A Compendium of Quotes on Failure

Dec 9, 2012

"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright

As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Dec 8, 2012

"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer

As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Dec 2, 2012

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian


Dec 1, 2012

Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins


Nov 12, 2012

"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nolan Bushnell


Nov 11, 2012

Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright)
The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch

Nov 10, 2012

"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov

Nov 9, 2012

"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke

Oct 29, 2012

"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters Oct 17, 2012

"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure . New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)

Oct 15, 2012

Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:

"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6

Oct 14, 2012

"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."

John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:

"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats

Oct 13, 2012

Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:

"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki

Oct 12, 2012

Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)

"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775

"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)

Oct 10, 2012

"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times Oct 9, 2012

"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach

Oct 8, 2012 - Today I've decided to start up a compendium of my favorite quotes on failure - I'll be making a valiant attempt to post one-a-day (A quote a day keeps the failure away?? :-)

Here's the first one for you all - from the creator of Peter Pan no less:

"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie

Just came across this on Gotham so here's another one for today:

“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."

Samuel Beckett

A Case of Collossal Failure - Premier Cigarettes, $325 million "burned"

Up until the 1950s cigarettes were not generally deemed to be unhealthy - during the Second World War, soldiers routinely received cigarettes as standard issue...

But by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the outcry against smoking, led by US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, was reaching new highs daily... (interestingly Dr. Koop sported his own failure in the dot.com boom days of the late '90s with "drkoop.com," one of the first decent sites to provide health information to the masses - sold for fractions of a penny and now part of healthcentral.com, but I digress...). In his most controversial commentary Dr. Koop actually compared the addictiveness of cigarettes to heroine and cocaine!

Needless to say tobacco companies, not knowing yet that smokers will continue smoking even when death stared them straight in the face from the packaging, nor aware of the vast opportunities awaiting them in eastern Europe and in Asia - well, they panicked. And panic makes the smartest people do the dumbest things.

In 1982 RJR began research on a new type of smokeless cigarette - Premier. The idea was to quiet the outcry by eliminating second-hand smoke - Premier was supposed to burn discretely based on an internal heat generator, and therefore produce no smoke if at all (see picture, and for greater detail visit "Premier - The 'smokeless' cigarette").

The device was "based on a superheated piece of carbon. Sucking on the cigarette pulled hot air from the glowing carbon through a filter of tobacco and around an aluminum "flavor capsule" that released nicotine and smoke taste, which then passed through a regular filter and into the smiling, satisfied mouth of the consumer." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 23).

As Steinberg delineates beautifully in his entertaining treatise, Premier was very problematic or several reasons:

Premier couldn't be lit with a regular match or even with a regular lighter - one needed to purchase special butane lighters, not typically readily available

Enjoying Premier required reading through and understanding a 4-page instruction booklet...

Even when properly lit, it was extremely difficult to draw anything out of the cigarette, which required Herculean sucking capabilities

They tasted bad...and smelled worse - as reported by users, who said it reminded them of burning plastic...

They presented a fire hazard...since it was difficult to tell when the Premier stopped burning, it was dangerous to discard...

Premiers cost more...

Perhaps the biggest problem was that, since RJR - or any other tobacco company, really - could not and would not admit that smoking represented any kind of health hazard whatsoever... - it could not advertise that it was "healthier," or indeed that it lacked the smoke that causes cancer... (RJR repeatedly used the word "cleaner" hoping that smokers would subconsciously substitute "healthier...")

The product was introduced in October 1989. Surgeon Koop immediately pounced on it as a "drug delivery system" sending the FDA after RJR... Reportedly RJR executives were hoping that "health advocates would embrace Premier as a healthful alternative to real cigarettes." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 25)

Premier was discontinued in February 1990, barely five months after their introduction, leaving RJR with a $325 million bill...

Did RJR execs, or anyone for that matter, learn anything from the Premier failure?

A last quote from Steinberg, because it's too good to leave out: "Maybe they (RJR exeutives) learned that consumers might be interested in a cigarette that wouldn't kill them, provided it didn't taste like shit and you could light it with a match." (Steinberg, 1994, A Complete and Utter Failure, p. 26)

Read more about the Premier fiasco and other entertaining and educational consumer product failures and flops in Steinberg's excellent and often hilarious book, A Complete and Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops

Top Ten Reasons "Green" Entrepreneurs Fail

Startup Pro, an award winning blog run by Martin Zwilling, has published an interesting list of the top ten reasons first time entrepreneurs fail. I don't necessarily agree with everything Zwilling writes, but it's definitely a lot of food for thought!

The Power of Failure

Charles C. Manz is a professor at U Mass who focuses on the study of leadership. In 2002 Profesor Manz published a nice little book on The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks Into Success - while the book is more of a motivational treatise and not an academic, research-based analysis of the subject, Manz emphasizes a lot of important and valuable lessons, as one would expect from a tenured U Mass prof.

Old world, old economy failure used to be all about not performing, falling short, being inept, forgetting, neglecting - "A bad, bad thing that should be avoided, mourned and punished."

How refreshing that failure in the new economy has come to mean something altogether different! Today failure is seen as "a stepping stone to success, an opportunity for learning and development, an opportunity for creative change and innovation."

Go forth and fail as in failure you will find the seedlings of your next successful venture!

Why big companies fail to innovate...

This goes straight to an old argument my father and I always get into. He comes from a VERY BIG company backgroud (Emerson Electric, Norden, Rafael), and I'm an entrpreneur who has worked mostly with small, nimble, innovative companies. The argument - in case you're wondering - is about why large companies almost never come up with the really big innovations.

A nice new blog series from HBR, Why Big Companies Can't Innovate, provides some good rationale in my support.

How frequent is bank failure?

Marketwatch reported on September 28th 2012 that First United Bank is the 43rd bank to fail in the US this year!!!

First United Bank is 43rd 2012 U.S. bank failure

However, if that sounds like a lot, turns out that on average 70 banks fail in the US annually... Problem Bank List does us all a favor and track all bank failure news.

One can pull practically any and all bank failure data from the FDIC database, as an example see this table displaying all US bank failures from 1990 to date.

The FDIC maintains and regularly updates a failed bank list

The St. Louis Fed issued an interesting report on bank failures, analyzing bank failures between 2007 and 2010 but providing extensive graphical analysis of bank failures more or less from the beginning of the 20th century to date. The report is titled The Geographic Distribution and Characteristics of US Bank Failure (download).

BigThink ran a nice piece on Why Banks Fail—And Why They Fail on Friday back in 2010.

The Failure of Government Programs

If there is one entity that fails to learn consistently, it's government.

The crux of national policy for most if not all western governments over the past century has been to improve equality among their citizens (aka "voter base...").

Yet almost without fail... (pun intended...) - the result has been the exact opposite.

Paul Ormerod, in his terrific analysis of failure across all segments of government and industry, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics , provides some telling statistics on the progress - or lack thereof - of government policies worldwide:

The role of the government and direct involvement in the economy has grown considerably in every western country from 1950 to 2000

In 2000, Subsidies for the poor, welfare, tax breaks etc accounted for almost 20% of EU countries' national income

Even in the uber-capitalistic US of A approximately 10% were spent on such items

Overall, in the EU gov't spending accounted for as much as 48% of national income - 36% in the US

Yet equality in western nations is on the decline!

In other words, billions and trillions of dollars are being spent on programs that are failing.

Does it look like western governments are drawing the necessary conclusions from such failures? Are they LEARNING? Not that anyone can tell, as widely accepted economic equality indices such as the Gini coefficient continue to increase.