Fear Of Failing Quotes & Sayings

If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars. — Nina Bawden

Inflexibility is the worst human failing. You can learn to check impetuosity, overcome fear with confidence and laziness with discipline. But for rigidity of mind, there is no antidote. It carries the seeds of its own destruction. — Anton Myrer

I think people are afraid of either failing or succeeding. It takes courage to feel the fear and feel the risk. — John Assaraf

Each precious moment of your life in which you are frozen with fear is a moment when you are not being all you can be. In the end, that hurts more than anything. Succeeding or failing does not determine if we are surviving or living. Rather it is in our ability to reach beyond our present self-imposed definition of who we are, and to risk becoming more, that we are able to feel fully alive. — Rhonda Britten

What does failure do to us? We fall into a vicious downward spiral. Failure is a lot like a shot from a double barrel gun but with a difference. The first shot is like the news which explodes in one's face. But it is the second, after a short time lag, which causes the most damage. It comprises of pain, humiliation, shame, frustration and anger. The first shot pales in comparison. It is life after the blast that causes the most hurt. — Anup Kochhar

There might well be deep evolutionary reasons for these fears; it made sense, millennia ago, to fear situations where we had no control and situations that involved malevolent attackers. In our modern world, however, the things we really ought to fear are almost entirely of our own doing. Failing to climb the stairs and get enough exercise kills far more people than any number of murderers climbing those stairs. You are at far greater risk of taking your own life than being killed by a terrorist. If you were to go strictly by the numbers, that cigarette in your hand ought to have you screaming louder than a chance encounter with Hannibal Lecter. — Shankar Vedantam

Failing at everything except his fear of success. Passed over yet again. Archivist of slights. Everyone else's good fortune is food out of your mouth or a hug you never got from someone who should have loved you better. Halfway through lunch she realized glass ceilings allow glimpses up into another person's hell. — Colson Whitehead

We are vulnerable to fear only when we leave the present. If I drift into the past, my regrets surge up, my memories of failing and forsaking. If I shift into the future, I meet with doubt and delusion, fear of what's to come, what I'm not capable of controlling. It's in the present moment that I belong. — Jan Phillips

As you know from school, it's when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you've done your best. — Alice Walker

I don't even remember the first time I did meth in front of my child. This is mostly because I've never actually done meth. But it's a good way to start out a chapter about how you fear you're failing as a parent because it sets the bar of child-rearing very, very low and everything you do that isn't meth in front of your children seems incredibly impressive by comparison. My — Jenny Lawson

I used to think that the term inner child was a ridiculous metaphor invented to remind responsibility-burdened adults to lighten up occasionally and just have fun. But it turns out that the inner child is very real. It is our past. And the only way to escape the past is to embrace it. So before going to bed that night, I put the photo in a frame and place it next to my bed. And I vow that from this day forward, that child will be protected. He will be loved. He will be accepted. He will be trusted. And all this will be given unconditionally. He will not be taught to hate and fear. He will not be criticized for failing to live up to unrealistic expectations. He will not be used as a Kleenex or aspirin for someone else's feelings of loneliness, fear, depression, or anxiety. — Neil Strauss

The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face, and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through. — Tony Scott

They strive to attain their wishes by every available means, instructing and compelling themselves to dishonest and difficult acts. And when their labour is without reward, it is the fruitless disgrace that tortures them - they are not grieved to have desired evil things but to have desired in vain. Then remorse for what they began lays hold of them, and the fear of beginning again, and thence creeps in the agitation of mind which can find no relief - because neither can they rule nor can they obey their desires. And then comes the hesitancy of a life failing to clear a way for itself, and the dull wasting of a soul lying torpid amidst forsaken hopes. — Seneca.

My father is the most genial Midwestern guy imaginable, but for him, disaster lurks around every corner - financial ruin, squandered health, pyramid schemes, airbags failing to deploy - so he tends to use fear as a parenting tool to try to goad his daughters into being more prepared.When he retired, he reached new levels of preparedness, so his car contained bottled water, hand wipes, a roadside emergency kit with flares, books on tape, a coin dispenser, and two hand towels to use as makeshift bibs so he and my mother could drive and eat without making a mess. — Jancee Dunn

Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing.
Visions born of hope give birth to our success.
What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it. — Terry Brooks

Because the demands on the goalie are mostly mental, it means that for a goalie the biggest enemy is himself. Not a puck, not a opponent, not a quirk of size or style. The stress and anxiety he feels when he plays, the fear of failing, the fear of being embarrassed, the fear of being physically hurt, all symptoms of his position, in constant ebb and flow, but never disappearing. The successful goalie understands these neuroses, accept them, and put them under control. The unsuccessful goalie is distracted by them, his mind in knots. His body quickly follows. — Ken Dryden

Be strong and of good courage; fear not or be dismayed; for the Lord, even my God, will be with thee. He will not fail thee, till thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord. — David

The United States is primarily a guilt-based culture. The dominant method of social control in this country involves teaching people to feel guilt about not living up to personal expectations. Contrast this with shame-based cultures like Japan. As researchers Ying Wong and Jeanne Tsai explain in their paper, Cultural Models of Shame and Guilt, shame is "associated with the fear of exposing one's defective self to others. Guilt, on the other hand, is associated with the fear of not living up to one's own standards." In this formulation, guilt is based on failing to achieve personal ideals; shame is based on social exposure ["The Anti-Vaccine Movement Should Be Ridiculed, Because Shame Works," Gizmodo, February 6, 2015]. — Matt Novak

Can we quantify failure in degrees and say, 'on a 10 point scale this failure causes this much pain?' Extremely difficult. — Anup Kochhar

Trust in God alone, and lean not on the needs of human help. Be not surprised when friends fail you; it is a failing world. Never reckon upon immutability in man: inconstancy you may reckon upon without fear of disappointment. — Charles Spurgeon

Don't think about the possibilities of failing. Never forget to think about the possibilities of flying. — Debasish Mridha

Many people have failing relationships because they have not really fallen in love with each other, but they have fallen for the mental images they have created of one another. We assume we know our partner, we think about them nonstop, creating many different ideas of who they are, what they like, and how we will be together, then as soon as our partner does something that doesn't fit with our mental image of them, we become sad, upset, confused, or heart broken. Our partner did not cause our suffering; we caused it, through our false perceptions and mental images. — Joseph P. Kauffman

The fear of failure kills creativity and intelligence. The only thing it produces is conformity. — Anup Kochhar

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker. — Stanley Kubrick

Fear of God failing us leads us to "cover for God." This means we ask, expect, and are satisfied with less. — Francis Chan

Failure is like flu. It can happen to anyone. Just as it is difficult to find a person who hasn't had the flu, it is difficult to find someone who has not been stuck by failure at some time. — Anup Kochhar

The Fear of failure is the greatest fear of man. Even the fear of death is fear of failing to continue life. — Anup Kochhar

Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you're not failing from time to time, you're not pushing yourself. And if you're not pushing yourself, you're coasting. — Eric Zorn

Children play at being great and wonderful people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a like dream once; everybody and nobody built up the dream bit by bit, and the ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires.
from a preface to
Gods and Fighting Men
by Lady Augusta Gregory — W.B.Yeats

One great help here - and I make no claim that it is the only help or even a necessary condition for forgiveness - is sincere repentance on the part of the wrongdoer. When I am wronged by another, a great part of the injury - over and above any physical harm I may suffer - is the insulting or degrading message that has been given to me by the wrongdoer: the message that I am less worthy than he is, so unworthy that he may use me merely as a means or object in service to his desires and projects. Thus failing to resent(or hastily forgiving) the wrongdoer runs the risk that I am endorsing that very immoral message for which the wrongdoer stands. If the wrongdoer sincerely repents, however, he now joins me in repundiating the degrading and insulting message - allowing me to relate to him (his new self) as an equal without fear that a failure to resent him will be read as a failure to resent what he hs done. — Jeffrie G. Murphy

You are surprised that the world is losing its grip, that the world is grown old? Think of a man: he is born, he grows up, he becomes old. Old age has its many complaints: coughing, shaking, failing eyesight, anxious, terribly tired. A man grows old; he is full of complaints. The world is old; it is full of pressing tribulations. . . . Do not hold onto the old man, the world; do not refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you, 'The world is passing away, the world is losing its grip, the world is short of breath. Do not fear. Thy youth shall be renewed as an eagle — Augustine Of Hippo

Don't let your fear of failing triumph over the joy of participating. — Marilyn Monroe

I think the fear of God failing us leads us to "cover for God." This means we ask for less, expect less, and are satisfied with less because we are afraid to ask for or expect more. — Francis Chan

Shapers" are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing. — Adam M. Grant

it's being branded a failure that causes the most pain; when 'failure' changes from being a verb to becoming a noun. — Anup Kochhar

We are all afraid. That's the thing that unites all truly successful people: fear, fear of failing, fear of criticism, fear of letting down the team in some way. That why they try so hard, that's why they pay attention to detail and try to get every possible duck in a row. It's fear — Peggy Noonan

Most of the reason we don't do things is because we're afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not not going to do things in my life because of fear. — Sara Blakely

Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
'O young man, O my slayer
To-morrow you shall die.'

O Queen of air and darkness
I think 'tis truth you say,
And I shall die to-morrow;
But you shall die to-day. — A.E. Housman

And so we polish our own lives, creating landscapes and canyons and peaks with the very silt we try to avoid, the dirt we disavow or hide or deny. It is the dirt of our lives - the depressions, the losses, the inequities, the failing grades in trigonometry, the e-mails sent in fear or hate or haste, the ways in which we encounter people different from us - that shape us, polish us to a heady sheen, make us in fact more beautiful, more elemental, more artful and lasting. — Terry Tempest Williams

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals. — Ayelet Waldman

Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life. — Alfred Adler

I'm always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I'm going to get up in the morning. — Taylor Swift

Passion can overcome fear - the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional. — Seth Godin

There are even more galvanizing aspects to the Canadian psyche than mere reticence. There is the collective fear, at least when I was growing up, of becoming too big for our britches. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels (my countryman), it's the kind of place where they award Miss Canada to the runner-up, because the prettiest already gets to be the prettiest. Rather than demanding liberty or, failing that, death, we are a country forever giving up our seats to the elderly, all the while thanking one another for not smoking. — David Rakoff

We must not be afraid to define our enemy. It is Islamic extremist terrorism. I did not say all of Islam. I said Islamic extremist terrorism. Failing to identify them properly maligns decent Muslims around the world. It also sets up a fear of being politically incorrect that can have serious consequences. And it has. — Rudy Giuliani

At 13, I was fearless. I looked at everything so positive. When you're older and been through it all, you know how bad it can get. There is a fear of failing. — Michelle Kwan

Failure is an inescapable part of life and a critically important part of any successful life. We learn to walk by falling, to talk by babbling, to shoot a basket by missing, and to color the inside of a square by scribbling outside the box. Those who intensely fear failing end up falling short of their potential. We either learn to fail or we fail to learn. — Tal Ben-Shahar

I wanted to find my limitations so I decided to do Shylock. And if I fail? I've never been afraid of that. I have other fears - doing bad work knowingly is the worst fear. — Dustin Hoffman

Debtors and idlers abounded in the colonial era, but failing in business was not so calamitous as falling from grace... In Early America, fear of failure loomed largest on Sunday. Monday morning dawned about the year 1800. By then, 'failure' meant an entrepreneurial failure. — Scott A. Sandage

Having the courage to make decisions and take action. Never be afraid to fail. You have nothing to fear if you have prepared to the best of your ability. — John Wooden

I got him' is nonsense in terms of love relationships, and so is 'I lost him'. If we could stop thinking in terms of capture, we would not have to fear the loosening of the captives' bonds and our failing beauty, and he would not have ulcers about being outsrtipped or belittled. — Germaine Greer

"Have you done your homework?" my mother would ask. "I'll do it later." "You will do it now, young man. I don't want you winding up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica." Flagg-Utica was a local textile plant. Somehow, I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetation to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing a life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt and fear as catalysts, you can read anything, even geography books and Deuteronomy. — Lewis Grizzard

I don't fear failure because if you don't fail, you would not know the secret of success. — Sonam Kapoor

I am consumed with the fear of failing. Reaching deep down and finding confidence has made all my dreams come true. — Arsenio Hall

Whenever the occasional doubt starts to creep into my mind about my artistic ability, I start to think about the reality of having the greatest artist ever living inside of me. The One who created the orchid, peacock and the human circulatory system is the same God who gives me ideas for my next logo project. The God who parted the Red Sea is the same God who knows Photoshop. The God who raised Lazurus from the dead is the same God who brings new clients to me. He can do anything! If we want to talk about a fear of failing, we have to talk about being blessed to know the One who can do anything but fail. — V.L. Thompson

...Success is built upon failure - usually an endless line of them! Were I to live in fear of failing, then I should never venture to try anything. And if I am to fail, then I would that it be an Epic failure! — C.A. Clark

Don't be afraid of being laughed at for failing. Fear being sixty-five years-old and never trying. — Troy Gathers

The more time you invest in thinking about the project - where to begin and how to pull it all together - the more original, successful, and enjoyable the project will be. There is always an element of fear here - everyone is afraid of failing. Don't be! The truth is that you are going to fail in some way, but this is something to be embraced and viewed as a learning experience. There is freedom in recognizing you will fail - you'll be inspired to push yourself. With every finished project you will probably have a list of things you would do differently next time. Expect this from the beginning and the journey will be more rewarding. — Nathan Smith

For two weeks, I lay awake at night and said Hail Marys over and over to stop my heart from beating too fast. I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. I realized that Renee had seen me fail, and that she was the person I was going to be failing in front for the rest of my life. It was just a little failure, but it promised bigger failures to come. Additional ones, anyway. But that's who your wife is, the person you fail in front of. Love it so confusing; there's no peace of mind. — Rob Sheffield

Whatever it is I'm born to do, my fear of failing at it has almost become greater than my desire to figure out what it is. — Ann Kidd Taylor

The only people I have ever seen paint successfully, consistently, with great authority, unselfconsciously and without fear of failing were about four years old. — Brian Johnson

I only hope that one day I can frighten my daughter this much. Right now, she's not scared of my husband or me at all. I think it's a problem. I was a freshman home from college the first time my dad said, "You're going out at ten p.m.? I don't think so," and I just laughed and said, "It's fine." I feel like my daughter will be doing that to me by age six.
How can I give her what Don Fey gave me? The gift of anxiety. The fear of getting in trouble. The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law. The Worldwide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes. — Tina Fey

We were putting into these gomers our fear of death, but who knew if they feared death? Perhaps they welcomed death like a dear long-lost cousin, grown old but still known, coming to visit, relieving the loneliness, the failing of the senses, the fury of the half-blind looking into the mirror and not recognizing who is looking back, a dear friend, a dear reliever, a healer who would be with them for an eternity, the same eternity as the long ago, before birth. — Samuel Shem

Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure. — Malcolm X

You cannot achieve success without the risk of failure. And I learned a long time ago, you cannot achieve success, if you fear failure. If you're not afraid to fail, man, you have a chance to succeed. But you're never gonna get there unless you risk it, all the way. I'll risk failure. Sometimes, half the fun is failing. Learning from your mistakes, waking up the next morning, and saying 'Okay. Watch out. Here I come again. A little bit smarter, licking my wounds, and really not looking forward to getting my ass kicked the way I just did yesterday.' So now, I'm just a little more dangerous. — Paul Heyman

When the fear of losing money and failing becomes too painful inside, a fear we both have, he chooses to seek security and I choose to seek freedom. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Quitting my day job and starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk. It was a fool's leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. ( ... ) Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take. — Alan Moore

The question is not how can I overcome fear? The question is: how can I use it creatively? If you have problems (and we all do), how are you going to deal with them? To be is to be imperfect. Contentment is resiliency, the willingness and the ability to see the opportunities presented by mistakes. Take what you like and pay for it - failure is the price you pay for success. It is the wages of growth. Success is failing forwards, figuring out how to conduct suffering, and in its reconstruction to transform it into illumination. Eschew impatience. Let stillness teach you where your centre is, where your origins are. Be impeccable in all your dealings with the world. Integrity isn't a luxury - it's an essential. Remember the best advice of the I Ching: perseverance furthers. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Nobody is born without fear. We are all born into this world screaming and crying, a bloody mess. We're afraid of failing. What differentiates people is that some of them tend to deal more with fearful situations and understand that it's hurting them in life. That by becoming fearful they're maiming themselves and they learn to move past these fears. — Robert Greene

Countless others, however, failed to escape the relentless pursuit of the auditors, who assured society that law would prevail. They hunted those who tried to circumvent their rules, which were harsh to prevent the city's power supply from failing. The rules had to be harsh to avoid bad precedents.
Nobody had the freedom to spontaneously use their imagination. This was the order of things. — Alexandre A. Loch

I think, as an actor, it is good to feel the fear of failing miserably. I think you should take that risk. Fear is a necessary ingredient in everything I do. But if I do 'Hamlet,' it will probably be in a small theater on a small stage, and it will have to be very, very soon because I'm getting a little long in the tooth for it. — Johnny Depp

Claritypoint: A fear-based philosophy about life (seeing life as a testing center) can prevent you from seeing yourself and situations accurately.- A fear of failing skews your perspective and distracts you from learning and loving. — Kimberly Giles

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing. — J.K. Rowling

Our pride, our ego, our fear of failing too often keeps us from achieving greatness, keeps us stuck in jobs we don't like, working with people we can't stand, engaging in pursuits we're not wholeheartedly passionate about. — Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution

So many times, people are afraid to start something because of fear of failing. But it can be fabulous - because it leads you to the next thing. — RuPaul

Rather than risk starting their own businesses, most people seek safer environments, preferring job security to freedom and a steady paycheck to greater wealth. Their fear of failing is greater than the joy of freedom. — Robert Kiyosaki

there are things in our souls which we know not how much they mean to us. Or rather, if we live without them, it is because, either through fear of failing or suffering, we daily postpone the moment of coming under their thrall. — Marcel Proust

And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop. — Caroline Knapp

In order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely and purely without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions we shall ever take. — Alan Moore

There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's judgement, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed on because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects or one's merits. Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine. — Paulo Coelho

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song."
I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old ... just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something. — Jennifer DeLucy

They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve it. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan, and yet it is compassion, not fear, that brings harmony to most races. It is harmony, working toward shared goals, that precedes greatness. — R.A. Salvatore

I've got to fight for that connection with God all the time no matter what you're going through in life. I'm growing up. I'm maturing. But I definitely think that the backbone of this is the freedom and creativity I have without the fear of failing. If I fail, what's going to happen? Nothing. I'm not looking for my self-worth in the sport. — Kelly Clark

You gotta learn to love when you're failing ... The embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you. Fear is the mind killer. — Stephen Colbert