Time & Perspective Quote by John Mortimer

Mortimer’s line flips the usual self-help panic about running out of time. “There is always time for failure” sounds like a shrug, but it’s really a needle: a reminder that disaster doesn’t need planning, permission, or perfect conditions. Success gets treated as a scarce appointment we might miss; failure, Mortimer suggests, is the one thing the calendar reliably accommodates.

As a novelist (and a working observer of British institutions), Mortimer knew how people weaponize busyness to avoid risk. The subtext is comic and faintly cruel: you can postpone the hard leap indefinitely because the consequences will still be waiting. That’s the joke. The sting is that it’s also true. Failure isn’t just an outcome; it’s a default setting when ambition is replaced by dithering, when taste outruns craft, when fear masquerades as prudence.

The phrasing matters. “Always time” borrows the soothing cadence of reassurance, then delivers a nihilistic payload. It’s anti-motivational in the most motivating way: it punctures the melodrama of “now or never” while refusing to let you hide behind it. If you’re telling yourself you can’t start because the moment has passed, Mortimer offers a colder comfort: the moment for failing hasn’t passed either. So the real choice isn’t between success and failure; it’s between deliberate action and the kind of failure you slide into, well-rested and on schedule.