Success and Failure

After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.

Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, in Success and Failure

Don't let fear stop you.

William F. Light, (to someone threatening to knock him out), in Success and Failure

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.

Vincent T. Lombardi, in Success and Failure

The average person thinks he isn't.

Larry Lorenzoni, in Success and Failure

Do, or do not. There is no try.

George Lucas, The Empire Strikes Back (Yoda), in Success and Failure

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it.

Elias Schwartz, in Success and Failure

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Albert Schweitzer, in Success and Failure

Talkers are no good doers.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, in Success and Failure

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

You see things and you say, "Why?" But I see things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Part I, Act I (1921), in Success and Failure

To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective.

Liz Smith, in Success and Failure

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Thomas Jefferson, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

If someone had told me I would be pope one day, I would have studied harder.

Pope John Paul I, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

Every man wishes to rule the world. Unfortunately, the world rules every man.

Jeremy Preston Johnson, in Success and Failure

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.

Franklin P. Jones, in Success and Failure

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

James Joyce, in Success and Failure

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

Danny Kaye, in Life and Death and Success and Failure

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

John Keats, in Success and Failure