Top 100 Failed Quotes
#1. If you don't learn how to be alone, you'll always be lonely, loneliness is failed solitude.
Sherry Turkle
#2. If the people are foolish, he said, it is because their leader has failed them.
Brian Staveley
#3. Every time you use a coffeemaker for your morning cappuccino, you are benefiting from the fragility of the coffeemaking entrepreneur who failed. He failed in order to help put the superior merchandise on your kitchen counter.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#4. I was raised on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Something about this genre - hard-boiled-private-eye-with-heart-of-gold - never failed to take me away from whatever difficulties haunted my daily world to a wonderful land where I was no more than an enthralled spectator.
Alan Furst
#5. The frightful engines of ecclesiastical councils, of diabolical malice, and Calvinistical good-nature never failed to terrify me exceedingly whenever I thought of preaching.
John Adams
#6. I don't believe in the so-called Olympic spirit. I speak from personal experience. When China hosted the Games, it failed to include the people. The event was constructed without regard for their joy.
Ai Weiwei
#7. ... unpacked her books, her sweet delight in happier days, and her soothing resource in the hours of moderate sorrow: but there were hours when even these failed of their effect; when the genius, the taste, the enthusiasm of the sublimest writers were felt no longer.
Ann Radcliffe
#8. The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society - and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.
William H. Whyte
#10. Like waves, men and women exist only in motion, in change. Put them on the page, and you have already failed. And
Brian Staveley
#11. My scars tell a story. They are a reminder of times when life tried to break me, but failed. They are markings of where the structure of my character was welded.
Steve Maraboli
#12. In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed.
Gustave Flaubert
#13. Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?
Jeff Goodell
#14. You should know, I tried for many years not to be in love with you, but I failed. And I really did try very hard. But it was not possible, and it never has been, because I have actually loved you from very early in our relationship. Possibly as early as our first meeting.
Augusten Burroughs
#15. Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with.
Umberto Eco
#16. That we have collectively failed to halt and repudiate the war in Iraq makes us even worse than the Germans.
Scott Ritter
#17. Most governments in Latin America have failed to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their right to their own traditional territories.
Bianca Jagger
#18. I was supposed to be powerless, and as a result they failed to see that I possessed claws.
Nenia Campbell
#19. Until a person has failed significantly or missed the boat, they will not know how to hold the tension until the right moment or how to test the waters before pushing on.
Michael Meade
#20. Rarely do you regret what you have done nearly as much as what you have failed to do.
Jeffrey Fry
#21. I wanted to be a huge star and I have failed.
John Otway
#23. Me: Don't thank me, Sydney. You shouldn't thank me, because I failed miserably at trying not to fall in love with you.
Colleen Hoover
#24. There's an exception to every rule, Nora. And you've never failed at being the exception before.
Marilyn Grey
#25. I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you're bent over about the color, don't leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.
Janet Evanovich
#26. Mom also hinted a couple of times that it was good I was going to college, since with one failed marriage behind me, I 'd have trouble landing a good husband and would need something to fall back on. "A package that's been opened once doesn't have the same appeal".
Jeannette Walls
#27. The U.N. can be very frustrating and at times impotent, but it can also be a valuable forum for discussion and resolution of world problems. We should not walk away from it just because it's failed to live up to its promise.
Robert Foster Bennett
#28. My mother tried to teach me when I was a small child to sing but failed because of my inability to carry a tune.
Heber J. Grant
#29. It's not natural disasters that are to blame for the deprivation of the North Korean people, but the failed policies of Kim Jong Il.
John Bolton
#30. If I don't cry while writing a key emotional scene, my gut feeling is it's failed.
Jojo Moyes
#31. When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.
Erin McKeown
#32. Let's cut to the chase, the sharia controversy. I don't think I, or my colleagues, predicted just how enormous the reaction would be. I failed to find the right words. I succeeded in confusing people. I've made mistakes - that's probably one of them.
Rowan Williams
#33. I think if the average person that uses AOL can't physically see the changes in the company, we've failed.
Tim Armstrong
#34. So the cluviel dor was a test of Eric's sincerity, in Niall's eyes. And the cluviel dor was a test of my love for Eric, in Eric's eyes," I said. "And we both failed the test.
Charlaine Harris
#35. I have to try and uplift the standard of living for the people in Zambia. If I cannot do that, I will have failed.
Michael Sata
#36. Yeah. I failed R&R in school. I was too busy studying for my anal retention classes.
Rosanna Leo
#37. Christian researcher George Barna concludes, "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus.
Skye Jethani
#38. In every business I had ever started, even ones that had totally failed, I had kept good relations with the investors.
James Altucher
#39. Who had he been? A failed father, a runaway husband. A son. A packet of unopened letters. He was dead; he was dead.
Anthony Doerr
#40. I completely failed to see the value in memorizing the stupid periodic table of elements.
Inara Scott
#41. [May] understood people and she let them be whatever way they needed to be. She had faith in every single person she ever met, and this never failed her, for nobody ever disappointed May. Seems people knew she saw the very best of them, and they'd turn that side to her to give her a better look.
Cynthia Rylant
#42. If someone would have asked him to describe that moment, he would have failed miserably. The only thing he knew was this is how it felt to love and be loved in return. Till now love as a feeling was alien to him but tonight he had witnessed its definitions in the most profound manner ever possible.
Namrata
#43. The surface causes of Adams's anxieties are not difficult to discern. Every activist knew the penalty for treason. Every congressman knew that prison, perhaps death, would be his reward if the American rebellion failed.
John Ferling
#44. Let's be honest about this; the liberal agenda with failed stimulus plans and government entitlement programs is crippling our economy and our quality of life.
Alveda King
#45. Sarah Palin has managed to use her failed vice presidential run to put herself in a position of power and influence. Joe Biden won the race and he hasn't been able to put himself in a position of power and influence.
Craig Ferguson
#46. The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.
George Henry Lewes
#47. In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.
John Eaton
#48. More times than not, it's a failed endeavor. You will fail more times than you succeed. But I think you need those failed endeavors.
Ben Gibbard
#49. Readers have the power that professors pretend they wield. Millions of words of professorial contempt have failed to kill Kipling. Praising Shaw to the skies has been vain.
Gene Wolfe
#50. I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.
Ransom Riggs
#51. But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channeling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.
Robert Higgs
#53. Because she is my sister and I am her protector. And since I failed in that duty in life, I will satisfy it in death.
Anna Kay Akana
#54. If God doesn't use people who've failed, who's left for Him to use?
Richard L. Mabry
#55. This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was.
David Niven
#56. Sometime in your past you entered a social situation (usually overstimulating to begin with) and felt that you failed. Others said you did something wrong
Elaine N. Aron
#57. it's hard to believe that next time will be different (especially if you're using the same strategy that failed last time).
Stephen Guise
#58. Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don't feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they're stuck right where they started: Guilty.
Geoffrey Wood
#59. If one of these, if a hundred of them, a thousand, came too soon or failed to thrive or were born incomplete somehow, born blue or ill made or with reason's taut string already snapped, it was of little matter in the long history of God's bustling. There
Alice McDermott
#60. Clean water and power is our right as humans on this earth, and for too long, our governments in Africa have failed to provide these things.
William Kamkwamba
#61. People express their arrogance in their failed expectations.
Travis Luedke
#62. Introduce me to someone who has never failed; I'll introduce you to someone who has never tried.
Anthony Labson
#63. My aspiration to become a jurist had been laid to rest in the Graveyard of Failed Hopes, an all-female establishment. The sorrow of it had faded, but regret remained, and I'd taken to wondering if the Fates might be kinder to a different girl.
Sue Monk Kidd
#65. It always disappointed me when mortals put themselves first and failed to see the big picture - the importance of putting me first
Rick Riordan
#66. According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.
Ferdinand Mount
#67. Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon ... probably the demigod Hazel admired most. He'd saved her life so many times on their quest to Alaska; but when he had needed Hazel's help in Rome, she'd failed him. She'd watched, powerless, as he and Annabeth had plunged into that pit.
Rick Riordan
#68. If you believe you have a foolproof system, you've failed to take into consideration the creativity of fools.
Frank Abagnale
#69. Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.
Nic Pizzolatto
#70. Today we have done an hour's saluting drill because Tjaden failed to salute a major smartly enough. Kat can't get it out of his head. "You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he says. Kropp
Erich Maria Remarque
#71. In the festival which concludes the period, before they go to the temple, both wives and children fall on their knees before their husbands or parents and confess everything in which they have either erred or failed in their duty, and beg pardon for it.
Thomas More
#72. I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth.
Jack Gantos
#73. Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.
Immanuel Kant
#74. He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor.
Ernest Bramah
#75. At some time or another, everyone was failed by this world. Disappointment was the one thing humans had in common.
Jodi Picoult
#76. Ill-Success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued.
Charlotte Bronte
#77. Wall Street is littered with clever plans to use financial instruments to change behavior - carbon trading, for example. Some have changed the world, and others failed miserably.
Andrew Ross Sorkin
#78. before long we'll be pining for the good old days, when, no matter how often people failed to uphold the standards of integrity, those standards actually meant something.
Anonymous
#79. We spend so much time making up for things we failed to say, she mused. If only, she began
for the thousandth time, the images of those days beginning to flash behind her eyes like a slide
show she was powerless to stop
Nicholas Sparks
#80. The first thing that I really understood politically and was old enough to get was the failed assassination attempt on Reagan.
Ben Affleck
#81. The most that many people could hope for was that they should not incur the wrath of gods whom they had failed to appease or propitiate; beyond that, gods should be left to get on with their proper business and mortals with theirs.
Alexander McCall Smith
#82. The test is to recognize the mistake, admit it and correct it. To have tried to do something and failed is vastly better than to have tried to do nothing and succeeded.
Dale Turner
#83. Our Parliamentary system has simply failed to meet the challenge of judicial activism.
Stockwell Day
#84. The problem was not that they failed to find these principles written upon their hearts, but that they could not bring themselves to attend closely to the inscription.
J. Budziszewski
#85. People tried and failed to combine the words Izzy and Ymir. The closest they came was Izmir, but that had been the name of a city in Turkey.
Neal Stephenson
#86. Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.
Edward Abbey
#87. sometimes we have to face the unwilling part of our live. i'm failed to facing the unbreakable fact that i falling in love with the one who just passed my life...
Li Huang
#88. A failed attempt on a virgin face of an eight thousander gives me much more than the successful ascent of a known route.
Bernadette McDonald
#89. If you never failed, then you're probably not doing very much.
Charles Koch
#90. Only time will tell in what ways Freud was prescient and in what ways he failed to understand how the mind functions. For example, no scientist and very few psychoanalysts still embrace Freud's death instinct.
Siri Hustvedt
#91. His wife, however, happened to be the only woman in his life who failed totally to arouse any passion in him whatsoever.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#92. Wolfgang Tillman's stunning large-scale pictures, being shown for the first time, were so offhand I failed to see them as art.
Jerry Saltz
#93. If we achieve our sustainability targets and no one else follows, we will have failed.
Paul Polman
#94. You hear headlines from time to time about the Amazon rainforest disappearing at a greater or lesser rate ... The real story is that over time the rate has stayed just the same. Year after year, decade after decade, we have failed to stop or really even decrease deforestation ...
Patrick Symmes
#95. Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
Orison Swett Marden
#96. Think it not strange if you should frequently feel yourself to have failed, nor wonder if it should turn out that at such times you have best succeeded. You must not expect to become sufficient as of yourself; no habit or exercise can render you independent of divine assistance;
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#97. Tomorrow could not get better if one failed to survive today.
C.S. Friedman
#98. Terrorists have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.
Gijs De Vries
#99. I had been interested in science from when I was very young, but after a disastrous summer lab experience in which every experiment I tried failed, I decided on graduating from college that I was not cut out to be a scientist.
Martin Chalfie
#100. If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it's a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd in wealth accumulation.
Charlie Munger
