Quotes & Sayings About Failure Of Others

Learning from the successes and failures of others is key to making quantum leaps toward our goals. — Robin Crow

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which could be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work. — Ernest Hemingway,

I know you like to be in control and you operate a lot from fear but you have to break the bounds of your past Nicole and rewrite the story you've been telling yourself based off of others experiences. You have to create your own experience, write your own story. — Kathryn Perez

Don't let any emotional thought concerning success or failure, fame or gain, overtake you, and don't dwell upon them. Give up your personal shortcomings, such as foolish talk, distracting activities, and absentmindedness. Train in being totally gentle in all physical, verbal, or mental activities. Don't ponder the flaws of others; think instead of their good sides. — Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Contrary to popular belief, I consider failure a necessity in business. If you're not failing at least five times a day, you're probably not doing enough. The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. The operative word here is learn. If you repeat the same mistake two or three times, you are not learning from it. You must learn from your own mistakes and from the mistakes of others before you.4 — John C. Maxwell

When school is not a good fit for a boy, when his normal expressions of energy and action routinely meet with negative responses from teachers and classmates, he stews in feelings of failure - feelings of sadness, shame, and anger, which can be very hard to detect beneath that brash exterior. Unable to "talk out" the emotional pressure, boys typically act out through verbal or physical aggression that walls them off emotionally from others, straining or severing emotional connections to the people and circumstances they find painful. And the worse a boy behaves, the more he invites negative reactions from teachers and other adults. — Dan Kindlon

You are doing the best you can, and that best results in good to yourself and to others. Do not nag yourself with a sense of failure. Get on your knees and ask for the blessings of the Lord;then stand on your feet and do what you are asked to do. — Gordon B. Hinckley

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought. — Thomas Bernhard

Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability. — Alain De Botton

Do you have the power to move mountains? Do you turn the other cheek, able to offer love and peace to those who strike you? Are you anxious in your relationship or lack thereof? Are you concerned about your means of income, or your career, or your status? Do you fear for your children? Are you worried about what you will wear, or how others will view you in any respect? Do you secretly suspect that you can never quite measure up to what you think God or the world expects of you? That you are doomed to be a failure, always? Are you quick to point out the failures of others? — Ted Dekker

True, we can learn much from observation of the failure of others without having to personally suffer the same pain, but the character and memory of the wisdom gained may be more acute and long-lasting from our own personal failures. Even worse is the generational fear of failure prevalent in our culture, resulting from parents carefully programming their offspring as young as three to participate in activities intended to cultivate intellectual and sports prowess which in their design do not allow for failure. Before children can feel the pain of their mistakes, the parents intervene and deflect the taking of personal responsibility by the child. We pay for it so they do not have to. This is the most dangerous thing we can do for them. — Kevin R. Anderson

Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others. — Laozi

I am concerned about the failure of our moral computers of honesty, integrity, decency, civility, and sexual purity. How many people today are truly incorruptible? So many get caught up in waves of popular issues and tides of rhetoric. This breakdown of moral values is happening because we are separating the teachings of God from personal conduct. An honorable man or woman will personally commit to live up to certain self-imposed expectations, with no need of an outside check or control. I would hope that we can load our moral computers with three elements of integrity: dealing justly with oneself, dealing justly with others, and recognizing the law of the harvest. — James E. Faust

Toxic shame, the shame that binds us, is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that "I am flawed and defective as a human being." Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits; it is a state of being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self. It is like internal bleeding - exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the perceived failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. — John Bradshaw

I had utterly abandoned myself to Him. Could any choice be as wonderful as His will? Could any place be safer than the center of His will? Did not he assure me by His very presence that His thoughts toward us are good, and not evil? Death to my own plans and desires was almost deliriously delightful. Everything was laid at His nail-scarred feet, life or death, health or illness, appreciation by others or misunderstanding, success or failure as measured by human standards. Only He himself mattered. — V. Raymond Edman

A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure. — Thornton Wilder

I think I'm less afraid of failure than some others. — Russell Simmons

Humility is the only soil in which the graces root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all. — Andrew Murray

One instance of this failure is the case of smoke, as well as air pollution generally. In so far as the outpouring of smoke by factories pollutes the air and damages the persons and property of others, it is an invasive act. It is equivalent to an act of vandalism and in a truly free society would have been punished after court action brought by the victims. Air pollution, then, is not an example of a defect in a system of absolute property rights, but of failure on the part of the government to preserve property rights. Note that the remedy, in a free society, is not the creation of an administrative State bureau to prescribe regulations for smoke control. The remedy is judicial action to punish and proscribe pollution damage to the person and property of others.48 In — Murray N. Rothbard

Our failure to forgive others keeps us in bondage. When you fail to take the hard road of learning to love your neighbor, or your enemy, or the one who painfully wronged you, you will find yourself forever stuck in a pit that from time to time overwhelms you. Forgiveness is hard in the short term. But staying stuck in the pit of unforgiveness, while easier in the short term, is death in the long term. — Dan Lacich

Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man's inner talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking, are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world. — Neville Goddard

Our very success, gained you will agree by skill, will draw more people than ever to see it. And that will benefit many more clubs than Rangers. Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us. We will never hide from it. Never fear, inevitably we shall have our years of failure, and when they arrive, we must reveal tolerance and sanity. No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers. — Bill Struth

He was astonished at how calm he found he was. Fear of death had always energised him, making him move far more quickly than his body should have been capable of, accelerating his reactions and his thought process to a quite incredible level. This time, though, he only thought, Oh, and realised that he didn't really care all that much. He could feel his responsibilities, the love of others towards him, the unfulfilled possibilities; they were like a child's hand trying to pull him up, doing its best but simply not strong enough for the job. Above all, there was no blame. I tried to climb a wall, but I couldn't, and there it is. — K.J. Parker

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do
then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected. — Tennessee Williams

I've had occasional dark hours, dreary fits, when my life, laid out before me, has seemed bitter and hollow and insignificant ... I forgot the many modest successes of my career and instead saw every failure ... the missed opportunities, the moments of cowardice and disappointment ... I had been very much in love ... [and had been thrown over] for another ... I had rather turned my back on romance after that disenchantment, and the few affairs I had had since then had been very half-hearted things. Now the passionless embraces came back to me ... in all their dry mechanical detail. I felt a wave of disgust for myself, and a pity for the [others] involved. — Sarah Waters

I found out that "Shame is a reaction to other people's criticism, an acute personal chagrin at our failure to live up to our obligations and the expectations others have of us. Personal desires are sunk in the collective expectation. (Shame is) the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining control over adults — Paul G. Hiebert

Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life. Ten years ago such revelations as these of the Erie Railway would have sent a shudder through the community, and would have placed a stigma on every man who had had to do them. Now they merely incite others to surpass by yet bolder outrages and more corrupt combinations. — Charles Francis Adams, Sr.

Some economists became obsessed with market efficiency and others with market failure. Generally held to be members of opposite schools-freshwater and saltwater, Chicago and Cambridge, liberal and conservative, Austrian and Keynesian-both sides share an essential economic vision. They see their discipline as successful insofar as it eliminates surprise-insofar, that is, as the inexorable workings of the machine override the initiatives of the human actors. — George Gilder

Gratitude brings a peace that helps us overcome the pain of adversity and failure. Gratitude on a daily basis means we express appreciation for what we have now without qualification for what we had in the past or desire in the future. A recognition of and appreciation for our gifts and talents which have been given also allows us to acknowledge the need for help and assistance from the gifts and talents possessed by others. — Robert D. Hales

At Childerstown High School and at college he had never led his class nor taken prizes; but, without being aware that he did, he really blamed this on his failure to work hard, or any harder than he needed to ... What he did not know, what Paul Bonbright, among others, showed him, was that those abilities of his that got him, without distinction but also without much exertion, through all previous lessons and examinations, were not first rate abilities handicapped by laziness, but second rate, by no degree of effort or assiduity to be made the equal of abilities like Bonbright's. — James Gould Cozzens

His fame seemed to him a failure of perception on the part of others. — Richard Flanagan

Colin was beginning to be afraid( ... )of the future, of the possibility, suddenly glimpsed, that his life might end like this. Like most young people, he'd always assumed, without ever really thinking about it, that regret, waste, failure lay in wait for others, but not for him. Now( ... )he realized, for the first time, that he was not exempt, that this, unless he took steps to avoid it, could happen to him. — Pat Barker

For the first time Vishal had understood what success truly meant. It came at a cost. It came at the expense of others' failure. It did not necessarily merit one's integrity, passion or zeal. It did not worry about the method either. It could not be swapped, lent or borrowed. It was a lonelier place. Smile to a mere few at expense of several heartbreaks. Yet if success was that important, he needed to value it. Life is cruel.

- Beginning with a Comma, Ch 10 — Amrit Sinha

The character of greatness must be measured in two ways, else the measurement is flawed. First, and by far most popular of all, is by one's ability to succeed in times of trial where others may fail. But of no less importance, and perhaps foundational to any form of greatness, is one's willingness to start over in spite of failure, when success seems farthest away. — Guy Finley

The truth about most people: they will never accept you as you are. You'll need to change. And I'm begging you, change. But only for yourself, and even if that means by yourself. Never bend for them. Don't calm your heart, don't scale back these dreams. Stay strange, lost your mind, finger fuck the rules, burn bridges if you must, and follow your insanity. Feel everything, it's telling you something. People will love you in bits and pieces, and hate you just the same. You'll always be too much for some, and not enough for others. They will never believe in you, as much as you do. And understand that you will never be a success in the eyes of a failure. There's a magic in you that most others can't believe in, simply because they haven't made sense of themselves. But you're magic, still. You've been that way all along. And even if the world changed everything in you, that much would always be true. — J. Raymond

In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who have entered college more easily. — Abraham Lincoln

Ignorance has one virtue: persistence. It will insist through dogged persistence on leading others to follow its vision no matter how misguided. Ignorance will drive the world to the brink of failure and catastrophe and beyond into the abyss with arrogance and anger because wisdom is often too polite to fight. Wisdom doesn't like to impose its will, but that is all ignorance understands - force over free will and choice. Sooner or later the world comes to its senses, but oh the damage that has been done. — John Kramer

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious
all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy.
No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure
that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation
being sent to prison
was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory. — Charles W. Colson

Failure is a great teacher; but never insist on hiring one for yourself. Learn vicariously from others' teachers. — Ashok Kallarakkal

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again. — George MacDonald Fraser

The resulting action is based on informed intuition, or as he calls it, "superthought." In jazz, superthought goes beyond determining the "right" answer: It allows one to see new possibliities where others see only more of the same, and to construct the rate "useful combination." Perhaps we can superthink our way through choice by learning the fundamentals of its composition, and then using the knowledge to create more music where there might otherwise by only noise. Insisting on more when one already has a great deal is usually considered a sign of greed. In the case of choice, it is also a sign of the failure of the imagination, which we must avoid or overcome if we wish to solve our multiple choice problem. — Sheena Iyengar

Look beyond the failure of others. — Jeremy Gutsche

We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of "success" from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. — Randy Komisar

May I invite you to rise to the great potential within you. But don't reach beyond your capacity. Don't set goals beyond your capacity to achieve. Don't feel guilty or dwell on thoughts of failure. Don't compare yourself with others. Do the best you can, and the Lord will provide the rest. Have faith and confidence in Him, and you will see miracles happen in your life and the lives of your loved ones. The virtue of your own life will be a light to those who sit in darkness, because you are a living witness of the fulness of the gospel (see D&C 45:28). Wherever you have been planted on this beautiful but often troubled earth of ours, you can be the one to "succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees" (D&C 81:5). — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

True life begins when you resolve not to quit, downplay failure, stop apologizing of who you're, and refrain from appeasing others. Begin living! — Assegid Habtewold

The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "The Revenge of Failure". This is what Envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well, we will destroy the canons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we are not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! we will strum a guitar all day, and call it self-expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased,and failure has had its revenge. — Henry Fairlie

Trusting others puts us at risk. Yet failure to trust entails risk as well. The ability to navigate through this minefield successfully is one of life's most valuable assets. DeSteno provides by far the best account of what science has learned about how we do this. The Truth About Trust is also a terrific read. — Robert H. Frank

As a functional Aspergian adult, one thing troubles me deeply about those kids who end up behind the second door. Many descriptions of autism and Asperger's describe people like me as "not wanting contact with others" or "preferring to play alone." I can't speak for other kids, but I'd like to be very clear about my own feelings: I did not ever want to be alone. And all those child psychologists who said "John prefers to play by himself" were dead wrong. I played by myself because I was a failure at playing with others. I was alone as a result of my own limitations, and being alone was one of the bitterest disappointments of my young life. — John Elder Robison

Humanity has one strength that no one has: that is we may feel the feelings, pain, jealousy, failure, love, happiness of others and identify with them, and even see the world through their own eyes. — Orhan Pamuk

For the dueller, what other people think of him will be the only factor in settling what he may think of himself. He cannot continue to be acceptable in his own eyes when those around him find him evil or dishonourable, a coward or a failure, a fool or an effeminate. So dependent is his self-image on the views of others that he would prefer to die by a bullet or stab wound than allow unfavourable ideas about him to remain lodged in the public mind. — Alain De Botton

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

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!
Theodore Roosevelt — Douglas L. Smith

To nurture a resilient human being, or a resilient city, is to build in an expectation of adversity, a capacity for inevitable vulnerability. As a word and as a strategy, resilience honors the unromantic reality of who we are and how we are, and so becomes a refreshingly practical compass for the systems and societies we can craft. It's a shift from wish-based optimism to reality-based hope. It is akin to meaningful, sustained happiness - not dependent on a state of perfection or permanent satisfaction, not an emotional response to circumstances of the moment, but a way of being that can meet the range of emotions and experiences, light and dark, that add up to a life. Resilience is at once proactive, pragmatic, and humble. It knows it needs others. It doesn't overcome failure so much as transmute it, integrating it into the reality that evolves. Such — Krista Tippett

At its root, perfectionism isn't really about a deep love of being meticulous. It's about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success. — Michael Law

There are times when democracy can be a disadvantage. There is an often-recounted and many-versioned story of the mercurial Doug Scott on K2. All versions end with Doug disagreeing with the others, who suggest that the matter be put to the vote. 'You know, youth,' replied Doug, 'democracy is a bit of a failure if you end up having to vote on it. — Victor Saunders

Contingent on what, though? Some bases for feeling good about oneself may be worse than others. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at Ohio State University, and her colleagues have shown that the prognosis is particularly bad when self-esteem hinges on outdoing others (competitive success), approval by others, physical appearance, or academic achievement.47 Consider the last of those. When children's self-esteem rises or falls with how well they do at school, achievement can resemble an addiction, "requiring ever greater success to avoid feelings of worthlessness." And if it looks as though success is unlikely, kids may "disengage from the task, deciding it doesn't matter, rather than suffer the loss of self-esteem that accompanies failure. — Alfie Kohn

It's a mistake to act as though we're not created equal.
It's another mistake not to correct the first one.
Blaming others nurtures failure.
Helping others reaps a share of their success. — L. Anthony

HOW TO REFUSE DEFEAT Life is fragile and uncertain. Sooner or later, you will experience a great loss in life, when suffering reveals that the world is not the place you think it is, and that your dreams will not come true after all. What then? Don't blame others for what happened to you, even if it might well be their fault. This is a dead end. And don't settle for stoic acceptance of your fate. Merely bearing up under strain is noble, but it's wasting an opportunity for transformation. You have the power to turn your burden into a blessing. What if this pain, this heartbreak, this failure, was given to you to help you find your true self? Make adversity work for you by launching a quest inside your own heart. Find the dragons hiding there, slay them, and bring back the treasure that will help you live well. — Rod Dreher

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others. — Elizabeth Drew

In all our lives, however, there are many days when we die a little, when we are wounded by loss or failure, or by fear, or by seeing the suffering of others for whom we are able to offer only pity, for whom we are powerless to offer aid, who are beyond mercy. — Dean Koontz

Your success does not depend on the failure of others. — Omar Suleiman

I'm convinced that the world, more than ever, needs the music only you can make. And if it takes extra courage to keep playing in spite of your loss, many will applaud the effort. And who knows? Others may be inspired to pick up their broken instruments, their broken lives, and begin again. — Steve Goodier

Failure's relative. I've always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something's not right about that. It's how you treat failure, too. There's something to learn from it. I've had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures: What kind of failure was it? A failure because it's misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself? — Al Pacino

Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them. — Cyril Connolly

Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can't go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live. — Kevin Bacon

It is an inherent nature of life: Whenever success is in your reach, it tosses either an unexpected obstacle or an alluring offer, straight on your path. That unexpected manifestation, obstacle or offer, would either prompt you to press the panic button or distract your focus from your target. As you become busy dealing with the fresh situation, time, with its own flair, flies miles away from your reach, with the reward in offer. Those who endure, without getting disturbed by the obstacle or decoyed by the illusive offer, will reap the fruit. Others will flop, falling as victims to life's conspiracy. — Hari Parameshwar

... I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It's a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why?
Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats).
So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one.
Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man. — David Marusek

Successful investors tend to be unemotional, allowing the greed and fear of others to play into their hands. By having confidence in their own analysis and judgement, they respond to market forces not with blind emotion but with calculated reason. Successful investors, for example, demonstrate caution in frothy markets and steadfast conviction in panicky ones. Indeed, the very way an investor views the market and it's price fluctuations is a key factor in his or her ultimate investment success or failure. — Seth Klarman

I found the concept of hindsight bias fascinating, and incredibly important to management. One of the toughest problems a CEO faces is convincing managers that they should take on risky projects if the expected gains are high enough. Their managers worry, for good reason, that if the project works out badly, the manager who championed the project will be blamed whether or not the decision was a good one at the time. Hindsight bias greatly exacerbates this problem, because the CEO will wrongly think that whatever was the cause of the failure, it should have been anticipated in advance. And, with the benefit of hindsight, he always knew this project was a poor risk. What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves. — Richard H. Thaler

When others spoke of the fear of war, you spoke of the need for warriors and peace through strength. When others bewailed the failure of big government to provide for the collective good, you spoke of self-reliance, of personal responsibility, of individual pride and integrity. When others preached compromise - when others demanded compromise, you, Ronald Reagan, preached conviction. — Margaret Thatcher

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren't where you want to be, you will always be a failure. — Erin Cummings

I had killed people before, in war and as a member of the New Orleans police department, and I know what it does to you. Like the hunter, you feel an adrenaline surge of pleasure at having usurped the province of God. The person who says otherwise is lying. But the emotional attitude you form later varies greatly among individuals. Some will keep their remorse alive and feed it as they would a living gargoyle, to assure themselves of their own humanity; others will justify it in the name of a hundred causes, and they'll reach back in moments of their own inadequacy and failure and touch again those flaming shapes that somehow made their impoverished lives historically significant. — James Lee Burke

I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone. Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God's purposes for your life. — Rick Warren

His conclusion, preserved for posterity, was that the experiment of interning families of suspected nationalities - German, Japanese, Italians, and others - was a failure. Nonetheless, — Jan Jarboe Russell

Anxiety, as neuropsychologists today tell us, is toxic; our brains are wired to avoid anxiety. Anxiety corrupts the chemistry of the brain and leads us to depart (emotionally or physically) from others to protect ourselves. Jesus's words to his disciples "to fear not" (Luke 8:50 NRSV) become of utmost significance. Anxiety is so acidic that it is nearly impossible to have relationship, to be a place-sharer, where the air is poisoned with it. Bonhoeffer's calm and composure, even on the first day, signaled to the boys that he had no anxiety, no worry about lessons being unfinished or others thinking he was a failure. His composure signaled to them that it might be that he is really just here for them, rather than to fulfill some goal that they could frustrate (like getting them through the material). Bonhoeffer's composure tacitly indicated to the boys that he was more loyal to their concrete persons than any end others sought for them. — Andrew Root

leader is great, not because of his or her power, but because of his or her ability to empower others. Success without a successor is failure. A worker's main responsibility is developing others to do the work (see — John C. Maxwell

So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn't be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities, and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue to write letters to the editor pointing out untruths, and continue to be surprised each time the newspaper publishes its next absurdity. At least I've stopped writing to politicians. — Derrick Jensen

The deepest-lying and most pervasive part of character is disposition: it accompanies us everywhere, and shows itself in all we do. It is the attitude of the soul toward life, the way in which we accept our situation and our daily experiences. On the inner side it gives color and tone to our own conscious life: on the outer side it pervades and modifies our conduct toward others and our reactions to events. A good disposition is indispensable to good character, though of course not all of character; without it one cannot hope for perfection; even with it one may fail through lack of higher elements. It is a sort of foundation layer. — Edward O. Sisson

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker

Jealous leaders measure their success by the failure of others. — Andy Stanley

Our host drifted away, and Vidia and I continued chatting about this and that. Swift judgments came down. The simplicity in Hemingway was "bogus" and nothing, Vidia said, like his own. Things Fall Apart was a fine book, but Achebe's refusal to write about his decades in America was disappointing. Heart of Darkness was good, but structurally a failure. I asked him about the biography by Patrick French, The World Is What It Is, which he had authorized. He stiffened. That book, which was extraordinarily well written, was also shocking in the extent to which it revealed a nasty, petty, and insecure man. "One gives away so much in trust," Vidia said. "One expects a certain discretion. It's painful, it's painful. But that's quite all right. Others will be written. The record will be corrected." He sounded like a boy being brave after gashing his thumb. The — Teju Cole

The average time for karma to produce results is five years. I mean, five years for a company to prove itself or end, but also for a person to achieve success or failure. Now, if you really persist in doing something truly good for five years of your life, you must conquer the results you envisioned, if you did so. And the same applies for the ignorant. If you ignore the potential of those around you, if you ignore your life partner, if you ignore the needs of others, if you are ignorant about yourself and waste your time for five years, then expect to get karma back after that period as well. Life is wonderful, even for the stupid, but you shouldn't need negative consequences to learn something useful from it. — Robin Sacredfire

Success and failure are largely self-defined in terms of personal standards. The higher the self-standards, the more likely will given attainments be viewed as failures, regardless of what others might think — Albert Bandura

He's writing his name in water," I said. "What's that?" It was the half-regretful term - borrowed from the headstone of John Keats - that Crabtree used to describe his own and others' failure to express a literary gift through any actual writing on paper. Some of them, he said, just told lies; others wove plots out of the gnarls and elf knots of their lives and then followed them through to resolution. That had always been Crabtree's chosen genre - thinking his way into an attractive disaster and then attempting to talk his way out, leaving no record and nothing to show for his efforts but a reckless reputation and a small dossier in the files of the Berkeley and New York City police departments. — Michael Chabon

Such knowledge is probably gained in several ways. One process undoubtedly operates through social comparison of success and failure experiences. Children repeatedly observe their own behavior and the attainments of others — Albert Bandura

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce. — Bill Gates

If the only thing I did for the rest of my life was treat others kindly, file manila folders, and sit on the porch watching the grass grow it would be enough. It had to be. I did the math. The number of people who actually achieve a significant legacy is trifling compared to the vast number who go from birth to death living relatively unremarkable lives (at least on the surface). And maybe that wasn't the failure I'd been conditioned to believe. Maybe there was something to be said in praise of an outwardly unremarkable life. Maybe there were deep everyday forms of magic that had nothing to do with profound acomplishments or a Twitter feed that resonated down through the ages. — Clara Bensen

Don't hide love. If you feel it, express it-not to demand that others love you back, but simply to live outwardly the best of what you feel inwardly. The worst that can happen to your heart is not rejection by another person but failure to act on the love you feel. — Martha Beck

I don't know the secret of success - but the secret of failure is to always try to follow the will of others. — Paulo Coelho

Fear of failure and criticism can be crippling. Don't let others' negativity take away your joy. — Lee Hammond

I now think that was distanced me from Tricia and from the Rape Crisis Center was their use of generalities. I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others. It somehow blindsided my sense that I was going to survive. Tricia prepared me for failure by saying that it would be okay if I failed. She did this by showing me that the odds out there were against me. But what she told me, I didn't want to hear. In the face of dismal statistics regarding arrest, prosecution, and even full recovery for the victim, I saw no choice but to ignore the statistics. I needed what gave me hope, like being assigned a female assistant district attorney, not the news that the number of rape prosecutions in Syracuse for that calendar year had been nil. — Alice Sebold

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment? — Helen Fielding

But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil
that is moral guilt. — Karl Jaspers

Fear of success is far more dangerous than fear of failure, because the subconscious mind works to prevent that which it fears. People may fear success because of low self-esteem and feeling of not deserving it; because it will increase what others expect of them. Fear of success shows up as anxiety, indecision, avoidance, procrastination or acceptance of mediocrity. — Joe Tye

Boys who grow up seeing themselves everywhere as powerful and central just by virtue of being boys, often white, are critically impaired in many ways. It's a rude shock to many when things don't turn out the way they were told they should. It seems reasonable to suggest media misrepresentations like these contribute, in boys, to a heightened inability to empathize with others, a greater propensity to peg ambition to intrinsic qualities instead of effort and a failure to understand why rules apply or why accountability is a thing. It should mean something to parents that the teenagers with the highest likelihood of sexually assaulting a peer and feel no responsibility for their actions are young white boys from higher-income families. The real boy crisis we should be talking about is entitlement and outdated notions of masculinity, both of which are persistently responsible for leaving boys confused and unprepared for contemporary adulthood. — Soraya Chemaly

This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where - "
"We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human - but that's not what happened." His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department - others as well - may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't. — Philip K. Dick

Not learning how to read is not another style of literacy, and not learning to see others as ends in themselves is not another style of ethics. It is a failure of ethics. — Sam Harris

Studies have shown that we are often so worried about failure that we create vague goals, so that nobody can point the finger when we don't achieve them. We come up with face-saving excuses, even before we have attempted anything.

We cover up mistakes, not only to protect ourselves from others, but to protect us from ourselves. Experiments have demonstrated that we all have a sophisticated ability to delete failures from memory, like editors cutting gaffes from a film reel - as we'll see. Far from learning from mistakes, we edit them out of the official autobiographies we all keep in our own heads. — Matthew Syed

Errors of human judgment can infect even the smartest people, thanks to overconfidence, lack of attention to details, and excessive trust in the judgments of others, stemming from a failure to understand that others are not making independent judgments, but are themselves following still others - the blind leading the blind. - ROBERT J. SHILLER, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, YALE UNIVERSITY — Pamela Yellen

Oh and I thought, as i was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, and the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; and to detect every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous experience, an not as unconscious, at least in its approaches, as death is. — Virginia Woolf