We expect teachers to handle teenage pregnancy substance abuse and the failings of the family. Then we expect them to educate our children.

Before this government came to power many failing schools were simply allowed to drift on in a pattern of continuing failure. The government is determined to break that pattern and is successfully doing so.

Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply.

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success.

There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero where there's no expectations and that's where I like to be.

I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.

I think some parents now look at a youngster failing as the final thing. It's a process and failure is part of the process. I would like it if the teacher and the parents would connect more. I think that used to be but we're losing a little bit of that right now.

We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

As I said there is nothing wrong with failing. Pick yourself up and try it again. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure.

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.