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.

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

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison – they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

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

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

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.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.

At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

Anytime we step out boldly to make changes, we take a chance that we might fail. But the only way to get better is to try.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms.

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.

The fundamental question I believe is, ‚Is political Islam in our best interest?‘ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

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

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don’t always feel like I’m a success. That’s right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I’ve just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I’m trying to communicate with.

There’s never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome: it’s mostly a fabrication.

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

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

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

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

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

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.

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if – the probable outcome is failure.

We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq – and we should have learned it by now.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

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

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

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‚whiz kids‘ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

No one is ever successful at everything that they do.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven’t had that fear.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

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

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

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from 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.

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

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.

I’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals.

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

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