- Perseverance
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- Nov 07, 2020
Failure Quotes
What failure costs, and what it sometimes forces.
This page gathers failure quotes on a wide range of subjects: a legal misdemeanor for not filing a form, the long odds behind a legendary TV pilot season, and a blunt wartime statement that failure simply wasn't an option. One entry reflects on a major historical intelligence failure. See Fear for what often sits just behind failure.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Low
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- Nov 07, 2020
Not failure, but low aim is sin.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.
- Nov 07, 2020
The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartiality to human failure.
- Government
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- Nov 07, 2020
In policy arena after policy arena, Democrats respond to every failure of clunky government by proposing the addition of still more layers to 1960s-era bureaucracies as they break down.
- Enemies
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- Nov 07, 2020
Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will.
- Impossible
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- Nov 07, 2020
Primarily affecting low-information voters and members of the mainstream media, Obama Worship Syndrome attributes impossible capabilities to Obama's political opponents, finds excuses for every Obama failure in everyone around him and praises the president as the finest politician - nay, human being - of our time.
- Government Spending
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- Nov 07, 2020
The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.
- Deterred
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think that a lot of the most talented and driven people, they're not super deterred by failure. So if you put out a really big challenge, I think they get reality excited by that - they say, 'Hey, why not, let's go give it a shot, and if we fall short on that, at least we took a shot at doing something really important and meaningful.'
- Feel
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- Nov 07, 2020
I don't want my children to feel the same sense of failure I did growing up because they're not good at passing tests.
- Light
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- Nov 07, 2020
Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.
- Future
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- Nov 07, 2020
In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking.
- Necessary
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- Nov 07, 2020
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
- Able
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- Nov 07, 2020
With everything that is complex, we learn. If you don't learn, then it's an utter and abject failure. If you do learn, and you're able to apply that to the next situation, then you take away a measure of success.
- Fear
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- Nov 07, 2020