Success and Failure

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower, in Success and Failure

When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

Dylan Thomas, in Success and Failure

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson, in Success and Failure

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power of the greatest obstacle.

Henry David Thoreau, in Success and Failure

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Lily Tomlin, in Success and Failure

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

Henry Ford, in Success and Failure

Whether you think that you can or that you can't, you are usually right.

Henry Ford, in Success and Failure

To accomplish great things, you must not only act but also dream, not only dream but also believe.

Anatole France, in Success and Failure

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, in Success and Failure

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

Benjamin Franklin, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

With every passing hour, our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Ransom K. Ferm, in Success and Failure

If at first you don't succeed, try, and try again. Then give up. There's no sense in being a damned fool about it.

W. C. Fields, in Success and Failure

If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Success and Failure

Once you've tried to change the world you find it's a whole bunch easier to change your mind.

Unknown, in Altruism and Cynicism and Success and Failure

Only those who do not expect anything are never disappointed. Only those who never try, never fail.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Perfection is only achieved on the point of collapse.

Unknown, (from Bjarne Stroustrup's book on C++), in Success and Failure

Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

Unknown, in Success and Failure