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

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy, in Success and Failure

Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.

Søren Kierkegaard, in Success and Failure

We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!

Rudyard Kipling, in Success and Failure

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

Henry Kissinger, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Don Knuth, in Success and Failure

Pick battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win.

Jonathan Kozol, in Success and Failure

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

Christopher Lasch, in Success and Failure

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Neil Peart, in Success and Failure

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Plato, The Republic, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters.

Ross Presser, in Life and Death and Success and Failure

There are moments when everything goes well, but don't be frightened, it won't last.

Jules Renard, in Success and Failure

All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.

La Rochefoucauld, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure

Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is.

Will Rogers, in Success and Failure

You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising budget is big enough.

Ed Rollins, in Success and Failure

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.

Leo Rosten, in Success and Failure

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

Margaret Lee Runbeck, in Life and Death and Success and Failure

The race may not be always to the swift, or the battle to the strong, but that's sure the way to bet.

Damon Runyon, in Success and Failure