Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well. Success is built on failure.
I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992.
I've really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed. I had to be a student of failure and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it's still something I do.
One of my most vivid memories from 1974 was the gas station at the foot of the hill below my Southern California high school - car lines snaking out into the street, heralding the failure of the government's price controls and lame ideas such as odd-even rationing.
A lot of actors do that - they blame their failure on their agents or their photos. But that is just putting off the real issues.
My time at Real Madrid wasn't a failure. I played 120 matches, I scored 28 goals, and I played an average of 30 games a season. What's more, I won three trophies: La Liga, a Copa del Rey, and a Supercopa de Espana.
Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.
Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
I feel rejecting rejection is one of the most crucial steps in getting past failure.
In theory, I absolutely love to work from home, in all its warmth and comfort, but have reluctantly been forced to confess that it's a total failure.
Access to our civil courts has been severely restricted by the combination of: the removal of legal aid from some cases based on their type, not their merit; a high financial threshold for the receipt of legal aid in other cases; and a failure to deliver a safety net for vulnerable individuals by the exceptional funding arrangements.
Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.
If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall.
The Tea Party people say they're angry about socialism, but maybe they're really angry about capitalism. If there's a sense of being looked down upon, it's that sense of failure that's built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers.
My motto is more, 'If you want to find something new, look for something new!' There is a certain amount of risk in this attitude, as even the slightest failure tends to be resounding, but you are so happy when you succeed that it is worth taking the risk.
First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily, odorless and tasteless liquid that kills on contact with the skin or when inhaled in aerosol form. Like other nerve agents, it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure.
Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
I have tried every diet to lose weight. When you restrict yourself, you're setting yourself up for failure.
I know that when you are experiencing failure, it's pretty damn painful. It is easy in retrospect to wax poetic about it. But in the moment, you don't think you will survive, let alone have the time to reflect on how valuable those lessons will be for you in the future.
