Our educational system is not preparing people for the 21st Century. Failure is an essential part of entrepreneurship. If you work hard you can get an 'A' pretty much guaranteed but in entrepreneurship that's not how it works.

I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash.

The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts and see the world as it should be and not as it is. This inspires people to take huge leaps of faith. But this blindness to facts can be a liability too. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed can also lead to their failure.

In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for after all habit is relative to a stereotyped world and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons things situations seem alike.

I think I've always been somebody since the deaths of my father and brother who was afraid to hope. So I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.

Of course Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.

Outward failure may be a manifested variant of inward success.

Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail the whole world knows about it.

My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.