Success and Failure

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.

Publilius Syrus, in Success and Failure

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower, in Success and Failure

When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

Dylan Thomas, in Success and Failure

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson, in Success and Failure

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power of the greatest obstacle.

Henry David Thoreau, in Success and Failure

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Lily Tomlin, in Success and Failure

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

Harry S Truman, in Success and Failure

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.

Mark Twain, in Success and Failure

Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Success and Failure

Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, in Success and Failure

The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.

Robert Heller, in Success and Failure

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it.

Elias Schwartz, in Success and Failure

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Albert Schweitzer, in Success and Failure

Talkers are no good doers.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, in Success and Failure

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

You see things and you say, "Why?" But I see things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Part I, Act I (1921), in Success and Failure

To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective.

Liz Smith, in Success and Failure