“If you're afraid to fail, then you're probably going to fail.”
Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
Context: So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.
“If you're afraid to fail, then you're probably going to fail.”
Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
Of his father
Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang in Forever (1976)
“We may fail, do fail continually, but He never fails.”
James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China
(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 175).
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach
Wooden only repeated a common aphorism (e.g. Interview on Charlie Rose, reported by Bill Walton), which was already in circulation as early as the 1920s, when he was a youth. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbs=bks%3A1%2Ccdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3AJan+1_2+1900%2Ccd_max%3ADec+31_2+1930&q=%22fail+to+prepare%22+%22prepare+to+fail%22 <br class="br">Misattributed
“Failing to plan is planning to fail”
Alan Lakein (1973) American writer
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett book Worstward Ho
Worstward Ho (1983)
Variant: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Context: All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”
A. Whitney Brown (1952) American stand-up comedian
The Big Picture: An American Commentary (1991)
“Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity”
Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter
All This Useless Beauty
Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)
Context: Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal — is it such a surprise?
“Try and fail, but don't fail to try.”
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)