Success Quote by Phillip Adams

Adams frames success as less a destination than a tolerance test. The line isn`t inspirational wallpaper; it`s a blunt audit of what people quietly bargain away when they say they want something. By stacking three verbs in a row - have a go, fail miserably, have another go - he turns the myth of merit into a gritty loop. The adverb "miserably" is doing the real work: it refuses the sanitized language of "setbacks" and "learning experiences" and insists on the ego bruise, the public awkwardness, the part most ambition narratives edit out.

The subtext is a rebuke to the spectator stance. "Unless you`re willing" makes success conditional not on talent, luck, or connections (though Adams, a seasoned media and political commentator, would know those matter), but on psychological consent: can you live with looking incompetent long enough to become competent? The sentence also demotes "success" from something that happens to the deserving into something that only happens after you`ve rehearsed failure without quitting. It`s anti-heroic in a particularly writerly way: progress is iterative, not epiphanic.

Contextually, coming from a career built on public opinion, deadlines, and being wrong in print, the quote reads like professional weather-reporting. You don`t win by being untouched; you win by staying in the game after you`ve been corrected, mocked, ignored, and still choosing to try again.