Success and Failure

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, in Success and Failure

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

Benjamin Franklin, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.

Robert Frost, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith, in Success and Failure

Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold.

Thomas Hobbes, in Science and Religion and Success and Failure

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Doug Hofstadter, in Success and Failure

Success is like a fart -- only your own smells nice.

James P. Hogan, in Success and Failure

Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction never changes.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

Desperation is like stealing from the mafia: you stand a good chance of attracting the wrong attention.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

First rule of Economics 101: our desires are insatiable. Second rule: we can stomach only three Big Macs at a time.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

Good ideas are a dime a dozen, bad ones are free.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

If wishes were fishes we'd all be throwing nets. If wishes were horses we'd all ride.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

Perfection is perfectly simple; fouling things up requires true skill.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

Most of life is choices, and the rest is pure dumb luck.

Marian Erickson, in Success and Failure

With every passing hour, our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Ransom K. Ferm, in Success and Failure

If at first you don't succeed, try, and try again. Then give up. There's no sense in being a damned fool about it.

W. C. Fields, in Success and Failure

If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Success and Failure

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

Henry Ford, in Success and Failure