Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant – the digitalis of failure.

Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed – you’re not gonna succeed all the time, and I know that.

It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

There is no such things as ‚best‘ in the world of individuals.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.

I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations… They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.