Famous Quotes

"It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

John Steinbeck on Failure

More quotes about Failure

• "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

  Theodore Roosevelt on Failure

• "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

  Michael Jordan on Failure

• "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

  Calvin Coolidge on Failure

• "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

  Abraham Lincoln on Failure

• "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

  Steve Jobs on Failure

More quotes by John Steinbeck

• "No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."

• "The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."

• "Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass."

• "Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard."

• "It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world."