Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Failure
& Mistake:
"No matter how far you have gone on a
wrong road, turn back."
Turkish proverb
- Anonymous: "A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame others."
- Bill Cosby: "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
is trying to please everybody."
- Milton Friedman: "If you make a mistake and refuse to admit it, you
hurt yourself twice: once, when you make the mistake; a second time, when you refuse to
learn from your mistake."
- Robert F. Kennedy: "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever
achieve greatly."
- John Wesley Powell: "The only real mistake is the one from which we
learn nothing."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Take a method and try it. If
it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something."
- Beverly Sills: "You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are
doomed if you don't try."
- Nadine Stair: "If I had to live my life over again, I'd dare to make
more mistakes next time.
- Oscar Wilde: "Experience is the name that everyone gives to their
mistakes."
- Frank Lloyd Wright: "A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect
can only advise his clients to plant vines."
- Thomas
Henry Huxley:
“There
is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in
life.”
- Henry
Ford:
“One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more
intelligently to begin again.”
- Elbert
Hubbard:
“There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from
within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
- W. Somerset Maugham: "The common idea that success spoils
people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary
it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter
and cruel."
- F.A. Hayek: "Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately
shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong."
- Julius
Sextus Frontinus, Roman engineer, 1st century AD: "Inventions
have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development."
- Western
Union internal memo (1876): "This
'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse (1872): "Louis
Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Thomas
Watson, chairman of IBM (1943): "I
think there's a world market for maybe five computers."
- Popular
Mechanics,
March 1949: "Where
a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons,
computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2
tons."
- Sir
William Siemens, on the announcement of the first light bulb (1880): "Such
startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and
mischievous to its true progress."
- Member of the French Academy of Sciences: "I personally
have examined Mr. Edison's phonograph, and I find it is nothing but the clever use of
ventriloquism."
- Margot Dalton: "I make it a policy to try never to make a
complete idiot of myself twice in the same way. After all, there's always all kinds of new
ways to make a complete idiot of myself. Why repeat the old ones?"
- Humphrey Davy: "The most important of my
discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures."
- Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet after the Pearl Harbor
attack: Speaking to cheering subordinates at the news of the attack: "I
am afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible
resolve."
- Jon Meacham, Newsweek, March 31, 2003 issue, interviewing former
President George H. W. Bush during Operation Iraqi Freedom: "What do
you think is going on with France? [Pause] They’re French. Any
elaboration? Nope. There’s always been some friction. I was once talking to a
group of French intellectuals, and I said, 'You think we’re arrogant, and we think
you’re French.' And they looked at each other and thought maybe I’d said
something very intelligent..."
- Victor Zammit: "Orthodox scientists and surgeons before
1912 threw their surgical tools to the ground and put dirt on them to try to ridicule Dr.
Joseph Lister's findings about infection by germs."
- John Adams: "We have not men fit for the times. We are
deficient in genius, education, in travel, fortune -- in everything. I feel unutterable
anxiety."
- Bill Gates (1981): “640 K [of computer memory] ought to be enough for anybody.”
- Thomas Malthus: In 1798 he declared
that "the power of the earth to provide subsistence" is
finite, and that "a gigantic, inevitable famine" would be forthcoming;
but George Gilder has pointed out that Malthus "failed to grasp that it is not the earth but man that produces food." Relentless
techno-agricultural advances have made a liar out of Malthus. Comments Nick Murray, The
Excellent Financial Advisor: "All pessimists are
Malthusians, in that they extrapolate the problem -- whatever the problem is -- in a
straight line, but they hold the potential for solution of the problem -- i.e. human
ingenuity and/or will -- constant... Humankind in general, and Americans in particular,
are always at their best in a crisis. This isn't a lesson of history, it's the
lesson of history."
- Victor Zammit: "John Logie
Baird, the inventor of television, was attacked by closed-minded skeptics who stated it
was: 'absolute rubbish that television waves could produce a
picture!'... The Scientific American, The New York
Times, The New York Herald, the U.S. Army, academics — including
Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy Simon Newcomb from John Hopkins University —
and many other American scientists all heaped derision, ridicule and denigration onto the
Wright brothers claiming that it was: 'scientifically impossible for
machines to fly!' ... Sir
William Preece, former chief engineer of Britain's
Post Office will be remembered for making one of the most 'idiotic' comments in history
about Edison's
inventions. Sir William stated that Edison's
lamp (parallel circuit) was a 'completely idiotic idea' ... Professors,
including Professor Henry Morton who knew Edison,
stated immediately before Edison
demonstrated the electric light globe: 'On behalf of science ... Edison's
experiments are a ... fraud upon the public' ... one
of the leading scientists from the French Academy of Sciences stated that hypnosis is a
fraud and stated after seeing a hypnotized subject with a four inch needle in the top of
his arm: 'This subject has been paid for not showing he's in pain'
... another scientist from the French
Academy
of Sciences, after listening to a record made by Edison,
stated: 'clearly that is a case of ventriloquism' ...
COMMUNICATING with afterlife entities is the greatest discovery in human history. Science
is making huge progress in the afterlife research. I predict within twenty years there
will be a revolution in the afterlife science. It is reported there are millions around
the world who have made contact with their loved ones from the otherside. People now are
coming out and telling the world what they experienced. I am one of them myself. I kept
quiet for many years – but as I stated a few weeks back – why should I not share
with millions of others what they themselves experienced? I made contact with my crossed
over parents. I asked my father many questions to ascertain authenticity. All questions
were answered correctly. This is something I found out that many people experienced. They
should come out in the open and share with us their most important experience in their
life." http://victorzammit.com
- BusinessWeek, August 13, 1979: Cover story, "The
Death of Equities: How Inflation Is Destroying The Stock Market... For better or
worse, then, the US economy probably has to regard the death of
equities as a near-permanent condition..." This was written within throwing
distance of the start of the great Reagan Bull Market.
- Roy Orbison: The legendary rock star of "Pretty Woman"
fame tells the story of his early days in the music business. Roy's beautiful singing
voice, as it happened, was heard by Johnny Cash. Country Western's great baritone
"deep-throat" enjoyed what he heard so much that he approached Roy and
graciously offered a contact with the owner of the record company then-currently promoting
Cash's work: "Tell him Johnny Cash recommended that you call him." Roy did just
that, introduced himself on the phone, only to be greeted by the incredible and pig-headed
response: "Johnny Cash doesn't run this record company!" to which was added the
slamming down of the phone in Roy's ear! Editor's note: ha, ha, ha --
Imagine giving the bums-rush to someone who would go on to sell millions and millions of
records! This little story is dedicated to all job-hunters who have endured the ignominy
of interviewing with churlish hiring-managers, those possessing talents inferior to those
of the one interviewed.
- Wilbur Wright: "I confess that in 1901, I said to my
brother Orville that man would not fly for 50 years... Ever since, I have distrusted
myself and avoided all predictions."
- Doug C. Engelbart: "A person's ability to grow and succeed
is directly related to [an] ability to suffer embarrassment" as one learns and
practices new skills.
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