Success & Failure Quotes

I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest number. It means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of 51 per cent the interests of 49 per cent may be, or rather, should be sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine …

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however …

Where there is absolute lawlessness, absolute failure by the state to control or supervise these great corporations, the inevitable result is to favor, among these very able men of business, the man who is unscrupulous and cunning.

Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the …

The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.

I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.

Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love.

My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it …

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

With all the uncertainty of the success of the next campaign, and with the absolute certainty that we are now making our last effort...I should be willing to conclude a peace, which compared with our situation a year ago would be most …

There is no such thing as success in a bad business.

Revolutionary tactics must harmonize with revolutionary principles. We could better hope to succeed with reactionary principles and revolutionary tactics than with revolutionary principles and reactionary tactics.

His character does not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent ambition, and such enraged fanaticism with so much regard to justice and humanity.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the …

we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes …

Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.

How long must the church live before it will learn that strength is won by action, and success by work, and that all this immeasurable feeding without action and work is a positive damage to it — that it is the procurer of spiritual …

A truce to philosophy! — Life is before me and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread.

Grief do I give you — grief and dreadful laughter. Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after. The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine.

Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this …

Slavery was the cause... [O]ur success was to be his freedom.

Nothing so apt to inflame passion as hopes and fears: a young woman of a calm temper and modest deportment is less apt to attract lovers, than one who is changeable and coquettish; a man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a …