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

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain, in Success and Failure

Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.

Francis Bacon, in Science and Religion and Success and Failure

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 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

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.

Mark Twain, in Success and Failure

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

Harry S Truman, in Success and Failure

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

Lily Tomlin, 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

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

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

Dylan Thomas, in Success and Failure

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

Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower, in Success and Failure

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

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

Sun Tzu, in Success and Failure

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

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

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

Casey Stengal, in Success and Failure

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

Bessie Stanley, in Happiness and Misery and Success and Failure