That someone like Obama could be elected president of the United States - with its unrivaled power and prestige - has begun to restore the country's and the world's faith in America as the land of opportunity.

With engineering I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly.

Failure and things of this sort - you can take it one of two ways. You can either let that hurt you and really affect the way that you live your life in the future or you can use that as an opportunity for growth.

Beside every great success are the seeds of enormous failure. In every failure there's the opportunity seeds of great success. They're not miles apart. So if they're that close together and if you're really working you're always gonna have that likelihood that something's not going to work.

Thoughtless risks are destructive of course but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

When you experience a failure as a leader don't hide it - talk about it. Your missed opportunity will encourage others to take risks.

Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise it's just you.

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive of course but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again this time more intelligently.

Remember the two benefits of failure. First if you do fail you learn what doesn't work and second the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.