Failure And Doubt Quotes & Sayings

Creators spend almost all their time creating, persevering despite doubt, failure, ridicule, and rejection until they succeed in making something new and useful. There are no tricks, shortcuts, or get-creative-quick schemes. The process is ordinary, even if the outcome is not. Creating is not magic but work. — Kevin Ashton

The word of God is the Christian soul's best weapon, and it is essential to have it with him always. In doubt it decides, in consultation it directs; in anxiety it reassures; in sorrow it comforts; in failure it encourages; in defense it protects; in offense it is mightier than the mighty. — Wilfred Grenfell

Success in moderation was no doubt better for the character than failure, but too much of it and he would lose his cutting edge. — P.D. James

I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it. — Kobe Bryant

I find no foeman in the road but fear; to doubt is failure and to dare success. — Frederic Lawrence Knowles

The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege. — Marilynne Robinson

The disaffection, neurosis, anguish and frustration encountered by psychoanalysis comes no doubt from being unable to love or to be loved, from being unable to give or take pleasure, but the radical disenchatment comes from seduction and its failure. Only those who lie completely outside seduction are ill, even if they remain fully capable of loving and making love. Psychoanalysis believes it treats the disorder of sex and desire, but in reality it is dealing with the disorders of seduction ... The most serious deficiences always concern charm and not pleasure, enchantment and not some vital or sexual satisfaction. — Jean Baudrillard

Thoughts of doubt and fear are pathways to failure. When you conquer negative attitudes of doubt and fear you conquer failure. — Bryan Adams

A coward worships the limits of impossibilities, obeys the rule of uncertainty, respects the forces of doubt, and magnifies the fear of failure. — Olarewaju Oladipo

And there it is again, the look. There's no doubt about it, if Sylvie had a receipt, she would have taken him back by now; this one's gone wrong. It's not what I wanted. — David Nicholls

Life is not easy for anyone here. Loss and fear, failure and disappointment, pain and ill-health, doubt and death-even those who have escaped from poverty have no escape from these. What makes life bearable is love-to love, to be loved, and-even after death or parting-to know that you have loved and been loved. — Vikram Seth

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. — Jeff Wheeler

They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure. — James Allen

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure. — Milton Friedman

Sometimes I write a line and it fills me with self doubt. Sometimes I write a line and its poetry reduces me to tears. — Sandra J. Jackson

Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate . But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation. — Steven Erikson

No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create ... a generation of permanent cripples failed seekers who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebodyor at least some force is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel. This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. — Hunter S. Thompson

The adventure is which I have shared so passionately is not over
this adventure with its doubt, failure, the dreariness of no progress, then a glimpse of light, a hope, a hypothesis confirmed; and then after weeks and months of anxious perseverance, the intoxication of success. — Simone De Beauvoir

If a man achieves worldly success and does not blend into his life a program of self-improvement to bring about a sensible balance, he no doubt will end up as a failure. — John H. Vandenberg

Faced with a new mutation in an organism, or a fundamental change in its living conditions, the biologist is frequently in no position whatever to predict its future prospects. He has to wait and see. For instance, the hairy mammoth seems to have been an admirable animal, intelligent and well-accoutered. Now that it is extinct, we try to understand why it failed. I doubt that any biologist thinks he could have predicted that failure. Fitness and survival are by nature estimates of past performance. — George Wald

The heroes of all myths face doubts. They feel that they have a calling but they do not know whether they can live up to their destinies. The drama of the psychological birth of the hero is facing fear, doubt, and hesitation; knowing that reaching for the stars entails the risk of failure, ridicule, even injury or death; and knowing that by not trying, you forfeit the possibility of greatness. — Carlo Strenger

The award for excessive success is eternal doubt and eventual failure."
"So what, it's stupid to even try?"
"No. It's unwise to hope."
- Something Like Stardust — Genevieve Ross

Oscar leaned in, eyes wide. 'He's keeping me,' he whispered to the kitten.
Pebble chirped. Oscar's eyes flicked to the books underneath his bed. They called out to him: Misfit. Orphan. Idiot.
Oscar coughed and shifted his eyes back to Pebble. 'He thinks I can work the shop ... He said he knew I could do it.'
Wolf: He didn't see you work the shop. He doesn't know. Just wait until he hears.
'He wants me to do the best I can.'
Wolf: If only he knew how bad that was. He'll know soon.
Oscar clenched his hands into fists and squeezed his eyes shut ... 'I'm not going to disappoint him,' Oscar said. He repeated himself once more, in case the words themselves had any power. 'I'm not. — Anne Ursu

Self-doubt is common when our efforts fail to bring results. Failure is a rock in our shoe that nags us until we find relief. At first, failure to achieve our desired end will elicit careful scrutiny (What can I do better?) and resumed commitment (How can I try harder?). Success may be achieved - straight As, an athletic scholarship, perfect Sunday school attendance - but the real goal - a happy family, an end to the abuse, or relief from the pain - is always out of reach. — Dan B. Allender

practice only envisioning yourself at the finish line and be unrelenting and fervent in racing towards that finish line. Undue preoccupation and fixation with the how's, whens, and what ifs will not only derail and further distance you from your destination, but will also feed your mind with those fatal seeds of doubt that make failure inevitable" ~ Awaken and Unleash your Victor — Ogor Winnie Okoye

We don't have time for such uncertainty because it reliably breeds indecision, and indecision is one of the mothers of failure. — Dean Koontz

That stab in the heart she felt when she woke, and the panicky doubt that her life was in her grasp, not fraud or failure, not entirely - that was a brief misery and one she could set aside by putting the light on and reading for a while. She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, because she knew there were limits to her experience that precluded her knowing what there was to be wished. — Marilynne Robinson

Put one foot in front of the other. Keep marching forward, even when doubt, fear, and failure all come knocking at your door. — Jared Leto

Thoughts are things; they have tremendous power. Thoughts of doubt and fear are pathways to failure. — Bryan Adams

In life; don't go chasing after everything, or if you go for something, never doubt and miss the step, Or else you will miss a trick of the tail and lose everything. — Auliq Ice

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. — Max Beerbohm

To possess and exercise omniscience is to never have sensed temperature, experienced a single emotion, or practiced a single vice. It is to have never been amazed, concerned, analytical, or sympathetic. By exercising omniscience, an Omni-maximum being could not move, be moved, or inspired. Such a being could not interfere, empathise, interject, alter, adjust, or give advice. Ever. Such a being could not devise a plan, hear music, imagine a story, or recognise art or deviancy in any guise, for it could never differentiate creativity from cold reality. Such a being could not know doubt, desire, success, or failure. It could not, therefore, know itself, and if it is incapable of that, then it is incapable of experiencing pleasure. — John Zande

Goldin and Katz have no doubt that increased wage inequality in the United States is due to a failure to invest sufficiently in higher education. More precisely, too many people failed to receive the necessary training, in part because families could not afford the high cost of tuition. In order to reverse this trend, they conclude, the United States should invest heavily in education so that as many people as possible can attend college. — Thomas Piketty

A positive attitude is important, but it is only part of the story. Understanding how to surmount pain, doubt, and failure is a vital component in winning the game of life. — Chin-Ning Chu

The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn't have what people were supposed to, and that this was down to some grave and no doubt externally unmistakable failing in my person: all this had quickened lately, the unwelcome consequence of being so summarily dismissed. I don't suppose it was unrelated, either, to the fact that I was keeling towards the midpoint of my thirties, an age at which female aloneness is no longer socially sanctioned and carries with it a persistent whiff of strangeness, deviance and failure. — Olivia Laing

Indecision and fear can cripple any chances of succeeding and lead to maelstroms of regret that fuel our most fantastic nightmares. — Kilroy J. Oldster

And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.
You have this: You are thin. — Marya Hornbacher

Someone sits in a mountain vale A robe of clouds, rainbows for tassels The fragrant forest is the place to live The road has been long and difficult With a heart full of doubt and regret A life has passed and nothing has been accomplished Others call it failure I stand alone devoted to this Cold Mountain life — Hanshan

I knock unbidden once at every gate
If sleeping, wake
if feasting, rise before
I turn away
it is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death, but those who doubt of hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore,
I answer not, and I return no more. — John James Ingalls

In times of deep despair we dethrone Him through our doubt and find Him a failure through our fears. We cling to what we know, see, and feel, and then declare that God just isn't there. We trust ourselves, instead of God. And that . . . is the greatest tragedy. But, God is greater than our sin . . . He's greater than our pride. — Cherie Hill

Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions
all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced. — Friedrich Hayek

He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy. — Virginia Woolf

In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless yielding like Bethmann's by the civilians to the military. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Fear and doubt are greater enemies than failure. — Matshona Dhliwayo

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old - or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give. — Mary Oliver

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate. — Amy Tan

RIVETING TORPOR
It is remarkable how far I am prepared to go
In order to avoid doing the one thing that might
Provide satisfaction, and it is remarkable to consider
What I will do instead of it, purely for the pleasure
Of being dissatisfied. When it is merely a matter
Of sitting down for a few hours and dreaming
That something of value might eventually arise
From this routine of self-enforced boredom. — John Tottenham

Outside theology and fantastic literature, few can doubt that the main features of our universe are its dearth of meaning and lack of discernible purpose. And yet, with bewildering optimism, we continue to assemble whatever scraps of information we can gather in scrolls and books and computer chips, on shelf after library shelf, whether material, virtual or otherwise, pathetically intent on lending the world a semblance of sense and order, while knowing perfectly well that, however much we'd like to believe the contrary, our pursuits are sadly doomed to failure. — Alberto Manguel

How strongly do you believe in what you want to do? How prepared are you live and die for it? You are not likely to succeed when you always doubt your capacity to reach higher heights in your pursuits. — Israelmore Ayivor

One of the nice things about our marriage, at least to my way of thinking, is that my wife and I no longer have to argue every thing through. We each know what the other will say, and so the saying becomes an unnecessary formality. No doubt some marriage counselor would explain to us that our problem is a failure to communicate, but to my way of thinking we've worked long and hard to achieve this silence, Lily's and mine, so fraught with mutual understanding. — Richard Russo

Now I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips - whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I'm sure he was worried that he'd run out of pink slips. There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business and I happen to think that's indefensible. If you're a victim of Bain Capital's downsizing, it's the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it. — Rick Perry

Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. — James Allen

Doubts kill more dreams than failure ever will. Fear is faith in reverse. Fear creates doubt. Replace your fears with faith and your doubts with determination. — Zig Ziglar

Men crawl in slime and wallow in the mud;
The Realist groans: "All life is mud ans slime!"
Men lie and steal and shed each other's blood;
And Realism sees but blood and crime.
Yet Right is just as real as Wrong,
The mountain peak is real as the ooze,
A curse is no more real than a song;
Among realities we need but choose.
The cynic sees the failure of To-day,
The Prophet cries the triumph of To-morrow,
Knowing the spirit in our clogging clay
That masters doubt, disaster, loss and sorrow.
Failure is but a passing weariness,
There is no final answer but Success. — Berton Braley