An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
- this quote in various forms has been attributed to: Orlando A. Battista, Edward R. Murrow, JFK, Chris Matthews, and "a wise man" (whoever that is/was)

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
- Gore Vidal

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Owning up to failure is not a weakness; it's a measure of strength.
- John Baldoni

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
- Jules Renard

Failure is the path of least persistence.
- Anonymous

Turning FAILURE into SUCCESS:
Ivory Soap wasn't meant to float, but a manufacturing error became its top selling point. Kleenex failed as a cold cream remover. Repackaged as a disposable handkerchief, its success remains nothing to sneeze at.

Should a door slam in your face, open a window.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.
- Lou Holtz

The Wright brothers first flight was not reported in a single newspaper because every rookie reporter knew what could and couldn't be done.
- Edward R. Murrow

It doesn't matter how many times you fail.
It doesn’t matter how many times you get it almost right.
All that matters in business is that you get it right once.
Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
- Mark Cuban

Nothing breeds inactivity like not knowing what you're doing.
- Lester Bittle

To err is human; to blame it on others is even more human.

Many a false step is made by standing still.

When one door closes, one or more will open.

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
- Samuel McChord Crothers

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.

Success consists simply of getting up one more time than you fall.
- sign in a football locker room

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
- Thomas A. Edison

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
- Chinese proverb

Never let defeat have the last word.

Failure has been my best teacher. If what you're doing is worth anything, then failing now and again is inevitable. Ultimately, success is about getting past the setbacks that you encounter. If you let failure bother you, you'll never succeed. Don't fear failure. Learn from it.
- John Peterson, CEO, J. Peterman Co.

Many times the difference between failure and success is doing something nearly right ... or doing it exactly right.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.
- George Bernard Shaw

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
- Beverly Sills

Failing many times does not make one a failure. Giving up makes one a failure.
- Grant M. Bright

The only difference between a wise man and a stupid man is the magnitude of their mistakes.

Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.
- Mike Dikta

The only way to fail, is to quit.
- Curt Schilling’s dad

If you lean in the direction of success, you will make progress even when you fall.
- Grant M. Bright

Mistakes are made and lessons are learned. But a man without mistakes is a man without success!

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
- Bill Cosby

Most failures are not really failures – they are simply challenges in progress.
- Charles C. Manz

There are two fatal errors that keep great projects from coming to life:
1) Not finishing
2) Not starting
- Budda

When bad things happen to you, use the Ready, SET, Go approach:
S - See it as temporary (will this be a big deal 10 years from now?)
E - Externalize (step back and see the big picture; don't take it personally)
T - Take action (make plan/formula for correction, focus on things you can control)
This will generate a positive frame of mind that is future oriented.

When an ERROR occurs, then:
1. Acknowledge it
2. Correct it
3. Learn from it
4. Continue on ...
If you follow this procedure, then ERRORS will never become FAILURES.

Whenever you fail, remember:

The greatest quarterbacks complete only six of 10 passes.

The best basketball players make only 50% of their shots.

The top oil companies, with all their geologists, drill 10 dry holes for every wet one.

And even the most successful actors flunk 29 auditions for a television commercial before they land one.
- Council Fire Letter, published by Boy Scouts of America

Most people are injured more by success than they are by failure.
- Michael Landon

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
- Rudyard Kipling

A stumble may prevent a fall.
- English proverb

Success is a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
- Little Richard

The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.
- Edward C. Simmons

A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.
- Dutch Proverb

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
- Beverly Sills

A person without regrets is a nincompoop.
- Mia Farrow

If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe.
-Woody Allen

Genius can be stimulated by a powerful, challenging problem. It can be nurtured by an environment that eliminates fear and honors failure. It can be encouraged by the open flow of information and free interaction of people from all parts of the organization.
- Wake-up Brain

Keep these concepts in mind: You've failed many times, although you don't remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim. .... Don't worry about failure. My suggestion to each of you: Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try.
- Sherman Finesilver

At 10 minutes to seven on a dark, cool evening in Mexico City in 1968, John Stephen Akwari of Tanzania painfully hobbled into the Olympic Stadium - the last man to finish the marathon. The winner had already been crowned, and the victory ceremony was long finished. So the stadium was almost empty and Akwari - alone, his leg bloody and bandaged - struggled to circle the track to the finish line.

When asked why he had continued the grueling struggle, the young man from Tanzania answered softly: "My country did not send me 9,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 9,000 miles to finish the race."
- "The Confidence Course" by Walter Anderson

Success is a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

To err is human,
And stupid.
- Robert Byrne

Mistakes are the stepping stones to success.
- Charles E. Popplestone

When the ship misses the harbor, it's not the harbor's fault.

It doesn't matter how many pails of milk you spill. Just don't lose the cow.

What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.
- Wendell Phillips

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
- Chinese proverb

Mishaps are like knives that can either serve us or cut us depending on whether we choose to grasp them by the handle or by the blade.

Charlie Brown:
"Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about all the dumb things I do every day...
If I live to be eighty, and I do ten dumb things each day...
That would be about two hundred and ninety thousand dumb things...
When you add up all the dumb things you do it's best to use round figures."
- Charles Schultz

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
- W.C. Magee

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell, and rose again.

Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure, they stop trying.
- Howard Newburger and Marjorie Lee

A mistake in judgement is seldom fatal, but too much anxiety about judgement is.
- Pauline Kael

I am not judged by the number of times I fail but by the number of times I succeed, and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.
- Tom Hopkins

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin

Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick.
- Lawrence Shames

Inherent in the nature of our selfconciousness is the embarrassment we have over our shortcomings. Should we be embarrassed that we are human? No. Just Humble and Grateful to have the opportunity to help others learn from our mistakes.

A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.
- Pauline Kael

Our efforts to do a better job of living our values will undoubtedly come with flaws. But if we meet those flaws and occasional failures with both persistence and patience, we can unlock the fortunes that exist within our organizations.
- Eric Harvey & Alexander Lucia

Don't find fault, find a remedy.
- Henry Ford

Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success.
- John Keats

A stumble may prevent a fall.
- Thomas Fuller

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
- James Russell Lowell

Learn from the mistakes of others...you can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

A mistake is just another way of doing things.

If you haven't failed, you haven't tried very hard.

A failure is like fertilizer -- it stinks to be sure, but it makes things grow faster in the future.
- Dennis Waitley

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
- Babe Ruth

Thomas Edison viewed each setback he encountered in making a light bulb simply as another way NOT to make a light bulb.

MISTAKES are the stepping stones that lead to future accomplishments.

The way to SUCCEED is to double your FAILURE rate.
- T.J.Watson, Sr.

When you fall, don't get up empty handed.

When it is darkest, the stars come out.

Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done.
- A.E. Hotchner

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.
- James Joyce

An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates form college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
- Charles Kettering

We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently..., to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
- Charles Kettering

To me a winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses those skills to accomplish his goals. Even when I lost, I learned what my weaknesses were, and I went out the next day to turn those weaknesses into strengths.
- Larry Bird

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
- Confusius

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, 'I have failed three times,' and what happens when he says, 'I am a failure.'
- S. I. Hayakawa

Don't listen to those who say, 'You're taking too big a chance.' Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today. Most important, don't listen when the little voice of fear inside you rears its ugly head and says. 'They're all smarter than you out there. They're more talented, they're taller, blonder, prettier, luckier, and they have connections. I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live, the chances are you'll be a person worthy of your own respects.
- Neil Simon

Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
- Harper Lee

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

Persistence is what makes the impossible possible, the possible likely, and the likely definite.

When you fail, don't give up. These people didn't:
- R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
- Novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published the first of his 564 books.
- Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in the early grades when the teachers decided he could
not do the work.
- Harry S. Truman failed as a haberdasher.
- When Bob Dylan performed at high school talent show, his classmates booed him off the stage.
- W. Clement Stone, successful insurance company executive and founder of Success magazine,
was a high school dropout.

I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don't care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life any time he is ready and prepared to do it. Whenever he develops the desire, he can take away from his life the thing that is defeating it. The capacity for reformation and change lies within.
- Preston Bradley

When written in Chinese, the word CRISIS is composed of two characters- one represents DANGER and the other represents OPPORTUNITY.

The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball. They fight no fights. They make no mistakes, because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they attempt many things. The person who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He is the one who never, never tries anything new. He is the brake on the wheel of progress. The very fact that he tries nothing, takes no chances, does nothing except criticize those who try is, perhaps, the biggest possible error in a life-time.
- Anonymous

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.

Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure, they'll stop trying.
- Frank Burford

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with some rain.
- Dolly Parton

The Model "T" - Why "T"? Because Ford had gone through A-S before being successful in producing and marketing the "T".

Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.

A winner loses more often than losers.

You can't live without an eraser.

Silicon Valley is a graveyard. Failure is Silicon Valley's greatest strength.

ONE MAN'S ROAD THROUGH LIFE
Failed in business at age 22
Defeated for Legislature at 23
Failed again in business at 24
Suffered nervous breakdown at 27
Defeated for Speaker at 28
Defeated for Elector at 31
Defeated for Congress at 34
Defeated again for Congress at 39
Defeated for Senate at 46
Defeated for Vice President at 47
Defeated for Senate at 49
Elected President at 51
Guess Who? Abraham Lincoln
If all this happened to you what paradigm might you develop? How might that paradigm affect you in terms of your life from that point on? What does this tell you about Abe?

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
- Emerson

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
- Edison, who tried 10,000 different materials for the light bulb

There are no failures, only lessons to be learned.
- Oprah Winfrey

Oh, trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it.
- Edmund Vance Cooke

It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow.

There IS no failure - save in giving up.

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
- Charles Kettering

A mistake at least proves that somebody stopped talking long enough to DO something.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.
- Felicia Hemans

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself.
- Dr. Porsche

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.

Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.

Mistakes are oft the stepping stones to success.

The distance between success and failure can only be measured by one's desire.

End of Quotes on "Failure"

12/10/2008

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