If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.
Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.
I wanted to do a lot of things in wine, but I didn't know how to do it. So before I invested in anything, before I really put my dollars into it, I put my whole heart, soul, mind into it so that I really understand the severity of each outcome, the severity of success and the severity of failure.
Spend enough time around success and failure, and you learn a reverence for possibility.
Failure holds the seeds for greatness - so long as you water those seeds with introspection, they can be the root of your success.
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
The reality of most software development is that the consequences of failure are simply nonexistent.
If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.
Failure can teach you something, and as long as you're moving very, very quickly, you're going to start piling up the wins. Speed gives you the luxury to be able to fail.
I don't need to be looking at every failure of government, I need to be looking where failure of government needs reform.
My worst fashion failure was when I wore tight PVC pants, and I had a show in Eugene, Oregon... my pants split down the center.
I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.
Obviously, I agree with Trump on many of his criticisms of the mainstream media. You can absolutely argue that their failure to report honestly, to get outraged before we could, and to collude with the Clinton campaign directly led to the rise of Trump.
You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.
Failure is essential. Trial and error is necessary.
Like anyone, I'm scared of failure. That drives you to work really hard.
Failure usually works for me in the end.
All political careers end in failure, but few did it so quickly as David Cameron's. He came to power promising not to 'bang on about Europe' and ended up having the continent's name chiselled into the lid of his political coffin.
Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.
There is no question that the Islamic State will be defeated in Mosul; the real question is what comes afterward. Can the post-Islamic State effort resolve the squabbling likely to arise over numerous issues and bring lasting stability to one of Iraq's most diverse and challenging provinces? Failure to do so could lead to ISIS 3.0.
The failure of world leaders to act on the critical issue of global warming is often blamed on economic considerations.
I don't have a fear factor. Well, not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian, you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure, especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.
Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.
My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about.
I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?
To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.
Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.
We can't have a failure in Iraq, but we also can't be there for the next 10 years because if we are, it's going to become, I think, a failure in and of itself.
Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail, the whole world knows about it.
As efforts to fix this failure at the Veterans Administration continue, I also intend to persist in demanding answers and action on the establishment of a new clinic to serve the veterans in North Central Washington.
For me, the path of failure exceeded by far the joys of success. My plight was hopeless.
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!
But if you look at WorldCom, which is the biggest failure to date, they grew dramatically, they were buying companies that were bigger than they were and they were doing it off inflated stock.
Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you.
Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.
If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.
Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.
Fear of failure has always been my best motivator.
I have never, ever considered myself a failure.
Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success.
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
What's most disappointing about May's failure on climate change is that Britain played such a pivotal role in securing international agreement on it in the first place.
There is no failure except in no longer trying.
A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.
Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure.
The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.
When I got Jacob's Latter, I was nervous because I felt I wasn't allowed to fail. I felt that they were waiting for one little failure and that would prove them right and I'd be, 'out of there.'
I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.