Failing Quotes - Page 26

• Quality effective leaders have the confidence to trust others to try, succeed, and sometimes to fail. We very often confuse personality with leadership. In other words, leadership is not about being a nice person or not a nice person.

  Simon Sinek

  Nice, Personality, Leader

  "Why Leaders Should Always Eat Last – Simon Sinek Interview". Interview With Dan Schawbel, www.quickbase.com. February 19, 2014.

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• My whole life everyone always said 'it can't be done', 'you'll never do it', 'you will fail', 'no one has ever gone from Austria and become a Mr Universe, blah, blah, blah', or when I ran for governor people were sceptical. It was 'you're going to lose' and 'people don't take people from show-business seriously in politics'. So, I've heard all the 'it's impossible' thing but I didn't pay any attention because I believed that I could do it.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Impossible Things, People, Attention

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.

  George Clooney

  Fun, Sound And Music, Film Directing

  "The Ides of March - George Clooney interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics. After all, we only die because of one word: "error." The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn't function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that's why we die.

  Michio Kaku

  Mean, Errors, Cells

  "'Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics'". Interview with Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow, www.spiegel.de. September 28, 2012.

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• So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

  Alan Watts

  Money, People, Saving

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• Gold--the picklock that never fails.

  Philip Massinger

  Gold

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• I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

  George Sand

  Upset, Mind, Succeed

  Gustave Flaubert, George Sand (1999). “Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand”, Harvill Press

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• We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Weather, Wish, Encounters

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.41

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• Big money tries to purchase its own agenda. Money does too much talking in Washington. Every senator, every representative, even the president awakens each morning with a number in his head that will drive the whole day. The number is the amount of money that must [be] raised that day for his reelection. If he fails, the next day's number will be even higher.

  Patricia Schroeder

  Morning, Government, Talking

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• Calamities that are not the result of purely natural phenomena usually have their origins, distant and obscure though they may be, in common human failings.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  May, Common, Obscure

  Aung San Suu Kyi, University of Oxford. Refugee Studies Programme (1993). “Towards a true refuge”

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• To have something which one particularly wants to do is more important than anything else. It is even more important than succeeding in that thing you want to do. In fact it does not matter if you fail, but it does matter that you do or do not want to do something.

  Glenda Jackson

  Passion, Important, Want

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• there is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

  Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Laughter, Book, Play

  Mary Roberts Rinehart (1931). “My story”, Farrar & Rinehart

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• Be mine that silent calm repast,
  A conscience cheerful to the last:
  That tree which bears immortal fruit,
  Without a canker at the root;
  That friend which never fails the just,
  When other friends desert their trust.

  Nathaniel Cotton

  Roots, Tree, Cheerful

  John Gilbert Cooper, Nathaniel Cotton (1822). “The Poems of Cooper, and Cotton”, p.274

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• What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.

  Jane Jacobs

  Men, America, Erosion

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.370, Vintage

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• You will do very well to refuse offices; for a man seldom fails to give offense in them. It ought to weary you simply to hear them mentioned.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Men, Giving, Office

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• Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader? Do you promise to observe seemly moderation in the use of gangs, conspiracies, Super Criminals and Lunatics and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science? Will you honor the King's English? ... If you fail to keep your promise, may other writers steal your plots and your pages swarm with misprints.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Kings, Forever, Honor

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• If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven.

  John Tillotson

  Real, People, Heaven

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• When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Moving, Circles, Mind

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (1988). “Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Vintage

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• If we fail in this country, it is because we are too timid. If we lose our way in America, it is because we are too complacent. We must become conscious to the real threats before us and act creatively, imaginatively, now. We can no longer look to leadership beyond ourselves.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Country, Real, America

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• The future is always fairyland to the young. Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees, as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived--to reach a desert waste.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Beautiful, Flower, Future

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• whenever I encountered a slide show titled 'Eight Diet Foods That Pack on the Pounds' or 'Celebrity Fashion Fails,' I'd have to stop and investigate because hey, it might be information I'd need in some unforeseeable future where I had become, for some reason, a fat celebrity.

  Merrill Markoe

  Fashion, Eight, Might

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• Where there is any good disposition, confidence begets faithfulness; but distrust, if it do not produce treachery; never fails to destroy every inclination to evince fidelity. Most people disdain to clear themselves from the accusations of mere suspicion.

  Jane Porter

  Confidence, People, Faithfulness

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.208

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• Others may doubt us. They may criticize us. They may try to deny us what is rightfully ours. But they will fail. And I promise you, as long as I am mayor, I will never back away from fighting any opponent - or confronting any obstacle - that would prevent our people from achieving all of their dreams in Our New York.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Dream, New York, Fighting

  Michael Bloomberg's State of the City Address, www.gothamgazette.com. January 8, 2004.

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• Half of our sorrows come from setting exalted standards for people and then breaking our hearts when they fail to live up to them.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Heart, People, Expectations

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• I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Believe, Heart, Humble

  Address to the Nation Pardoning Richard M. Nixon, delivered on September 8, 1974, Washington D.C.

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