Success and Failure

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Unknown, in Success and Failure and Vice and Virtue

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle?

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Jones' Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.

Unknown, 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

Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension: In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize you are in a hurry.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing.

Unknown, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

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