Quotes about fail (2555 quotes, page 22)

“The universe will never allow you to fail.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Universe

“We want Trump to be hugely successful, so we don’t want to handle a bill that’s going to fail in a few years, Trump ran on price-discovery and competition across state lines, getting the price down — the price is going up by 20 percent and the bill we are getting ready to vote on, once again, goes back and does too much emphasis on the coverage aspect”

Dave Brat (1964) American economist and professor at Randolph–Macon College

Rep. Dave Brat: RyanCare a Perverse Economic System http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/11/exclusive-rep-dave-brat-ryancare-a-perverse-economic-system/ (March 17, 2017)

Success

“Under the limitation of armaments treaty a large saving in outlay and a considerable decrease in maintenance of the Navy has been accomplished. We should maintain the policy of constantly working toward the full treaty strength of the Navy. Careful investigation is being made in this department of the relative importance of aircraft, surface and submarine vessels, in order that we may not fail to take advantage of all modern improvements for our national defense. A special commission also is investigating the problem of petroleum oil for the Navy, considering the best policy to insure the future supply of fuel oil and prevent the threatened drainage of naval oil reserves. Legislative action is required to carry on experiments in oil shale reduction, as large deposits of this type have been set aside for the use of the Navy.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Problem , Future

“Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)

Faith , Sense

“When a fact came along, he junked theories that failed to match.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 12

“What can go wrong will go wrong, because political objectives are so narrowly defined. Without a great breadth of elasticity, a system has countless ways in which to crash and burn, since only one pathway has been designated, by legislated or dictated law, as the correct flight plan. It takes no great statistician to figure out the low probability of an errant political objective landing successfully in one precise landing spot. With so many possible routes in which to fail, government programs seem to boomerang every which way.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 50

Law , Way

“What we do when defeat stares us in the face is the real touchstone of character. But the very fact that success has time and again proved the means of awakening people to the knowledge of greater ability than they ever before dreamed they possessed, ought to hearten and encourage us to keep on no matter how often we fail. If we brace ourselves and continue to push forward we will ultimately win out.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Everybody Ahead (or, Getting the Most Out of Life) (1916).

People , Dreams , Knowledge , Time

“When we succeed, we must not forget our past. When we fail, we must remember there is still tomorrow. When the path leads to nowhere, we can always take another path. We can make a diversion.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Sydney, (22 January 2017)[citation needed].

Past , Forgetting

“… Any one of a million things could fail and cause our complex civilization to collapse for an hour, for a day, or however long. That's when you find out the extent to which you are reliant on technology and don't even know it. That's when you see that it's so interdependent, that if you take one thing away, the whole thing falls down and leaves you with nothing.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 1 - The Trigger Effect

“This Mr. Dewhurst has not understood the Impressionist movement in the very least. All he sees in it is a technical method... He also says that before going to London we knew nothing whatsoever about light; but we have studies that prove the contrary. He omits the influence of Claude Lorrain, Corot, all the 18th-century painters, Chardin most of all. But what he fails to realize is that while Turner and Constable were of service to us, they confirmed our suspicion that those painters had not understood 'The Analysis of Shadows', which in the case of Turner are always a deliberate effect, a plain dark patch. As to the division of tones, Turner confirmed us its value as a method, but not as a means of accuracy or truth to nature. In any case, the 18th century was our tradition. It seems to me that Turner too, had looked at Claude Lorrain. I am even inclined to think there is a picture by Turner, 'Sunset', hung side by side with a Claude.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to his son Lucien, 8 Mai 1903, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock - , Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 149
Quote of Pissarro - referring to the writer of the book Impressionist Painting, it Genesis and Development, published in 1904
after 1900

Truth , Nature , Thinking , Study

“If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: 'Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their [Muslims'] hearts.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2002, Letter to the American people (2002)

People , Fear , Victory , Heart

“The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

"Pale Horse, Pale Rider" (1939)

Death , Evil , Heart

“Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: — surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Across the Plains

Source: Across the Plains (1892), Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.

“Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can — and surely will at times — fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 415

Love , Thinking , Time , Hurt

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life , War , Pleasure , Law

“The conclusion drawn by … most of our élites … is that the population constitutes a deep and dangerous well of ignorance and irrationality; if our civilization is in crisis the fault must lie with the populace which is not rising to the inescapable challenges. And yet civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Anti-Intellectualism"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

People , Lie

“When the Union needs my poor support, in peace or in war, I induge the hope that I shall not fail in the performance of any duty which may be required me. At any rate, I hope not to fall behind that class of men who are, on all occasions, blurting their devotion to the Union into the unwilling ears of the country.”

Henry Wilson (1812–1875) Union Army officer, Vice president, politician, historian

Source: Speech (June 1853), p. 78

Men , War , Peace , Hope

“Having failed, do you accept failure, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn to other things? When night comes, do you accept the blackness of it, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn and wait for morning? Or do you go on striving to light a candle against that dark however often the wind blows out the flame, however often the night returns?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 102)

Failure , Light , Waiting , Night

“What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

During a discussion in Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" television series in 1980.
1980s–1990s

Money , People

“Even good arguments fail, if they are spiced with digressions.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone—horrors!—printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms—especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Hangover Theory", Slate (Dec. 4, 1998)

Money , People , Feeling , Imagination

“God will not forgive us if we fail.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Understanding the Cold War : A Historian's Personal Reflections (2002) by Adam Bruno Ulam and Paul Hollander, p. 269

God , Forgiveness

“In my view, and we've introduced legislation to deal with this, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2016 Presidential Campaign Rally in Madison, Wisconsin, (1 July 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OewBDIwy-O4 at 43:00
2010s, 2015

“Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.”

Frederick Rolfe book Hadrian the Seventh

Source: Hadrian the Seventh (1904), Ch. 22, p. 343

People , Understanding , Personality

“The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Impressions and Opinions (1891): "Balzac" http://books.google.com/books?id=QCQ7AAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+lot+of+critics+is+to+be+remembered+by+what+they+failed+to+understand%22&pg=PA2#v=onepage.

Understanding

“The great Cartesian invention had its roots in those famous problems of antiquity which originated in the days of Plato. In endeavoring to solve the problems of the trisection of an angle, of the duplication of the cube and of the squaring of the circle, the ruler and compass having failed them, the Greek geometers sought new curves. They stumbled on the conic sections…There we find the nucleus of the method which Descartes later erected into a principle. Thus Apollonius referred the parabola to its axis and principal tangent, and showed that the semichord was the mean propotional between the latus rectum and the height of the segment. Today we express this relation by x2 = Ly, calling the height the ordinate (y) and the semichord the abscissa (x); the latus rectum being… L. …the Greeks named these curves and many others… loci… Thus the ellipse was the locus of a point the sum of the distances of which from two fixed points was constant. Such a description was a rhetorical equation of the curve…”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Number: The Language of Science (1930)

Lying , Problem

“My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

My Days Among the Dead Are Past http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1957.html, st. 1 (1818).

Past , Dead

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 1 “A Parade in Ehrenrang” (p. 1; opening paragraph)

Truth , Imagination , Sea

“Ethical Egoism advocates that each of us divide the world into two categories of people—ourselves and all the rest—and that we regard the interests of those in the first group as more important than the interests of those in the second group. But each of us can ask, what is the difference between myself and others that justifies placing myself in this special category? Am I more intelligent? Do I enjoy my life more? Are my accomplishments greater? Do I have needs or abilities that are so different from the needs and abilities of others? What is it that makes me so special? Failing an answer, it turns out that Ethical Egoism is an arbitrary doctrine, in the same way that racism is arbitrary.”

James Rachels book The Elements of Moral Philosophy

The Elements of Moral Philosophy (1999), p. 95

Life , People , World , Way

“On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope, this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 3. The Prospects of the Race (pp. 44-45)

Hate , Fate , World , Hope

“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).

“It is said by parrot-minded critics that Owen was "a man of one idea," whereas he was a man of more ideas than any public man England knew in his day. He shared and befriended every new conception of moment and promise, in science, in education, and government. His mind was hospitable to all projects of progress; and he himself contributed more original ideas for the conduct of public affairs than any other thinker of his generation…. Because some of his projects were so far reaching that they required a century to mature them, onlookers who expected them to be perfected at once, say he "failed in whatever he proposed." While the truth is he succeeded in more things than any public man ever undertook. If he made more promises than he fulfilled, he fulfilled more than any other public man ever made. Thus, he was not a man of "one idea" but of many. Nor did his projects fail. The only social Community for which he was responsible was that of New Harmony, in Indiana; which broke up through his too great trust in uneducated humanity — a fault which only the generous commit. The communities of Motherwell and Orbiston, of Manea, Fen, and Queenwood in Hampshire were all undertaken without his authority, and despite his warning of the adequacy of the means for success. They failed, as he predicted they would. Critics, skilled in coming to conclusions without knowing the facts, impute these failures to him.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Memorial dedication (1902)

Truth , Education , Communication , Idea

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much;
Who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”

Bessie Anderson Stanley (1879–1952) American poet

What is success?, quoted in He Has Achieved Success Who Has Lived Well, Laughed Often and Loved Much, in QuoteInvestigator.com (26 June 2012) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/06/26/define-success/.

Success , Love , Life , Men

“It was that hard; I still feel that way. But I believe that President Bush failed to lead. History will judge him harshly not for the mistakes he made- we all make mistakes- but for the opportunities he squandered.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 352
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Way , Feeling , History

“A new point is determined in Euclidean Geometry exclusively in one of the three following ways:
Having given four points A, B, C, D, not all incident on the same straight line, then
(1) Whenever a point P exists which is incident both on (A, B) and on (C, D), that point is regarded as determinate.
(2) Whenever a point P exists which is incident both on the straight line (A, B) and on the circle C(D), that point is regarded as determinate.
(3) Whenever a point P exists which is incident on both the circles A(B), C(D), that point is regarded as determinate.
The cardinal points of any figure determined by a Euclidean construction are always found by means of a finite number of successive applications of some or all of these rules (1), (2) and (3). Whenever one of these rules is applied it must be shown that it does not fail to determine the point. Euclid's own treatment is sometimes defective as regards this requisite.
In order to make the practical constructions which correspond to these three Euclidean modes of determination, correponding to (1) the ruler is required, corresponding to (2) both ruler and compass, and corresponding to (3) the compass only.
…it is possible to develop Euclidean Geometry with a more restricted set of postulations. For example it can be shewn that all Euclidean constructions can be carried out by means of (3) alone…”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), pp. 7-8

Way , Success

“On eroding, ecologically degraded, increasingly toxic landscapes, worked by failing or subsidy-dependent farmers and by the cheap labor of migrants, we have erected the tottering tower of "agribusiness," which prospers and "feeds the world" (incompletely and temporarily) by undermining its own foundations.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Citizenship Papers (2003), A Citizen's Response

World , Dependency

“In this sterile statecraft, centred on the politics of the maNDalayoni, one’s neighbour was always an enemy, and the enemy of an enemy always a friend! Hindu princes, therefore, failed to hang together in the face of a common calamity. In the event, they were hanged separately.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

“Constitutional statutes … which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern — can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (17 February 1882)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

People

“Human nature is said by many to be good; if so, where have social evils come from? For human nature is the only moral nature in that corrupting thing called "society." Every example set before the child of to-day is the fruit of human nature. It has been planted on every possible field — among the snows that never melt; in temperate regions, and under the line; in crowded cities, in lonely forests; in ancient seats of civilization, in new colonies; and in all these fields it has, without once failing, brought forth a crop of sins and troubles.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 191.

Nature , Evil

“The man with a job to offer or land to sell has been America's land interpreter. On him has fallen the burden of presenting its romance, adventure, and beauty. He has failed so often because the land was not enriched by that cultural development and by those associations which satisfy the immigrant's need. The method has been to build a good industrial plant and to let the village grow up about it, with little thought of satisfying the longings of men for religion, knowledge, recreation, or even so simple a thing as gardens. Some time ago a factory having some idle land wondered what it could do for Mr. Hoover and started factory gardens, giving each man a small plot. The management made a discovery. The gardens cut down labor turnover. The crops were worth very little money, but the men did not want to leave until they had their potatoes in.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men , Money , Religion , Beauty

“If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

Rhyming response written on a windowpane beneath Sir Walter Raleigh's writing: "Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall." As quoted in The History of the Worthies of England (1662) by Thomas Fuller

Heart

“Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

https://owlquote.com/quotes/happiness-is-the-only-2jy3r26
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

Life , Madness , Happiness

“Everyone's talked about Bank of America and Citigroup and the rest being too big to fail, but no, no, no. The most important point…is that the US must be perceived to be too big to fail.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"The West Should Fear the Growth of State Capitalism," http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7883061/The-West-should-fear-the-growth-of-state-capitalism-Ian-Bremmer.html The Daily Telegraph (July 10, 2010).

“Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Three, Arbitrage, The Random Walk Cosa Nostra, p. 122
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Prologue p. 5
The Sabbath (1951)

God , Reality , Sense

“Hayek fails to account either for the passion among intellectuals for equality, or for the resulting success of socialists and their egalitarian successors in driving the liberal idea from the stage of politics. This passion for equality is not a new thing, and indeed pre-dates socialism by many centuries, finding its most influential expression in the writings of Rousseau. There is no consensus as to how equality might be achieved, what it would consist in if achieved, or why it is so desirable in the first place. But no argument against the cogency or viability of the idea has the faintest chance of being listened to or discussed by those who have fallen under its spell.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Hayek and conservatism", in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Idea , Passion , Chance , Success

“Since the late 1960s macroeconomic debates in the United States have centered on the competing interpretations of the new classical and new Keynesian macroeconomics. The initial new classical model developed in the early 1970s by Robert E. Lucas, Jr., combined market-clearing, imperfect information, and rational expectations. After much testing, it was eventually rejected in the late 1970s for failing to explain why business cycles lasted on average four years while information delays lasted only a few weeks. It was soon replaced by a second new classical approach, the Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, which was also based on continuous market clearing and competitive equilibrium, but now generated the business cycle through serially correlated procyclical technology shocks.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Robert J. Gordon, Are Procyclical Productivity Fluctuations a Figment of Measurement Error? (1992).

Business

“Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On the kde-licensing mailing list, (13 April 1998) https://marc.info/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2
1990s

People , Business

“On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit […] Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

"The One and the Many", Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954). Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. 229 pages
Essay also appeared in Perspectives USA, Spring 1954 http://books.google.com/books?id=2UMIAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+might+define+an+eccentric+as+a+man+who+is+a+law+unto+himself+and+a+crank+as+one+who+having+determined+what+the+law+is+insists+on+laying+it+down+to+others%22&pg=PA30#v=onepage
Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)

Law

“Just because we fall and slip up at times, doesn't mean it should define who we are. We fail. We're humans. It's how we heal wounds that count.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Official Website (2009)

Time

“The greatest success goes to the person who is not afraid to fail in front of even the largest audience.”

David Packard (1912–1996) American electrical engineer, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, businessman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense,…

Source: Bill & Dave, 2007, p. 393

Success , Personality

“When he regained his original size, he heaved a deep sigh; for he perceived by my silence that I had altogether failed to comprehend him. And indeed I was now inclining to the belief that he must be no Circle at all, but some extremely clever juggler; or else that the old wives' tales were true, and that after all there were such people as Enchanters and Magicians.After a long pause he muttered to himself, "One resource alone remains, if I am not to resort to action. I must try the method of Analogy."”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 16. How the Stranger Vainly Endeavoured to Reveal to Me in Words the Mysteries of Spaceland

People , Silence

“Worship without a symbol, a garden without a source of water, and the household affairs of one without a woman, all these are doomed to fail.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Flowers of Wisdom

Water

“The heavenly Bridegroom allows small failings and common weaknesses in order to deliver his loved ones from pride.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Love

“Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness?”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

Canto I, stanza 6.
The Bride of Abydos (1813)

Beauty , Feeling , Change , Heart

“If the great Western experiment fails and we end up living in totalitarian war-on-terrorism states, one day someone’s going to say, 'Well democracy doesn’t work because they had to give it up’.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in the documentary Art in a Word by Vera Baghiroli, qoob tv (22 July 2008).

War , Democracy

“Only, stay by his side
Till the page is really known,
It may be we failed because we tried
To learn it all alone,
And now that He would not let us lose
One lesson of love
(For He knows the loss,) — can we refuse?”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 377.

Love , Learning , Loss

“[F]or more than three years this Congress, which has been given the name “The Do-Nothing Congress,” has turned a blind eye to the intractable war in Iraq, ignoring the Administration’s many mistakes, allowing it to stay a failed course. Here we are with six days left in the 109th Congress, and the Republicans, which control the House and the Senate and the White House, have not held one hearing, not one, into the President’s wartime failures.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

"Reid: America Deserves Accountability for Iraq Contracting Abuses" http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=263222&, Senate Democratic Caucus website, September 18, 2006 (accessed 2006-09-21)

War , Failure , Housing

“Turkmens claim that they have the lowest life expectancy in Iran and that they are denied fair access to higher education. Those who manage to apply for university places are often turned away because they fail religious tests based on Shiism; their inadequate mastery of Persian reduces their chances further. Tehran authorities blame the Turkmen revolt on “secessionists” and “counterrevolutionaries,” allegedly supported by the United States. In fact, the revolt highlights the failure of a narrowly based ideological regime to understand the pluralist nature of Iranian society and the legitimate aspirations of its diverse component parts for dignity, equal opportunity and a fair share in decision-making.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Iran's latest ethnic revolt" http://nypost.com/2008/01/14/irans-latest-ethnic-revolt/, New York Post (January 14, 2008).
New York Post

Life , Education , Failure , Understanding

“While there have been many criticisms of the research in corporate social responsibility, perhaps the most troubling issue is the very nature of 'corporate social responsibility' as if the concept were needed to augment the study of business policy. Corporate social responsibility was often looked at as an “add on” to “business as usual” and the phrase often heard from executives is “corporate social responsibility is fine, if you can afford it.
We need to understand the complex interconnections between economic and social forces. Isolating "social issues" as separate from the economic impact which they have, and conversely isolating economic issues as if they had no social effect, misses the mark both managerially and intellectually. Actions aimed at one side will not address the concerns of the other. Processes, techniques and theories that do not consider all of these forces will fail to describe and predict the business world as it really is.”

R. Edward Freeman (1951) American academic

Source: A stakeholder approach to strategic management, 1984, p. 40

World , Understanding , Business , Nature

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)

Search , Thinking , Sense , Freedom

“Alas, producers of commercial dinosaur products continue to churn out low quality product that is either obsolete or improperly derivative. Dino documentaries and books have become so plentiful that they are no longer special and I do not try to keep up with them. There are also serious problems with quality and accuracy which often fail to meet the expectations of scientists. More about those problems here. I about kicked in the TV screen when one dino doc claimed that the brain of Tyrannosaurus was as large as that of a gorilla when its IQ was not all that much better than a croc’s. And why are the theropods shown pausing to challenge their prey before they charge, when the actual focus of predators is to hit and overwhelm the victim before it knows what is happening? The low standards are not surprising considering how the media and press frequently carry product that promotes belief in the paranormal. But these are quibbles. Dinosaur science has almost completely transformed over the half century that my neural network has been aware of it. The old stand-bys from Allosaurus to the always strange Stegosaurus are still fascinating, but we now know about armored sauropods, fat-bellied therizinosaurs and multi-winged, near avian, sickle claws. The reptile model is out and the avian-mammalian is dominant.”

Gregory Scott Paul (1954) U.S. researcher, author, paleontologist, and illustrator

Autobiography, part V http://gspauldino.com/part5.html, gspauldino.com

Books , Problem , Science

“The ones that weren't paintable were the ones I did paint. The dead. To start with, I wanted more to paint the whole business, the world as it then was, the living reality – I was thinking in terms of something big and comprehensive. But then it all evolved quite differently, in the direction of death. And that's really not all that unpaintable. Far from it, in fact. Death and suffering have always been an artistic theme. Basically, it's the theme. We've eventually managed to wean ourselves away from it, with our nice, tidy lifestyle... They [ Red Army Faction-members were not the victims of any specific ideology of the left or of the right, but of the ideological posture as such. This has to do with the everlasting human dilemma in general: to work for a revolution and fail..”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from a conversation with Jan Thorn-Prikker concerning the '18 October 1977 cycle' [R.A.F.], 1989; as cited on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Baader-meinhof' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/october-18-1977baader-meinhof-11
1980's

Death , World , Business , Thinking

“Try not to change the world. You will fail. Try to love the world. Lo, the world is changed. Changed forever.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

August 31
Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970)

Love , World , Change

“The Industrial Revolution, too, failed to introduce a reign of freedom and happiness: it converted the medieval serf into an industrial slave; replaced the feudal baron by the industrial mogul, created in its wake an ever-growing, ever-shifting class of declassés, who had neither pride of ancestry nor love of tradition… The age of machine and competition, of capital, class-struggle, and demagogy was upon man.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

Love , Age , Freedom , Happiness

“See, all creaturely activity and all practice of virtues must fail here, for here what God works is nothing but Himself in the highest nobility of the spirit. And here there is nothing but an eternal contemplation and gazing at the light with the light and in the light. And the coming of the Bridegroom is so rapid that He is always coming and is indwelling with fathomless richness, and that He is coming anew personally, without crease, with such new brightness just as though He had never come before. For His coming consists in an eternal now, without time, which is always received with new lust and in new joy.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

God , Light , Time , Joy

“Failing often can help a ministry experience it. Being overly cautious can kill it.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Help

“The friendship of high and sanctified spirits loses nothing by death but its alloy; failings disappear, and the virtues of those whose faces we shall behold no more appear greater and more sacred when beheld through the shades of the sepulchre.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 254.

Death , Friendship , Appearance

“When the media we create excludes girls and women, fails to depict them as leaders and innovators or treats them as little more than side-kicks, love interests and sex objects, is it any wonder that women are systematically excluded and under-represented in so many careers and leadership positions?”

Anita Sarkeesian (1983) American blogger

Ordinary Woman: Just a few days left! (Feminist Frequency, 2016)

Love , Women , Sex , Girl

“Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die.”

E. E. Smith book Triplanetary

All-Highest of Eddore, book 3, chapter 17.
Triplanetary

“As a moral guide, [the Bible] utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savages who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Religion , Sex , Animals

“Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had a greater priority than our national security objectives. Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq — without bipartisan cooperation we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on in Washington that would give us hope.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

Reporters and editors luncheon address (2007)

War , Hope , Failure , Support

“I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, with blowing of the wind from without, that dried and pained Him with cold more than mine heart can think.
And other pains — for which pains I saw that all is too little that I can say: for it may not be told. The which Shewing of Christ’s pains filled me full of pain. For I wist well He suffered but once, but He would shew it me and fill me with mind as I had afore desired. And in all this time of Christ’s pains I felt no pain but for Christ’s pains. Then thought-me: I knew but little what pain it was that I asked; and, as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had wist what it had been, loth me had been to have prayed it. For methought it passed bodily death, my pains.
I thought: Is any pain like this? And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see thy Love suffer. How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here felt I soothfastly that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to Him in pain.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 17

Love , Life , Death , Men

“Some see our struggle as a symbol of the trend toward suicide among Blacks. Scholars and academics, in particular, have been quick to make this accusation. They fail to perceive differences. Jumping off a bridge is not the same as moving to wipe out the overwhelming force of an oppressive army. When scholars call our actions suicidal, they should be logically consistent and describe all historical revolutionary movements in the same way. Thus the American colonialists, the French of the late eighteenth century, the Russians of 1917, the Jews of Warsaw, the Cubans, the NLF, the North Vietnamese—any people who struggle against a brutal and powerful force—are suicidal.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 5

People , Way , Suicide

“The unacceptability of the Doomsday Machine raises awkward, unpleasant, and complicated questions that must be considered by both policy maker and technician. If it is not acceptable to risk the lives of the three billion inhabitants of the earth in order to protect ourselves from surprise attack, then how many people would we be willing to risk? I believe that both the United States and NATO would reluctantly be willing to envisage the possibility of one or two hundred million people (i. e., about five times more than World War II deaths) dying from the immediate effects, even if one does not include deferred long-term effects due to radiation, if an all-out thermonuclear war results from a failure of Type I Deterrence. With somewhat more controversy, similar numbers would apply to Type II Deterrence. (For example, some experts would concede the statement for an all-out Soviet nuclear attack on Europe, but not if the Soviets restricted themselves to the use of conventional weapons.) We are willing to live with the possibility partly because we think of it as a remote possibility. We do not expect either kind of deterrence to fail, and we do not expect the results to be that cataclysmic if deterrence does fail.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Death , War , People , World

“Peace to you, small lady. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. But at least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers and blow them into the sky. He knew who he served now. And why he could not quit. And why he must not fail”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Mountains of Mourning (1989)

Peace , World

“Appear to know only this,—never to fail nor fall.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

That Courage is not inconsistent with Caution, book ii. Chap. i.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“The many fail: the one succeeds.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Day-Dream

The Arrival, st. 2
The Day-Dream (1842)
Context: The bodies and the bones of those
That strove in other days to pass,
Are wither'd in the thorny close,
Or scatter'd blanching on the grass.
He gazes on the silent dead:
"They perish'd in their daring deeds."
This proverb flashes thro' his head,
"The many fail: the one succeeds."

“Science ever has been, and ever must be the safeguard of religion. The grandeur of her truths may transcend our failing reason, but those who cherish and lean upon truths equally grand, but certainly more incomprehensible, ought to see in the marvels of the material world the best defence and illustration of the mysteries of their faith.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1856), p. 132
Context: Truths physical have an- origin as divine as truths religious, In the time of Galileo they triumphed over the casuistry and secular power of the Church; and in our own day the incontrovertible truths of primeval life have won as noble a victory over the errors of a speculative theology, and a false interpretation of the word of God. Science ever has been, and ever must be the safeguard of religion. The grandeur of her truths may transcend our failing reason, but those who cherish and lean upon truths equally grand, but certainly more incomprehensible, ought to see in the marvels of the material world the best defence and illustration of the mysteries of their faith.

Truth , World , Faith , Religion

“We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Freedom and Fear Are at War (September 2001)
Variant: We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.
Context: Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.

“Murder rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in parts of America as in all England; and, whereas a very high percent of burglars in England are caught and punished, in parts of our country only a very low percent are finally punished. The comparison can not fail to be disturbing.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)
Context: When the local government unit evades its responsibility in one direction, it is started in the vicious way of disregard of law and laxity of living. The police force which is administered on the assumption that the violation of some laws may be ignored has started toward demoralization. The community which approves such administration is making dangerous concessions. There is no use disguising the fact that as a nation our attitude toward the prevention and punishment of crime needs more serious attention. I read the other day a survey which showed that in proportion to population we have eight times as many murders as Great Britain, and five times as many as France. Murder rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in parts of America as in all England; and, whereas a very high percent of burglars in England are caught and punished, in parts of our country only a very low percent are finally punished. The comparison can not fail to be disturbing. The conclusion is inescapable that laxity of administration reacts upon public opinion, causing cynicism and loss of confidence in both law and its enforcement and therefore in its observance. The failure of local government has a demoralizing effect in every direction.

Time , Parting , Country

“Whenever the power structure falters or fails the general tendency is to replace it with free communism. This is almost a law of revolution.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Introduction : The Libertarian Tradition
Communalism (1974)
Context: The contemporary world is being pulled apart by two contrary tendencies — one toward social death, one toward the birth of a new society. Many of the phenomena of the present crisis are ambivalent and can either mean death or birth depending on how the crisis is resolved.
The crisis of a civilization is a mass phenomenon and moves onward without benefit of ideology. The demand for freedom, community, life significance, the attack on alienation, is largely inchoate and instinctive. In the libertarian revolutionary movement these objectives were ideological, confined to books, or realized with difficulty, usually only temporarily in small experimental communities, or in individual lives and tiny social circles. It has been said of the contemporary revolutionary wave that it is a revolution without theory, anti-ideological. But the theory, the ideology, already exists in a tradition as old as capitalism itself. Furthermore, just as individuals specially gifted have been able to live free lives in the interstices of an exploitative, competitive system, so in periods when the developing capitalist system has temporarily and locally broken down due to the drag of outworn forms there have existed brief revolutionary honeymoons in which freer communal organization has prevailed. Whenever the power structure falters or fails the general tendency is to replace it with free communism. This is almost a law of revolution. In every instance so far, either the old power structure, as in the Paris Commune or the Spanish Civil War, or a new one, as in the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, has suppressed these free revolutionary societies with wholesale terror and bloodshed.

Law , Communication

“The Greeks failed to comprehend the infinitely large, the infinitely small, and infinite processes.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 57
Context: The Greeks failed to comprehend the infinitely large, the infinitely small, and infinite processes. They "shrank before the silence of the infinite spaces."

“The Earth Speaks, clearly, distinctly, and, in many of the realms of Nature, loudly, to William Jennings Bryan, but he fails to hear a single sound.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

The Earth Speaks to Bryan (1925), p. 5; written in response to the Scopes Trial, where Bryan spoke against the theory of evolution. They had previously been engaged in the controversy about the theory for several years. The title refers to a Biblical verse from the Book of Job (12:8), “Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee.”
Context: The Earth Speaks, clearly, distinctly, and, in many of the realms of Nature, loudly, to William Jennings Bryan, but he fails to hear a single sound. The earth speaks from the remotest periods in its wonderful life history in the Archaeozoic Age, when it reveals only a few tissues of its primitive plants. Fifty million years ago it begins to speak as “the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life.” In successive eons of time the various kinds of animals leave their remains in the rocks which compose the deeper layers of the earth, and when the rocks are laid bare by wind, frost, and storm we find wondrous lines of ascent invariably following the principles of creative evolution, whereby the simpler and more lowly forms always precede the higher and more specialized forms.
The earth speaks not of a succession of distinct creations but of a continuous ascent, in which, as the millions of years roll by, increasing perfection of structure and beauty of form are found; out of the water-breathing fish arises the air-breathing amphibian; out of the land-living amphibian arises the land-living, air-breathing reptile, these two kinds of creeping things resembling each other closely. The earth speaks loudly and clearly of the ascent of the bird from one kind of reptile and of the mammal from another kind of reptile.
This is not perhaps the way Bryan would have made the animals, but this is the way God made them!

Nature

“Conservatism — from Burke and Hume to Hayek and Oakeshott — has always been, at its core, a critique of ideology in favor of reality. The world is as it is, the conservative argues. Any attempt to drastically overhaul it, to impose a utopian vision onto a messy, evolving human landscape will not just fail, it will likely make things worse. To pretend that the present exists for no good reason — and can be repealed or transformed in an instant — is a formula for ruin.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"The Triumph of Obama’s Long Game" in New York magazine (21 July 2017) http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/the-triumph-of-obamas-long-game.html
Context: Conservatism — from Burke and Hume to Hayek and Oakeshott — has always been, at its core, a critique of ideology in favor of reality. The world is as it is, the conservative argues. Any attempt to drastically overhaul it, to impose a utopian vision onto a messy, evolving human landscape will not just fail, it will likely make things worse. To pretend that the present exists for no good reason — and can be repealed or transformed in an instant — is a formula for ruin. The leftist vision of perfect “social justice” is therefore as illusory and as pernicious as the reactionary’s dream of restoring a mythical past. And the great virtue of America’s deeply conservative Constitution is that it throws so many obstacles in the way of radical, ideological change — to the left or right — that it limits the harm that humans can do to themselves in moments of passion or certainty or in search of ideological perfection.

World , Reality

“Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)
Context: These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America — it is also an illusory goal in its own right.
Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.
A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

World

“In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me. But will it be ever impossible to have them perfectly precise? I believe that even at present we have them sufficiently so to enter, at least, on the great problem under consideration. Name them as you will, the actions which society stamps as crimes, and of which it punishes the authors, are reproduced every year, in almost exactly the same numbers; examined more closely, they are found to divide themselves into almost exactly the same categories; and, if their number were sufficiently large, we might carry farther our distinctions and subdivisions, and should always find there the same regularity. It will then remain correct to say, that a given species of actions is more common at one given age than at any other given age.

“Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), p. 259.
Variant: It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
As extended upon in Adventures of Ideas (1933), Pt. 4, Ch. 16.
Context: Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

World

“What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them.”

Jane Addams book Peace and Bread in Time of War

Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), Chapter 7 : Personal Reactions During War
Context: What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?

Faith , Courage , Nature

“We are not sufficiently advanced to reveal our ideas to the public, but of course we cannot deny the general charge of rearmament and no doubt if we try to keep our ideas secret till after the election, we should either fail, or if we succeeded, lay ourselves open to the far more damaging accusation that we had deliberately deceived the people…I have therefore suggested that we should take the bold course of actually appealing to the country on a defence programme, thus turning the Labour party's dishonest weapon into a boomerang.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Diary entry (2 August 1935), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy. 1933-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 92.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Context: The Labour Party, obviously intends to fasten upon our backs the accusation of being 'warmongers' and they are suggesting that we have 'hush hush' plans for rearmament which we are concealing from the people. As a matter of fact we are working on plans for rearmament at an early date for the situation in Europe is most alarming... We are not sufficiently advanced to reveal our ideas to the public, but of course we cannot deny the general charge of rearmament and no doubt if we try to keep our ideas secret till after the election, we should either fail, or if we succeeded, lay ourselves open to the far more damaging accusation that we had deliberately deceived the people... I have therefore suggested that we should take the bold course of actually appealing to the country on a defence programme, thus turning the Labour party's dishonest weapon into a boomerang.

People , Secret , Idea , Country

“It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of peril.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Foreword, in United States Submarine Operations in World War II. (1949) by Theodore Roscoe, p. v
Context: When I assumed command of the Pacific Fleet in 31 December, 1941; our submarines were already operating against the enemy, the only units of the Fleet that could come to grips with the Japanese for months to come.
It was to the Submarine Force that I looked to carry the load until our great industrial activity could produce the weapons we so sorely needed to carry the war to the enemy. It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of peril.

“Even though the eagle,
King of birds,
Can with his powerful sight
Gaze steadfastly upon
The brightness of the sun;
Yet do the weaker eyes of the bat
Fail and falter in the same.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

Bird , Sun

“Financial "synergy" is a will-o'-the-wisp. It looks good on paper, but it fails to work out in practice.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 707

“No one will fail to realize how low such a standard is.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 7
Context: To be above the poverty line, means no more than to have a sanitary dwelling and sufficient food and clothing to keep the body in working order. It is precisely the same standard that a man would demand for his horses or slaves. Treating man merely as the "repository of a certain sort of labor power," it makes possible the utilization of that power to the fullest extent. No one will fail to realize how low such a standard is. It does not necessarily include any of the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, or social necessities; it is a purely physical standard...

“We tried to do this the easy way — and we failed. Now begins the conflict I strove to avoid.”

Jim Starlin (1949) Comic creator

Adam Warlock, in The Infinity Gauntlet (1991), Issue 4 : Cosmic Battle on the Edge of the Universe
Context: We tried to do this the easy way — and we failed. Now begins the conflict I strove to avoid. It may well prove to be a battle the Universe cannot survive! Eternity, it is now your turn.

Way

“Repeatedly I took stabs at writing, but the results were so poor that I would tear up the sheets. I was striving for a level of expression that matched those of the novels I read. But I always somehow failed to get onto the page what I thought and felt. Failing at sustained narrative, I compromised by playing with single sentences and phrases. Under the influence of Stein’s Three Lives, I spent hours and days pounding out disconnected sentences for the sheer love of words. I would write: “The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.” Or: “The child’s clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream.” “The old man huddled in the dark doorway, his bony face lit by the burning yellow in the windows of distant skyscrapers.” My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative. I strove to master words, to make them disappear, to make them important by making them new, to make them melt into a rising spiral of emotional stimuli, each greater than the other, each feeding and reinforcing the other, and all ending in an emotional climax that would drench the reader with a sense of a new world. That was the single aim of my living.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Love , World , Dreams , Feeling

“When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it.”

Robert L. Heilbroner (1919–2005) American historian and economist

Source: The Future As History (1960), Chapter IV, Part 9, The Grand Dynamic of History, p. 209
Context: In an age which no longer waits patiently through this life for the rewards of the next, it is a crushing spiritual blow to lose one's sense of participation in mankind's journey, and to see only a huge milling-around, a collective living-out of lives with no larger purpose than the days which each accumulates. When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it. If we are to meet, endure, and transcend the trials and defeats of the future — for trials and defeats there are certain to be — it can only be from a point of view which, seeing the future as part of the sweep of history, enables us to establish our place in that immense procession in which is incorporated whatever hope humankind may have.

History , Help

“War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure!”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, July 22, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report
Context: You know George W. Bush is a war-time president, he says - proudly. Guess what. War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure! Or a warlord. It's called a warlord in other countries. A war time president here. One man's ceiling I guess is another man's floor. George Bush is a warlord. He's a failure!

War , Failure

“When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Christian's Mistake (1865). p. 64
Context: When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

Love , Faith , Hope

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

As quoted in "A Genius and His Magic Camera" in LIFE magazine (27 October 1972); also in The Instant Image : Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience (1978) by Mark Olshaker, p. 65
Variant: An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
Context: An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.

Quotes about fail page 22

Quotes about fail
page 22