Quotes about fail

A collection of quotes on the topic of fail, doing, use, people.

James Baldwin quote: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

Michael Jordan quote: “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Quotes about fail

“In the end, the two failed Chilean constituent processes were a marketing exercise to legitimize the constitution of the Dictatorship.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Interview.

Exercises

“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.

Motivational, Success, Business, Graduation

“This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soulmate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Life, Hate, Truth, World

“My strong point is that even if I don’t do well in a competition, I don’t really get depressed. On the contrary, my motivation goes up 100% after a competition where I’ve failed.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Translation source: https://kaerb.tumblr.com/post/169640478259/my-strong-point-is-that-even-if-i-dont-do-well (user-translation) from 13 January 2018. Page: 23. Original: (ja) 試合でうまくいかなくてもあまり落ち込まないのが僕の特徴です。逆に失敗した試合のあとは100%モチベーションが上がります。

Motivation, Strong

“Stories of perfect people who have never failed don't inspire me, in fact, those stories make me bored and sleepy. I'm fascinated and addicted to stories of people who have failed and risen to become the world's best, those are the real heroes. Failing doesn't define you, how you bounce back up is what makes you”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

People, World, Perfection

“If you're afraid to fail, then you're probably going to fail.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

“"It's not a shame to fail exams, but it's a shame to be satisfied with the habit of failing continuously." Ahmed Omaar”

Ahmed Omaar (1987)

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/ahmedomaar7/

“When I try, I fail.
When I trust,
He succeeds.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“Do not be afraid to fail exams, be afraid to always be a witness to other students success.”

Ahmed Omaar (1987)

Success
Source: https://www.yourquote.in/ahmed-omaar-crc7k/quotes

Success

“If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Fast Company, article "Hondas in Space" https://www.fastcompany.com/52065/hondas-space (1 February 2005)

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Children, Family, For Parents

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
Context: A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [... ] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.

Success, For Men, For Team

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Music

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Variant: I can appect failure, but I cannot accept not trying.

Failure, For Men

“Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Soul, Failure, Animals

“You could spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future but all there will ever be is what's happening here and the decisions we make in this moments which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dared the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him and so he made a conservative choice instead, he got a safe job as an accountant and when I was 12 years old he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could do to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you could fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

Love, Life, Fear, Family

“Each of us has a particular way of looking at the world, of interpreting events and the actions of people around us. This is our attitude, and it determines much of what happens to us in life. If our attitude is essentially fearful, we see the negative in every circumstance. We stop ourselves from taking chances. We blame others for mistakes and fail to learn from them. If we feel hostile or suspicious, we make others feel such emotions in our presence. We sabotage our career and relationships by unconsciously creating the circumstances we fear the most. The human attitude, however, is malleable. By making our attitude more positive, open, and tolerant of other people, we can spark a different dynamic—we can learn from adversity, create opportunities out of nothing, and draw people to us. We must explore the limits of our willpower and how far it can take us.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 8 : Change Your Circumstances by Changing Your Attitude
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Life, Hostility, People, World

“It's not a shame to fail exams, but it's a shame to be satisfied with the habit of failing continuously.”

Ahmed Omaar

“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow if I fail, if I succeed at least I did as I believe.”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived."”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Life, Truth, Problem

“I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“How good are markets in predicting real-world developments? Reading the record, it is striking how many calamities that I anticipated did not in fact materialise.

Financial markets constantly anticipate events, both on the positive and on the negative side, which fail to materialise exactly because they have been anticipated.

It is an old joke that the stock market has predicted seven of the last two recessions. Markets are often wrong.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

World, Reading

“I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Life, Motivational, Wise, Deep

“[Fascism] was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Excerpt from My Life by Oswald Mosley (1968), Ch.16.

Death, People, World

“A mistake to a successful mind is not a dead end, it gives them the determination to bounce back harder, in fact their success can be measured by how high they bounce back when they fail.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.104 (July 2018)

Success, Dead

“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

" The Problem of Increasing Human Energy http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm", Century Illustrated Magazine (June 1900)

Motivational, Deep, Back To Work

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in The Wright Style (1992) by Carla Lind, p. 3

Love, Nature, Study, Beauty

“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Men, Courageous, For Men

“‎"A humble and prayerful person will find a thousand things in the Bible, which the proud student will utterly fail to discern." ~ J. C. Ryle”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

Personality

“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, " I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

Pain, Failure, Reality, Time

“In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Men, Hope, Flowers, Hope

“How many things would you attempt
If you knew you could not fail”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“I've missed over 9,000 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 (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

As quoted in Nike Culture : The Sign of the Swoosh (1998), by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, p. 49

Life, Game, Time

““Someone out there is waiting for you for a lifetime. You cannot afford to fail them; failing them is failing God. Remember, God is speaking to you through them, saying: 'They are fatherless, so that you can be their father.' 'They are lonely, so that you can be their companion.' 'They are in want, so that you can be their benefactor.'”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

” On the importance of charity - "SCATTERED! Eleven Children, One Wife, No Home" http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/1273/scattered-eleven-children-one-wife-no-home.html Nigerian Voice (October 9 2009)

God, Waiting

“If children fail to understand one another, it is because they think they understand one another.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) Tr. Marjorie and Ruth Gabain (1926)
Context: If children fail to understand one another, it is because they think they understand one another. The explainer believes from the start that the reproducer will grasp everything, will almost know beforehand all that should be known, and will interpret every subtlety. Children are perpetually surrounded by adults who not only know much more than they do, but who also do everything in their power to understand them, who even anticipate their thoughts and desires. Children, therefore... are perpetually under the impression that people can read their thoughts, and in extreme cases, can steal their thoughts away. It is obviously owing to this mentality that children do not take the trouble to express themselves clearly... This mentality does not contradict ego-centric mentality. Both arise from the belief of the child, the belief that he is the centre of the universe. These habits of thought account... for the remarkable lack of precision in the childish style.

Children, Understanding, Thinking

“You are braver and more courageous than you realize; but fail to act or speak out, for fear of displeasing others; the anguish one lives for not acting instinctively, hurts more than if you acted.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1998

Fear, Courage, Hurt

“There are two ways to live, he decided. You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch.3

Money, Way

“Rejection doesn't mean that you aren't good enough…
it just means the other person failed to realize what you have to offer.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Personality

“Perhaps only when human effort had done it's best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

God, Effort

“If you love without evoking love in return - if through the vital expression of yourself as a loving person you fail to become a loved person, then your love is impotent, it is a misfortune.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Love, Personality

“Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.”

Kevin Costner (1955) American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman

Men

“Let your motto then always be 'Excelsior', for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Source: The Art of Money Getting

“No one who is not utterly blind can fail to see that God gathered all the beauty of which the whole world is capable of in woman.”

Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) Magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, alchemist

God, World, Beauty

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: When each day is the same as the nest it's because people fail to reconize the good things that happen in thier lives everyday the sunrises
Source: The Alchemist

People, Sun

“My past is everything I failed to be.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

O meu passado é tudo quanto não consegui ser.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 100

Past

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Failure

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

“It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Past

“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”

Charles Bukowski book Tales of Ordinary Madness

Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

People

“To learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Learning

“Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

Justice

“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)

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

People, Spring, Communication

“Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

As quoted in Dictionary of American maxims (1955) edited by David George Plotkin.

“Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding?”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Crito
Plato, Crito

Men, God, Understanding, Country

“Let me say it again. I don't believe in black majority rule ever in Rhodesia—not in a thousand years. I repeat that I believe in blacks and whites working together. If one day it is white and the next day it is black, I believe we have failed and it will be a disaster for Rhodesia.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Nigel Rees, "Sayings of the Century", Unwin paperbacks, 1984, p. 247.
Radio broadcast, March 20, 1976.
Peter Godwin, Comment in the Guardian(UK) Newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/25/comment.zimbabwe.

“For a while, I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label. I feel that if I was figuratively dropped on the Earth and there was a political line, I would be just left of center. The difference for me is that conservatives are more interested in property values and rights and free markets, and liberals are more interested in human rights. In the end, there are people who don't fit into the marketplace and are not equipped. I believe the government should step in where the free market fails.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Las Vegas CityLife, August 9, 2007 http://www.lvcitylife.com/articles/2007/08/10/ae/stage/iq_15893857.txt Interviews, Print Interviews

People, Feeling

“Moreover, because the slothful mind is typically brought to its downfall gradually, when we fail to control our speech, we move on to more harsh words. Thus, at first, we are happy to speak of others kindly; afterwards, we begin to pick at the lives of those of whom we speak, and finally our tongues break into open slander against them.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Source: The Book of Pastoral Rule, p.124

Happiness

“People do not care whether or not they succeed; they care about whether or not they fail.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Personality Lectures

People

“The Fascist State directs and controls the entrepreneurs, whether it be in our fisheries or in our heavy industry in the Val d'Aosta. There the State actually owns the mines and carries on transport, for the railways are state property. So are many of the factories… We term it state intervention… If anything fails to work properly, the State intervenes. The capitalists will go on doing what they are told, down to the very end. They have no option and cannot put up any fight. Capital is not God; it is only a means to an end.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933), pp. 153-154, Interview took place between March 23 and April 4, 1932
1930s

God, Fight

“A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing.
Our helper He amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.”

Martin Luther Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott

Ein' feste burg is unser Gott,
ein gute wehr und waffen.
Er hilft uns frei aus aller not,
die uns itzt hat betroffen.
Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (1529), translated by Frederic H. Hedge, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Literal Translation: A firm fortress is our God,
a good defense and weapon.
He frees us from all need,
that has struck us.
Complete hymn, Pennsylvania Lutheran Church Book translation, at Wikisource

God

“I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Amos (prophet) Hebrew prophet

5:21-24 NIV
Book of Amos

Justice, Music

“All the people that were rooting for me to fail… at the end of the day, tomorrow they have to wake up and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. … They got the same personal problems they had today. And I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things I want to do.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

James not bothered by those rooting for him to fail, Steve Ginsburg, Reuters, June 13, 2011 http://ca.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idCATRE75C0T420110613, James addressing fans after losing to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2011 NBA Finals.

Life, People, Way, Problem

“Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

As quoted in Queers in History : The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays (2009), by Keith Stern, p. 465.

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 11, Page 351

Life, Dreams

“A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Conversation with Jean Martet (1 June 1928), Ch. 30
Clemenceau, The Events of His Life (1930)

Life

“Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal, though pop culture magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan would suggest that it is. It is intense, often desperate. Te internal landscape is violent upheaval, a wild and ultimately cruel disregard of human individuality, a brazen, high-strung wanting that is absolute and imperishable, not attached to personality, no respecter of boundaries; ending not in sexual climax but in a human tragedy of failed relationships, vengeful bitterness in an aftermath of sexual heat, personality corroded by too much endurance of undesired, habitual intercourse, conflict, a wearing away of vitality in the numbness finally of habit or compulsion or the loneliness of separation.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 2

Personality, Loneliness

“Gordon put his hand against the swing door. He even pushed it open a few inches. The warm fog of smoke and beer slipped through the crack. A familiar, reviving smell; nevertheless as he smelled it his nerve failed him. No! Impossible to go in. He turned away. He couldn't go shoving into that saloon bar with only fourpence halfpenny in his pocket. Never let other people buy your drinks for you! The first commandment of the moneyless. He made off down the dark pavement.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 4

People, Drink, Beer

“This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Address in Memphis, Tennessee (25 October 1905) http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly 1900s

Fear, Country

“No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Thinking, Time, Help

“Ivanov came to quite the same conclusion, though life supplied him with quite different material to think about. He puts it like this: many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it right; more often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it we despair because our lives seem meaningless… the secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them, and so learning to walk in the true path.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The Oak and the Calf

The Oak and the Calf (1975)

Life, Secret, Understanding, Thinking

“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Feeling, Failure, Drink

“Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!"”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, War

“When the enemy is driven back, we have failed, and when he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

"The Book of Military Quotations" - Page 124 by Peter G. Tsouras - Reference - 2005.

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Love, Lie, World, Sadness

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

Harvard address (2008)

Motivational, Deep, Success, Happy

“Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen.”

Oskar Schindler (1908–1974) German industrialist and Holocaust rescuer

After witnessing a day of Nazi roundups of Jews in Krakow, as quoted in Schindler's List (1982) by Thomas Keneally, Ch. 15. 
Context: Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.

Thinking, Personality

“I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

As quoted in Sophia, Living and Loving: Her Own Story (1979) by A. E. Hotchner, p. 76.
Context: I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people’s standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.

People, Sense

“Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.”

Amelia Earhart book Last Flight

Letter to her husband George P. Putnam, on the eve of her last flight
Last Flight (1937)
Context: Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.

Women, Men, Failure, For women

“Your lack of common sense (can be well judged from the fact) that the evidence of two women is equal to one man, that is a proof of the lack of common sense, and you spend some nights (and days) in which you do not offer prayer and in the month of Ramadan (during the days) you do not observe fast, that is a failing in religion.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Sahih Muslim, Book 001, Number 0142
Sunni Hadith
Context: It is narrated on the authority of 'Abdullah b. Umar that the Messenger of Allah observed: O womenfolk, you should give charity and ask much forgiveness for I saw you in bulk amongst the dwellers of Hell. A wise lady among them said: Why is it, Messenger of Allah, that our folk is in bulk in Hell? Upon this the Holy Prophet observed: You curse too much and are ungrateful to your spouses. I have seen none lacking in common sense and failing in religion but (at the same time) robbing the wisdom of the wise, besides you. Upon this the woman remarked: What is wrong with our common sense and with religion? He (the Holy Prophet) observed: Your lack of common sense (can be well judged from the fact) that the evidence of two women is equal to one man, that is a proof of the lack of common sense, and you spend some nights (and days) in which you do not offer prayer and in the month of Ramadan (during the days) you do not observe fast, that is a failing in religion. This hadith has been narrated on the authority of Abu Tahir with this chain of transmitters.

Women, Religion, Sense, Night

“In a little while it will be all over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Letter from Batoche, N.W. T. to The Irish World (6 May 1885), also published as " An Appeal for Justice" in The Gibbet of Regina : The Truth about Riel, Sir John A. Macdonald and His Cabinet Before Public Opinion, by One who Knows (1886) by One who knows, Napoléon Thompson, p. 186
Context: In a little while it will be all over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die. A day of reckoning will come to our enemies and of jubilee to my people. The hated yoke of English domination and arrogance will be broken in this land, and the long-suffering victims of their injustice will, with God's blessing, re-enter into the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions.

“We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
Context: Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all them to falter now? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

Victory

“So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Context: If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.

“Certain characteristics must exist for a democracy to survive. First, laws must be constructed in fairness and equality; and second, obedience of law by the citizens, and those who judge and enforce them; without strict adherence to these principles, democracies fail.

1994”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

Law, Democracy

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Love, Life, Making love, History

“Mankind will soon see that there is no alternative to sharing the produce of the world. Every other method has been tried and failed, and has led inevitably to war, suffering, degradation and misery.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

War, World, Suffering

“Do not be afraid to fail. Most do every day.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1973

“[T]here are some who challenge the expediency of the Imperial character of this realm. Having attempted, and failed, to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decomposition, they may, perhaps, now recognize in the disintegration of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only accomplish, but precipitate their purpose. The immediate dissolution of Parliament will afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course which will materially influence its fortunes and shape its destiny. Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the country.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Election address; letter to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Marlborough (8 March 1880), quoted in The Times (9 March 1880), p. 8

Peace, Dependency, Country

“Maths seem to be based on predestination. You have the question, but the answer is already there. Your task is to get it correct, no matter how many times you have failed.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Question, Time

“When your leadership fails, the followers are the ones to blame or perhaps, there is poor leadership on the side of the leading figure.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Extremist groups rarely consider the endgame. They’re so emotionally entrenched in the crusade; they fail to realize their extreme conceptions precludes normalcy in their lives.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2018

“The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light. In that hour was made a Darkness that seemed not lack but a thing with being of its own: for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book The Silmarillion

Source: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Light, Loss, Heart

“We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped… We suffer, therefore we think.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Pain, Hope, Problem, Thinking

“He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

Reality

“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 Misattributed

Business

“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

“[Rincewind] drew his sword and, with a smooth overarm throw, completely failed to hit the troll.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

“His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor