The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.

The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that's toxic by pitting students against one another. At best, it creates a hypercompetitive culture, and at worst, it sends students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.

Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it. Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you're creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it's very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you may wake up each day with failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are progressing only by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal, you have a system.

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen.

During my sojourn in ironclad atheism, the primary arsenal leveled against Christianity had been its failure on empirical grounds. Surely, enlightened reason offered a more coherent cosmos. Surely, Occam's razor cut the faithful free from blind faith. There is no proof of God; therefore, it is unreasonable to believe in God.

What strikes me is that there's a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.

Yes, 'Aagadu' was a failure. I was dejected for a couple of months, since there was a lot at stake.

The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'

Overhead will eat you alive if not constantly viewed as a parasite to be exterminated. Never mind the bleating of those you employ. Hold out until mutiny is imminent before employing even a single additional member of staff. More startups are wrecked by overstaffing than by any other cause, bar failure to monitor cash flow.

I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

So many financial dreams are thwarted by the failure to act upon good intentions.

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

We have to provide more visibility, more certainty to the investors and reduce the cost of failure.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

The only failure is not to try.

When you accept that failure is a good thing, it can actually be a huge propeller toward success.

Failure's a marker of success in its own right because you went out and tried something... If you really don't want to fail, go find a comfortable chair and stay there. Just don't go out and do anything.

Admitting failure is quite cleansing, but never - pleasurable.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

My greatest sense of accomplishment has come from having two amazing sons, but it's also a paradox in that the times when I felt like the biggest failure have been times when I felt like, as a parent, I wasn't making the right decisions or succeeding in the way that I should.

Science is so incremental and so full of setbacks and small steps forward. In order to really thrive in this business, you have to be able to glean as much joy from the failure days and from the small increments as you do from the breakthroughs.

Well, the idea is that failure is an inevitable partner on the road to success and, if you're not willing to confront failure, you can never find out how good you are.

Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama's Waterloo.

But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.

In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.

So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

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.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

If you can't admit a failure, you're not an entrepreneur. You are not a good business person. There's nothing brilliant about what you are doing.

It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry 'Native passes' issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

The most effective leaders are actually better at guarding against danger when they acknowledge it that it exists. Cowards, in contrast, cling to the hope that failure will never happen and may be sloppy in the face of danger - not because they don't acknowledge that it exists, but because they are just too afraid of it to look it in the eye.

Failure is never fatal. But failure to change can and might be.