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

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Success and failure

Love Friendship Happiness Hope Fear Courage Death Life Time War Peace Freedom Truth Wisdom Knowledge Science Art Music Nature Money Work Power God Beauty Laughter Family Success and failure Change Dreams Books and reading

“If one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.”
Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) said by 1897 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, — every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death ; every life; every success and every failure, — all change, — all permanence, — the perished leaf; the unutterable glory of stars, — all things speak truth to the thoughtful spirit.”
Rufus Choate (1799–1859) first seen 1844 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Power of a State Developed by Mental Culture", an address to the Mercantile Library Association (18 November 1844), published in The Works of Rufus Choate : Memoir, Lectures and Addresses (1862), edited by Samuel Gi…
“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is after creation, in the elation of success, or the gloom of failure, that love becomes essential.”
Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure.”
David Ogilvy (1911–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To have grazed every form of failure, including success.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”
Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) said by 1904 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
Truman Capote (1924–1984) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From "Self-Portrait" (1972)
“They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?”
Fidel Castro (1926–2016) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1991, during the fall of USSR.
“How melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories "Are shadows, not substantial things." Truly said the sayer, "disappointment is the salt of life" a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double value to the prize.”
Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First Footsteps in East Africa (1856)
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life ... it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs.”
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”
Colin Powell (1937–2021) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.
“If success is a catalyst for failure because it leads to the “undisciplined pursuit of more,” then one simple antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less. Not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials.”
Greg McKeown (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: letter, 22 April 1949, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
“Procrastination is one of the most common causes of failure.... Procrastination stands within the shadow of every human being, waiting his opportunity to spoil one's chances of success.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Building alibis with which to explain away failure is a national pastime. The habit is as old as the human race, and is fatal to success! Why do people cling to their pet alibis? The answer is obvious. They defend their alibis because THEY CREATE them! A man's alibi is the child of his own imagination. It is human nature to defend one's own brain-child. p. 173”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.”
Larry Ellison (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhuman, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity.”
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Independent (London, April 4, 1991)
“Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.”
Hyman G. Rickover (1900–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think, here is your emblem To hang in the future sky; Not the cross, not the hive, But this; bright power, dark peace; Fierce consciousness joined with final Disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon’s Realist eyes and act Married to the massive Mysticism of stone, Which failure cannot cast down Nor success make proud.”
Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rock and Hawk" in Solstice and Other Poems (1935)
“It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.”
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Milton Friedman: The Rise of Socialism is Absurd and There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch, Grand opening speech at Cato Institutes’ headquarters in Washington, D.C. (May 1993)
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
Andrew Grove (1936–2016) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Andrew S. Grove in: William J. Baumol et al (2007) Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth. p. 228
“A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”
Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“101 Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.”
Alan Perlis (1922–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure is inevitable. Success is elusive.”
Steven Spielberg (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My response to Bernie Sanders' you know uh stories you know fairytales is that uh the failure of capitalism is still much better than the success of socialism.”
Garry Kasparov (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would say the advice I would give [my younger self], or any young person, would be "Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Learning to be a writer is the delta of success and failure in comedy.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our success or failure is not in the hands of our leaders. It is in our hands.”
Alan Keyes (born 1950) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at McKay Events Center in Orem, Utah (22 September 2000)
“I am not working for failure, but for success, and for a real gain, and I must go the way to get it. I am sure the putting manhood suffrage in the Bill is not the way to get it. This has been done by the Chartists, and by the Complete Suffragists, but what has become of their Bills?”
John Bright (1811–1889) first seen 1858 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Joseph Sturge (2 February 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (1913), p. 270
“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
David O. McKay (1873–1970) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted from J. E. McCullough, Home: The Savior of Civilization [1924], 42; Conference Report, Apr. 1935, p. 116.
“[pp 232-233] The message of the consumer society, pumped out over flat screens... is shrill and unrelenting: You are a failure. Pop culture celebrates those who wallow in power, wealth and self-obsession, and perpetuates the lie that if you work hard and are clever, you can become a "success."...”
Chris Hedges (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure is just success rounded down.”
Ryan North (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.”
Rosalind Russell (1907–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.”
Jimmy Carr (born 1972) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Will Hodgkinson (16 December 2004) "Comedy's overgrown schoolboy", The Irish Times.
“The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.”
Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Business Class : Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work (2005) by Jacqueline Whitmore, p. 25
“And the rarest dangers are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest advantage.”
Thucydides (461–395 BC) said by 395 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.”
Jared Diamond (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Working at Perfekt, Got me down on my knees. Success to failure, Just a matter of degrees. Working at Perfekt, Got me down on my knees...”
Geddy Lee (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody at twenty-eight is a success or a failure. It's too early to figure out which way the tide's moving (Malkah, fifteen: THE SAME AS ME)”
Marge Piercy (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n aw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.”
Irvine Welsh (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's no better guarantee of failure than convincing yourself that success is impossible...”
Max Tegmark (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“# Treat each person with the bhakti and care as if the success or failure of your own spiritual life depends on this. Do not take into concern how they treat you. The manner in which you treat people is the same way you are treating Guru and Krishna.”
Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The New Finance focused on the market's major systematic mistake. In failing to appreciate the strength of competitive forces in a market economy, it over estimates the length of the short run. In doing so, it overreacts to records of success and failure for individual companies, driving the prices of successful firms too high and their unsuccessful counterparts too low.”
Robert Haugen (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source