Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Success and failure
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“If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try exactly the same thing again. You won’t succeed, again. Instead, have a think, evaluate, correct, modify and then try again. Creativity is an iterative process.”
Will Gompertz (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a black African woman could succeed in America in 1999, then all the entrepreneurs across the world can succeed!”. Rebecca speakimg during an interview with cherie Blair foundation for women.”
Rebecca Enonchong (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing wrong in using affirmative action to give a selected group of people the chance to succeed. What I propose is that chance to succeed should be given based on merit, not solely on the tribe, skin colour, gender, religion, or language. Unfortunately for Nigeria, meritocracy fell on the wayside shortly after gaining independence from the United Kingdom.”
Chika Oduah (born 1986) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are putting all the tools that are needed for the financial sector to succeed, but also for the farmers and the farmers' organizations also to succeed,”
Gérardine Mukeshimana (born 1970) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Africa’s food future depends on financing smallholders, youth and women – IFAD newTimes (September 09, 2026)
“History has shown us time and again that the spirit of our nation cannot be defeated. Those who now want to divide us and return us to a dark past, which no Romanian wants anymore, will not succeed. And they will not succeed because our strength lies precisely in our unity and in our common belief in freedom and democracy.”
Klaus Iohannis (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In short, the three chair countries, India, Indonesia and the US, face very different challenges in 2023. But if they all succeed, the world will be a far better place next year. Let’s hope that they all succeed in scoring some goals. The World Cup of diplomacy at the end will leave little doubt that it was far more significant than the World Cup of soccer.”
Kishore Mahbubani (born 1948) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The World Cup of diplomacy has just kicked off" (27 December 2022)
“If you don’t succeed, you’ll find yourself tirelessly explaining your efforts. The need to elaborate and justify your attempts arises when there’s no proof that you gave it your all unless you succeed.”
Burna Boy (born 1991) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Burna Boy's catchphrase appears in exams", Itunu Azeez Kareem 22 August 2023
“We are not just here to promote but also to facilitate and if we succeed, Nigeria will succeed. I am too old to japa and I can’t go anywhere.”
Aisha Rimi wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don’t have to be a table-basher to succeed and you don’t have to emulate men to succeed. Stereotypes like the entrepreneurs on Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice make compelling viewing but you don’t have to behave in that way to get results. I used to do the whole power-dressing thing until someone said I reminded them of a politician. At that point I stopped and went back to being just me!”
Jacqueline Gold (1960–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the things I remember from growing up was this pride that older Blacks had and this desire to see young Blacks succeed,” she said. “There was this village that you felt a part of. It was this motivation that helped you to want to succeed”
Karen Butler-Purry wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will say that it is very difficult to succeed nowadays, so I want to urge all the youths to work hard and never give up. You should always bet on yourself to succeed and in the end you will”
Ned Azemia (born 1997) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Exclusive interview with Ned Azemia - ‘Always bet on yourself to succeed’,22 June 2017
“If I can succeed in the private sector, I can as well succeed as President of Nigeria.”
Udom Gabriel Emmanuel (born 1966) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/04/2023-presidency-poverty-has-overtaken-us-i-can-turnaround-our-fortunes-if-elected-gov-udom/.During consultations for his presidential aspiration, Emmanuel argued that his record in ba…
“Embrace every challenge you have, every person you meet, every place you visit, every task you succeed at, and especially those at which you fail. You will learn from them all. You'll learn about the world at large and about other people but most important, you'll learn about yourself.”
Richie Sambora (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.”
Arthur Machen (1863–1947) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Hill of Dreams (London: Martin Secker, [1907] 1923) p. 154
“I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song and that he hoped I’d fail,[...] I said to him, ‘Someday, when we’re not together, you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the f—ing deli without hearing or seeing me.”
Lady Gaga (born 1986) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cosmopolitan (April 2010).
“When did you get so peppy?” she shouted. “Ever since I assumed I was dead, then I suddenly wasn’t.” “Then remind me to try to kill you once in a while,” she snapped. “If I succeed, it will make me feel better, and if I fail, it will make you feel better. Everyone wins!”
Brandon Sanderson (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, whereas chance and design both fail at the starting gate? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. (p. 153)”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most Authors cringe and flatter and Fish for compliments. If they fail to get Applause, they say the World is a Scurvy Place and those who dwell therein a Dirty Lot: if they succeed, they give thanks to Nobody, saying they got only what their Meritt entitles them to. But I rather like the World. The Flesh is pleasing and the Devil does not trouble me.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Love Ballads of the Sixteenth Century (1897)
“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Gerard Irvine, "Antipanegyric for Tom Driberg," [memorial service for Driberg] (8 December 1976)
“When corporations fail, you pay for it. But when they succeed, it's theirs. They socialize their losses and privatize their gains.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They can call me crazy if I fail All the chance that I need Is one in a million And they can call me brilliant If I succeed…”
Ani DiFranco (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far-left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?”
Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Asked if he wanted Barack Obama to succeed as a president on Hannity's America January 22, 2009
“I would address a few words to those who are in sympathy with the Social Democratic Party, but who hesitate to vote for it for fear they may lose their votes. Let me say to you: It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.”
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) said by 1926 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we were to fail, I do not think any Government could succeed. I feel it would lead to a totalitarian government of the left or the right.”
James Callaghan (1912–2005) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On BBC TV (30 September 1976), quoted in The Times (1 October 1976), p. 1
“For us, it is all right if the talks succeed, and it is all right if they fail.”
Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On President Richard Nixon’s visit to China (5 October 1971), as quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) edited by James Beasley Simpson
“I don't fail. I succeed at finding what doesn't work.”
Christopher Titus (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we fail, let us try again and again until we succeed.”
Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As a response to Prime Minister Gladstone's criticism of Chamberlain's "Radical Programme," from a Speech at Warrington, cited in "Great Issues in Western Civilization, Volume II" (Donald Kagan, 1992), pg. 419
“Advice to students: Leap in and try things. If you succeed, you can have enormous influence. If you fail, you have still learned something, and your next attempt is sure to be better for it. Advice to graduates: Do something you really enjoy doing. If it isn’t fun to get up in the morning and do your job or your school program, you’re in the wrong field.”
Brian Kernighan (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1890–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this book, I try to understand the challenge presented by the prospect of superintelligence, and how we might best respond. This is quite possibly the most important and most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced. And—whether we succeed or fail—it is probably the last challenge we will ever face.”
Nick Bostrom (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In democracy, it's a continuing struggle of convincing the other person to see things the way you do. You may succeed in doing that during one particular election then fail in the next.”
Francis Escudero (born 1969) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Who's afraid of People Power", Philippine Graphic, 31 January 2005, p. 28, ISSN 119-206X.
“With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First debate with Stephen Douglas Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858)
“For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed.”
Ken Robinson (1950–2020) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, 2009
“We must build on the resources represented by our young professionals and by our nation’s farmers. Without their involvement, we cannot succeed. With their involvement we can not fail.”
Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Models of bounded rationality describe how a judgement or decision is reached (that is, the heuristic processes or proximal mechanisms) rather than merely the outcome of the decision, and they describe the class of environments in which these heuristics will succeed or fail.”
Reinhard Selten (1930–2016) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: and Reinhard Selten eds. Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. (2001), p. 4
Also quoted by: Gerd Gigerenzer
“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow; if I fail, or if I succeed at least I did as I believe.”
Whitney Houston (1963–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember a networked learning machine's most basic rule: strengthen the connections to those who succeed, weaken them to those who fail.”
Howard Bloom (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some things fail and others succeed. Well, then you get quite desperate, and you think: 'I am going to work and work and I'm not going to have any failures.' But then you find out that failures are inevitable; you can't even draw a straight line, you know that.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in A House Divided: American Art Since 1955, Anne M. G. Wagner, Univ. of California Press 2012, p. 205 - note 8
“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 (1959–2021) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sydney, (22 January 2017).
“Well, said his little interior voice, a second is as good as an eon, if you succeed. Yeah, and as good as forever if you fail.”
Steve Perry (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be terrible, if no one expected anything from me. [...] Of course, I can't always deliver one hundred percent, but what I always try to do is: respond to their expectation at one hundred twenty percent level. That's why – when I fail to do so – the disappointment is huge, and when I [succeed], it's an amazing sense of achievement that no words can describe.”
Yuzuru Hanyu (born 1994) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpt from Hanyu's nominee-speech for Most Valuable Skater of the Year at the inaugural ISU Skating Awards, aired 11 July 2020.
“Fiction allows me to make up events that happened but feel emotionally true…House of Stone took me six years to write, about 17 drafts. My aim was to fail spectacularly rather than succeed safely”
Novuyo Tshuma (born 1988) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Stone re-imagines a collective home,8 December 2018
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. Originality is key.”
Funke Akindele (born 1977) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love what I am doing especially as it is impacting people. Genevieve changed my way of thinking from “what if I fail?” to “what if I succeed?”.”
Betty Irabor (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t want the West to fail, I want it to succeed. A weak and divided West is bad for the world. I am not anti-Western or anti-American. I just find that there are better ways to deal with Asia and China. The West has to realize that if history makes a turn, you cannot continue to go straight.”
Kishore Mahbubani (born 1948) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: There Are Better Ways To Deal with Asia and China – Der Spiegel" (8 April 2020)
“The assumption is always that if it’s a man, he will succeed and a woman will struggle and fail. This mindset needs to be changed and done away with.”
Chileshe Kapwepwe (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To oppose a favourite prejudice is to risk odium, if you succeed, and contempt, if you fail.”
Richard Duppa (1770–1831) said by 1831 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And she’s not alone in that fight. It might look like quite a few people are interested in seeing her fail, but there are also many who want her to succeed.”
Bothaina Kamel (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us continue to succeed many times beyond the low standards that others have expected of us, let us continue to develop our talents and abilities and speak so loudly that the whole world will fail to ignore our voice”
Duma Boko (born 1969) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Boko preaches healing during Independence Day 30 September, 2025