George W Bush - Barry Humphries - Coco Chanel - Sweet Bird of Youth 1962 - Tennessee Williams - Samuel Beckett - Bram Stoker - Tracey Emin - Friedrich Nietzsche - Anton Chekhov - Winston Churchill - Charlie Chaplin - Bruce Lee - Malcolm X - Claude Monet - Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright 2010 - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Poster billing - Michael Jordan - John C Maxwell - Theodore Roosevelt - W Clement Stone - Abraham Lincoln - John F Kennedy - Paulo Coelho - Gertrude Stein - The Simpsons TV - Irish Murdoch - Bill Cosby - Anais Nin - Alain de Botton - B F Skinner - The Matrix 1999 - George Canning - J K Rowling - Tennessee Williams - Charles Kettering - Michael Korda - George Eliot - Humphry Davy - Truman Capote - Marilyn Monroe - F Scott Fitzgerald - J M Barrie - Henry David Thoreau - John Keats - Napoleon Hill - John Steinbeck - Jasper Johns - Sophocles - William Faulkner - Jack Lemmon - Charles Dickens - John Wooden - Napoleon Hill - George Bernard Shaw - Vincent van Gogh - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Noam Chomsky - Take the Money and Run 1969 - Too Funny to Fail: The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show 2017 - Losers: The Miscast Champion 2019 - Hatton Garden TV - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Edwin Land - Benjamin Disraeli - Marilyn Monroe -
There’s no doubt in my mind. Not one doubt in my mind that we will fail. George W Bush, October 2001, cited The Telegraph online
I am going to be the Australian Cultural Attaché to the Court of Saint James. I also have the distinction of being the first official failure of the Betty Ford Foundation. How about that? Barry Humphries as Sir Les Patterson
Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women
All my life I’ve been on the outside. And time is running out. Look around you. Oh, they got places for the old and the sick and the homeless but there’s no place at all for the failures. And failure is a highly contagious disease. Paul Newman, Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962 film; from Tennessee Williams 1959 play
Success and failure are equally disastrous. Tennessee Williams
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983
We learn from failure, not from success! Bram Stoker, Dracula
I mean I was angry with myself for getting pregnant. And the main anger that I had was the failure. I was a failure. A total failure in life. And I mean, had I been successful, had I been a successful artist for example, then maybe I could have gone ahead with having the child. Whether or not I was supported by the father of the child or not. I could have had the conviction and seen the whole thing through. But the fact that I was a failure as a painter, a failure as an artist, and having an abortion gave me another level of failure as a human being. Tracey Emin, film How It Feels
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. Friedrich Nietzsche
Women can’t forgive failure. Anton Chekhov, The Seagull
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill, misattributed
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Winston Churchill, misattributed
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself. Charlie Chaplin
Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts
Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe’, and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure. Malcolm X
My life has been nothing but a failure. Claude Monet
This is the story of failure. Of my failure. And how all that is good is not me. They say that in the end life all comes down to a few fleeting moments. Then when we draw our last breathe only a few things will have mattered. Across the Line: The Exodus of Charlie Wright 2010 starring Andy Garcia & Aidan Quinn & Mario von Peebles & Jordan Belfi & Corbin Bernsen & Luke Goss & Gary Daniels & Raymond J Barry & Danny Pinoet al, director R Ellis Frazier, commentary
If he can find the goodness somewhere, if there is a chance to find some kind of redemption before we leave this Earth then life’s moments will have mattered. This is the story of failure. My failure. For all of the failures of this life. Of my life. Fade to nothing. Just fleeting moments. ibid. Garcia
Some of our greatest advances have come from analysing failure. Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e21: Peak Performance, Troi to Data
Norman Wisdom – The Successful Failure. Poster billing
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan
Without failure there is no achievement. John C Maxwell
The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at best know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt
So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin. W Clement Stone
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. Abraham Lincoln
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Abraham Lincoln
Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. John F Kennedy
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself. Gertrude Stein
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try. The Simpsons, Homer advice
All our failures are ultimately failures in love. Iris Murdoch, The Bell, 1958
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. Bill Cosby
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. Anais Nin
Friedrich Nietzsche believed that all varieties of suffering and failure were to be welcomed by anyone seeking happiness. We should regard them as tough challenges to be overcome. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Nietzsche on Hardship
For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations …
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle. Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life doing nothing. George Bernard Shaw
My reputation grows with every failure. George Bernard Shaw
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying. B F Skinner
Everybody fails the first time. The Matrix 1999 starring Keanu Reeves & Laurence Fishburne & Carrie-Anne Moss & Hugo Weaving & Joe Pantoliano & Gloria Foster & Marcus Chong & Julian Arahanga & Matt Doran & Belinda McClory & Anthony Ray Parker & David Aston & Robert Taylor et al, directors Wachowski brothers, re Neil’s computer-generated jump across buildings