Quotes & Sayings About Giving Your Best And Failing

It comes down to taking care of the people in your program and making them the best they can be-not giving up on them and never failing to be there for them. — Pete Carroll

Any president can start a war, and use the chaos of disorder that such a war creates as an indefinite argument for prolonging it. It's a war that keeps on giving. Failure means it's even more necessary to keep failing. — Andrew Sullivan

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action. Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. — Eckhart Tolle

Turns out fixing people up is not how we make money. It's failing to fix people up while still giving them hope that soon we might. — Laurie Frankel

We fail when we give up too soon. — Seth Godin

We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case. — Sheldon B. Kopp

Fear is the workout we give ourselves imagining what will happen if things don't work out ... Worry is our effort to imagine every possible way to avoid the outcome that is causing us fear, and failing that, to survive the thing that we fear if it comes to fruition. — Seth Godin

If you surround yourself with talented people and you give them the freedom to achieve, then the work will never fail. — Rankin

To give up on a person you care for who is trying and failing is a bad thing, but to cut ties with an individual who is giving zero effort, yet doing a number on your heart makes sense. — Christopher Hudspeth

Failure isn't failing at the project at hand. Failure is giving up on yourself. — Donna De Varona

There's no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot. — Robin Williams

I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course - for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers - but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, "They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves. — J.D. Vance

The man who fails to give fair service during the hours for which he is paid is dishonest. The man who is not willing to give more than this is foolish. — Charles M. Schwab

My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed. — Vinod Khosla

The banks should give a full, fair, and accurate account of their financial positions and they are failing that test. — Kevin Warsh

Consider that it is not failing in this or that attempt to come to Christ, but a giving-over of your endeavors, that will be your ruin. — John Owen

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

People fail to understand that unless they are themselves willing to give, they will never receive. — Norman Vincent Peale

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you'd never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life. — Mark Owens

If you ask people to do things and they usually don't get around to them, stop asking yourself, "What's the matter with people these days?" Instead, ask yourself, "What's the matter with me? What am I doing or failing to do that causes people to give me empty promises?" — Ed Bliss

So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it's wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn't it? That's just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it's the "cold" behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs 'cause they're so smart, doesn't it? — Jean Donaldson

It is my experience that no one, in the course of conversation, can fail to give themselves away sooner or later. Everyone has an irresistible urge to talk about themselves. — Agatha Christie

The acomodador or giving-up point: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress: a trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, a disappointment in love, even a victory that we did not quite understand, can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on. As part of the process of increasing his hidden powers, the shaman must first free himself from that giving-up point and, to do so, he must review his while life and find out where it occured. — Paulo Coelho

Cowardice more than any other failing demands a ruthless paying of the price from those who give it hospitality. — Elizabeth Goudge

The six rules of maybe
1. respect the power of hope and possibilites. Begin with beleif. Hold onto it.
2. If you known where you want to go, you're already half way there. Know what you desire but, more imporantly, why you desire it. Then go.
3. hopes and dreams and heart's desires require a clear path-get out of your own way
4. Place hope carefully in your own hands and in the hands of others
5. Persist, if necessary
6. That said, most importantly-know when you've reached an end, Quit, give up, do it with courage. Giving up is not failing-it's the chance to begin again. — Deb Caletti

It's impossible to give it all you got and fail unless you fail to give it all you got to do the impossible. — Behdad Sami

The willingness to fail gives us the freedom to succeed. — Vinod Khosla

When you recognize that failing doesn't make you a failure, you give yourself permission to try all sorts of things. — Lauren Fleshman

We fail because we give up, and we give up because we never had a plan in the first place — Robin Sieger

We're told that parents push their children too hard to excel (by ghostwriting their homework and hiring tutors, and demanding that they triumph over their peers), but also that parents try to protect kids from competition (by giving trophies to everyone), that expectations have declined, that too much attention is paid to making children happy.
Similarly, young adults are described as self-satisfied twits - more pleased with themselves than their accomplishments merit - but also as being so miserable that they're in therapy. Or there's an epidemic of helicopter parenting, even though parents are so focused on their gadgets that they ignore their children. The assumption seems to be that readers will just nod right along, failing to note any inconsistencies, as long as the tone is derogatory and the perspective is traditionalist. — Alfie Kohn

I don't mind failing because that means I'm trying. But giving up, now that's something that I'm just not willing to do. I will continue to try and try again. I will keep my peace, stay focused, and know that my time will come. My positive attitude will not depart me. I will hold it close and keep on striving, knowing that what's meant for me, will be. Nothing and nobody can stop it! My dedication and hard work won't fail me, but most importantly, I won't fail myself. I'm a winner and I'm a fighter! I don't allow challenges to stop me. — Stephanie Lahart

Taking money from job creating entrepreneurs and giving it to ever-failing government programs has to be the ultimate in economic illiteracy. — James Cook