Success and Failure

Brooks' Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, in Success and Failure

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.

Charles Brower, in Success and Failure

There's nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Peter F. Drucker, in Success and Failure

There's no success like failure, And failure's no success at all.

Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", in Success and Failure

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Alva Edison, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein, in Science and Religion and 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

Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure

Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure

Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Success and Failure

The majority of the time, the thing that gets in the way of success... is your brain.

Chris Blake, in Success and Failure