Top 100 My Failure Quotes
#1. As a man, I was a failure. A pathetic teacher lusting after Catholic school girls in short skirts. As a monster, I'm superb. It's comforting to know my place in the world.
Thomm Quackenbush
#2. I've never practiced a profession and have lived like a sort of student. I consider this my greatest success, my life hasn't been a failure because I succeeded in doing nothing.
Emil Cioran
#3. Having in my life been bitten by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.
Rupert Holmes
#4. A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.
J. Paul Getty
#5. My 30 year attempt (and subsequent failure) to reach "normal" has brought me to ponder whether "normal" even exists, or if it is nothing more than delusional grandeur based in the sounds of those sweet sirens drawing my ship in all the wrong directions.
Dan Pearce
#6. Failure will not overcome me so long as my will to succeed is stronger
Michael Kirby
#7. My parents told me I must get married. I was seen as a failure if I didn't do it.
Ben Folds
#9. Imitation is the surest form of flattery and failure. I am not interested with your talk about my ideas. I am more interested in your applying them to your life. If you do not, then you are essentially not in accord with your own mind.
Miyamoto Musashi
#10. No matter what the results, it is my choices that define me. And I will fight for them, even when it seems that failure is inevitable. Perhaps most especially then.
Cat Hellisen
#11. I'm definitely happy with the way my career has gone, the success; but I even feel glad that I've experienced some failure in my life. That gives you perspective and humility about this business; it's good to realize that you're always just one movie away from not being in Vogue anymore.
Reese Witherspoon
#12. My husband once said he'd never met anybody who walked so fast and ran so slowly. As I said, it's a little hard for me to try new things, and this was me facing a fear that I'd had my whole life. Since I had no experience running, I felt like a failure before I'd even begun.
Jamie Lee Curtis
#13. I love failure. It's stuff that I'm thinking about all the time in my life, so it would make sense to me anyway to write about it.
Loudon Wainwright III
#14. The truth is - most things are probably gonna fail. But my failures bring me to the next thing. So in that regard, nothing's a failure, it's a continuation.
RuPaul
#15. But if you believe that adults can 'make' children learn well - in the absence of or in defiance of a child's inner sense of confident engagement with the power of discovery and mastery - then, in my view, you are placing that child at great risk of failure as a learner.
Kirsten Olson
#16. I'm bound to fail when I write in Italian, but unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesn't torment or grieve me.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#17. That's one of my biggest obstacles. I'm afraid of failure. I want to succeed so bad that I become afraid of failing.
LeBron James
#18. Most merciful God, order my day so that I may know what you want me to do, and then help me to do it. Let me not be elated by success or depressed by failure. I want only to take pleasure in what pleases you, and only to grieve at what displeases you.
Kurt Bjorklund
#19. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.
James Altucher
#20. Every time I act on a fear, I feel disappointed in myself. I have a lot of fear. If I can quit all fear in my life and all guilt, then I tend to be much, much more living up to my standards. I've never seen a person fail if they didn't fear failure.
Sebastian Thrun
#21. My major goal in business was to learn. I had legislated in my mind for failure the worse possible scenario was I would learn a lot regardless of the outcome. This goal was the foundation for success of the business. Peldi, Balsamiq
Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution
#22. My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.
Dorothy Day
#23. By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.
Stephen King
#24. I finally found the courage to admit that deep within, my love was as shallow as yours.
Srividya Srinivasan
#25. The only reason my work seems to be eclectic up to a certain period is because I was a failure as an actor.
Hugh Grant
#26. I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched, because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.
Michael Koryta
#27. I know when I'm bad, I know when I'm good, and I know when I'm everything in between. I don't have any delusions of grandeur or delusions of failure. In terms of my work, I've got a pretty cold honest eye.
Bebe Neuwirth
#28. I'm quite detached from failure and success. Once a shooting is done, I kind of close that chapter in my life.
Ranbir Kapoor
#29. The more Nos I open myself up to hearing, the closer I am getting to my super successful life.
Malti Bhojwani
#30. I had a God who knew my every desire. He also knew how I would fall. And yet he was waiting on the other side of my failure and my shattered dreams with some dreams of his own ...
Eric Ludy
#32. One of my most vivid memories from 1974 was the gas station at the foot of the hill below my Southern California high school - car lines snaking out into the street, heralding the failure of the government's price controls and lame ideas such as odd-even rationing.
Nina Easton
#33. I had my battles, my deceptions, and my gardens of failure.
Jon Armstrong
#34. I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.
Dolly Parton
#35. Haters will broadcast your failure, but whisper your success.
Drake
#36. We've never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.
Gene Kranz
#37. In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care.
Bernard Lown
#38. The collapse of Enron and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen were tremendous tragedies. But as I stated at the time of my indictment on July 8, 2004, failure does not equate to a crime.
Kenneth Lay
#39. Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the # disclosure of the UFO files.
John Podesta
#40. Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.
Scott Adams
#41. My happiness is marred only by my failure to attain it.
Mary Ruefle
#42. I know success or failure in my life or ministry does not depend on my own skill or even on external circumstances, it depends only on my faithfulness. God will give me the gifts necessary to do whatever He calls me to do, and He will not be hindered in His work by circumstances.
Lester Sumrall
#43. My headshot is a scratch and sniff, it smells like failure and onions.
Zach Galifianakis
#44. I've never thought Mr. Nelson had much use for me since I wasn't an athlete. He probably considered me a failure to the male species, and I'm sure he harbored questions about my sexuality. To him, I was some artsy-fatsy guitar playing fairy. Like I said, the man was an asshole.
Katie Ashley
#45. I fight to win
To conquer
I will presevere
and use my fear
And with the grace of God
I will triumph
over failure
Rise
beneath defeat
And I will
fly
- Brody Madden
Kate McCarthy
#46. Regardless of its textual component, Noh is ultimately indescribable, like sexual ecstasy; what consoles me for my failure of language is the fact that so is everything else. Moreover, Noh aspires to indescribability.
William T. Vollmann
#48. Tried to focus on a particular aspect of this historical moment: the failure of mourning. This is something I haven't seen a great deal of in the writing around this disaster. And my view is that you write about disaster by writing around it, by writing allusively.
Teju Cole
#49. Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.
Paul Theroux
#50. My films seem to be about men's struggle with failure.
Tom Hooper
#51. Most of my failures can be ascribed to the fact that I chose that which was 'easy' over that which was 'right'. And while it's 'right' to admit this to myself, it isn't 'easy.' So, which choice am I going to make this time?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#52. No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.
David Lloyd George
#53. I never let the thought of failure enter my mind. My knowledge of my unity with the Universal One and the fact that I must do this thing, and the inspired belief I should do it as a demonstration of my belief in man's unlimited power, made me ignore the difficulties that lay in the way.
Walter Russell
#54. College is a safe space where it can be hard to truly fail. The institution is rooting for you because your failure makes them look bad, too. New York City has no such mandate. I've had to hone and sharpen and refine my work here at a pace which may not have happened in other cities.
Baratunde Thurston
#55. The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyze what I have learned, the inability to move toward righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults-these are the causes of my grief.
Confucius
#56. I can rise above the humility of my failure with an intense desire to search deeper and a blind faith that some day my sight may pierce through the veils that hide. I know God's face is there if I keep my gaze steady enough.
Emily Carr
#57. Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame.
Sarah Kane
#58. To pay for my father's funeral I borrowed money from people he already owed money to. One called him a nobody. No, I said, he was a failure. You can't remember a nobody's name, that's why they're called nobodies. Failures are unforgettable.
Philip Schultz
#59. It must not be forgotten in fairness to the National Government that apartheid is not just a policy of oppression but an attempt - in my opinion an attempt doomed to failure - to find an alternative to a policy of racial integration which is fair to both white and black.
Harry Oppenheimer
#60. Failure is an option. It's what you do with the failure that makes you who you are. Our failures mold us. I have failed at several things in my life. What sets some of us apart, is that when we fail, we can't sleep at night. It haunts us until we have our time at redemption.
David Goggins
#61. You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will - undoubtedly - fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I'm just not going to let this get me down.
Sonia Sotomayor
#62. I don't know whether my life has been a success or a failure. But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other, and just taking things as they come along, I've had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.
Harpo Marx
#63. "The only abject failure my mind can think of is ones failure to spend Eternity in God's Heaven"
~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
#64. I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.
Joyce Carol Oates
#65. The very phrase 'Oscar night' used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing - dating myself - it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films' failure - once again - to be honored.
Dick Cavett
#66. I do not have any fears, no fear of dying, of failure, of anything; that means I am very dangerous for my opponents.
Imran Khan
#67. I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel!
Gustave Flaubert
#68. My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him.
John Ashbery
#69. I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.
Amy Tan
#70. I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.
Hanif Kureishi
#71. The revolutions of my century, the 20th century - the Soviet revolution, or the Chinese, or the revolutions that were fomented in Latin America, such as in Cuba - failed for the most part, a failure which was completely clear by the end of the century.
Stephane Hessel
#72. I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I'd have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
Sara Blakely
#73. Yeah, right. Life is a soul-sucking test that you either survive or you fail. Personally, I think failure blows, so I intend to survive and laugh my ass off at all the losers. (Nick)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#74. I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.
William J. Clinton
#75. I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious.
Gretchen Rubin
#76. My greatest concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are concerned with your failure.
Abraham Lincoln
#77. I think the company's [HP's] success will be my legacy. The company's failure will be my failure, with all the predictable consequences of that.
Carly Fiorina
#78. Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, "Your time is coming to an end, you
pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be
remembered."
Gazzy's blue eyes flashed. "Then you can remember me telling you to kiss
my-"
"Enough!" ter Borcht said.
James Patterson
#79. Every failure hollows out my heart a little further, and no success is able to refill any of that emptiness.
Dean Koontz
#80. I've known a lot of alleged failures in my time and many of them, in losing what the world has always considered success, have achieved in facing up to failure, more than they ever achieved when they were considered successful.
Faith Baldwin
#81. But my behavior was really the result of the illness, which had progressed far enough to produce some of its most famous and sinister hallmarks: confusion, failure of mental focus and lapse of memory.
William Styron
#82. The manager of my line told me, You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read and if some go unread that's only chance, failure, they're like grubs that die without changing.
China Mieville
#84. The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.
Humphry Davy
#85. Others are ahead of me. I am continually challenged. My focus is forward. The atmosphere is affirming. I am often out of my comfort zone. I wake up excited. Failure is not my enemy. Others are growing. People desire change. Growth is modeled and expected.
John C. Maxwell
#86. In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.
Paul Lutus
#87. If it turns out that my best wasn't good enough, at least I won't look back and say that I was afraid to try; failure makes me work even harder.
Michael Jordan
#88. My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure.
Natalie Cole
#89. I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you're not that good. You just reached the level here. I don't ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.
Quentin Tarantino
#90. If anyone has seen success and failure on a global stage, it's my friend Steve Forbes.
Peter Diamandis
#91. Failure has a hacksaw to my ankles
and right now there is nothing
I want more than to learn
how to walk on my hands.
Jen Lynn Anderson
#92. When i started flirting with the hustle, failure became my ex, now I'm engaged to the game and married to success.
Lil' Wayne
#93. Failure in Afghanistan would have profound consequences for our national security. It would undermine the NATO alliance structure that has been the bedrock of Britain's defence for the last 60 years ... I will not allow this to happen on my watch.
Bob Ainsworth
#94. My eyes lingered on her naked body for several minutes. Was our relationship what she wanted? Was it satisfying for her? Was it what she dreamed of when she started falling in love with me? Did reality ever fulfill our dreams? Or do dreams just continually set us up for failure and disappointment?
T.B. Markinson
#95. As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.
Jimmy Carr
#96. My new one (tattoo) says 'Never a failure, always a lesson' and is kind of my mantra to life, just a reminder. My life is just a crazy rollercoaster every day and whenever I read that it just reassures me.
Rihanna
#97. Failure meant having my life led by someone else.
Kiera Cass
#98. One thing I do believe is I'm a believer in the presence of God. I believe that God is close. Whether it's in joy, pain or personal failure, I believe that God is close. That much I feel in my life.
David Gregory
#99. I put the sweat of my life into this project, and if it's a failure, I'll leave the country and never come back.
Howard Hughes
#100. I'm not really equipped to do anything else but making movies. In every other aspect of my life I'm a total failure.
Michael Pitt
