Most of the work performed by a development engineer results in failure.

I'm fascinated by failure and I'm fascinated by finality. Shakespeare's historical plays are more universal than his comedies because they relate to the finality of life. Without finality life would not be beautiful.

The more control you have over your life the more responsible you feel for your own success - or failure.

In our tabulation of psychoanalytic results we have classed those who stopped treatment together with those not improved. This appears to be reasonable a patient who fails to finish his treatment and is not improved is surely a therapeutic failure.

The time I had waited probably made the difference between success and failure.

We can't have a failure in Iraq but we also can't be there for the next 10 years because if we are it's going to become I think a failure in and of itself.

If you don't accept failure as a possibility you don't set high goals you don't branch out you don't try - you don't take the risk.

You cannot learn anything from success you only learn from failure.

Has Bill Clinton inspired idealism in the young as he himself was inspired by John F. Kennedy? Or has he actually reduced their idealism? Surely part of the answer lies in Clinton's personal moral lapse with Monica Lewinsky. But more important was his sin of omission - his failure to embrace a moral cause beyond popularity.

But whatever my failure I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession just as my grandfathers were in theirs in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.