Quotes about success and failure

If you win too easy, better ask what’s going on that you don’t know about.

It might be an impossible task, but at least it was a well-defined one. The rules for performance were no problem. He had learned them long ago on Teufel: you succeed, or you die trying. Until you succeed, you never relax. Until you die, you never give up.

He had achieved his objective, but his little inside voice would not keep quiet. Too easy, it said, much too easy. When a difficult goal is achieved with no effort, it’s time to be suspicious.

There’s always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe.

“Would that be justice, ladies?” asked the just man.

“It would be success, Mr. Low, — which is a great deal the better thing of the two.”

Teaching is a record of failures. But the glory of teaching is in the attempt.

And even if I fail—this is always the archivist’s consolation—perhaps I will have laid a foundation for someone wiser.

Real success is about helping other people succeed. To be well educated in a society of increasing illiteracy is not real success; neither is to be well fed and healthy while millions die of malnutrition.

You might look at someone successful and think they got lucky – a case of being in the right place at the right time perhaps? The truth is, every piece of good fortune is the result of hours, or even years, of hard work and preparation.

Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation. p. 47

When a castaway collapses from hunger and thirst it is fear of physical want rather than a real want, they say. Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.

'Success on that scale don't make for happiness. Look at Asquith. Why does he drink? I wouldn't want you to end up a drunkard like that.'