Failure Quotes

"I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure"

George W. Bush, President

"Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes"

John Dewey, Philosopher

"Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility"

Susan Sontag, Author

"I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success"

J. Paul Getty, Businessman

"Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

"The Bush Administration's failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world"

Barack Obama, President

"Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt"

Barack Obama, President

"Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act"

Andre Malraux, Author

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor"

Truman Capote, Novelist

"It's not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail"

Jimmy Carter, President

"As kids we're not taught how to deal with success; we're taught how to deal with failure. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you succeed, then what?"

Charlie Sheen, Actor

"Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure"

Earl Wilson, Athlete

"The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause"

Gustav Mahler, Composer

"The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower"

Audre Lorde, Poet

"The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure"

Elias Canetti, Author

"The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide"

James A. Baldwin, Author

"No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma - but we make out of them just what suits our purposes"

Alfred Adler, Psychologist

"There's no right or wrong, success or failure"

Miley Cyrus, Musician

"In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time determines success or failure"

Malcolm X, Activist

"I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try"

Nikki Giovanni, Poet

"The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms"

Neal Boortz, Journalist

"All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure"

Carl Sandburg, Poet

"Fear of failure has always been my best motivator"

Douglas Wood, Writer

"He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being"

Paul Tillich, Theologian

"He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure"

James Lane Allen, Author

"Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man"

William Howard Taft, President

"To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment"

James Lane Allen, Author

"War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination"

Bill Moyers, Journalist

"One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king"

Abraham Maslow, Psychologist

"Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets"

Victor Kiam, Businessman

"Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination"

Edward Abbey, Author

"I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault"

Branch Rickey, Athlete

"The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?"

Aldrich Ames, Criminal

"The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity"

Mitch Daniels, Politician

"There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation"

Brian Ferneyhough, Composer

"Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance"

John McCarthy, Politician

"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts"

John Wooden, Coach

"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be"

John Wooden, Coach

Page 4 of 13