Failure Equals Success Quotes

When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.

Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity. [Trans. Purohit Swami]

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.

Your vision should be something that can equally inspire everyone who is associated with your project and not just you.

There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months. 'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?

When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important. It's hard to understand failure when you're going through it, but in the grand scheme of things it's good to fall down—not because you're drunk and not near stairs.

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

As long as management is quick to take credit for a firm’s successes but equally swift to blame its workers for its failures, no surefire remedy for low productivity can be expected in American manufacturing and service industries.

When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important. It’s hard to understand failure when you’re going through it, but in the grand scheme of things it’s good to fall down—not because you’re drunk and not near stairs. But it’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.

I started to see it Eunice's way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began.

A perfect couple shares their failures, mistakes and their successes equally and deal with them all as a team.

Son, life is like a book. It has numerous chapters. It also has many a lesson in it. It is made up of a wide variety of experiences and resembles a pendulum where success and failure, joy and sorrow are merely extremes of the central reality. The lessons to be learnt from success and failure are equally important. More often than not, failure and sorrow are bigger teachers than success and happiness.

[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.

When a person is breathing their last, everything they have done in their life, every success or failure they have ever enjoyed or suffered, no longer matters because we are all equal. Good or bad, saint or sinner, you or me, one day we will all be on a level playing field.

So in short, the success of a film is due to the contribution of the actors and technicians in excess of my expectations, which is why it belongs to them, while failure belongs to me alone, as it means that I failed in channelizing their equally great contributions to their intended destination.

The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died. There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness.

it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.

You’re not a failure, Uncle,” he said, the words awkward and insufficient in his mouth. “It’s only that we don’t feel safe. A game has a reset button. You have infinite chances for success. Real life is awfully permanent compared to that, and a lot of religious people make it seem even more permanent—one step the wrong way, one sin too many, and it’s the fiery furnace for you. Beware. And then at the same time, you ask us to love the God who has this terrible sword hanging over our necks. It’s very confusing.” “Ah,” said Sheikh Bilal, looking melancholy, “but that’s the point. What is more terrifying than love? How can one not be overwhelmed by the majesty of a creator who gives and destroys life in equal measure, with breathtaking swiftness? You look at all the swelling rose hips in the garden that will wither and die without ever germinating and it seems a miracle that you are alive at all. What would one not do to acknowledge that miracle in some way?

You receive the gift of time freely and equally every day, beautifully wrapped in twenty-four new hours to invest in whatever you want, and how you use each hour decides your success or the lack of it

In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm—schools in low-income minority neighborhoods—this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds.

it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.

How is Life Full of Choices? When we eat too much, we make a choice to be overweight. When we drink too much, we make a choice to have a headache the next day. If we drink and drive, we choose to risk being killed or killing someone in an accident. When we ill-treat people, we choose to be ill-treated in return. When we don’t care about other people, we choose not to be cared for by them. When we light up a cigarette, we choose to invite cancer. Choices have consequences. The most important thing to understand is that we are all free to the point of making choices. but, after we make a choice, the choice controls the chooser. We have no more choices. What is success? Series of positive choices is called success and series of negative choices is called failure. We have an equal opportunity to be unequal. The choice is ours. Life can be compared to a pottery maker who shapes clay in any form he wants. Similarly we can mould our lives into any shape we want.

You're not a failure uncle," he said, the words awkward and insufficient in his mouth. "It's only that we don't feel safe. A game has a reset button. You have infinite chances for success. Real life is awfully permanent compared to that, and a lot of religious people make it seem even more permanent-one step the wrong way, one sin too many, and it's the fiery furnace for you. Beware. And then at the same time, you ask us to love the God who has this terrible sword hanging over our necks. It's very confusing." "Ah," said Sheikh Bilal, looking melancholy, "but that's the point. What is more terrifying than love? How can one not be overwhelmed by the majesty of a creator who gives and destroys life in equal measure, with breathtaking swiftness? You look at all the swelling rose hips in the garden that will wither and die without ever germinating and it seems a miracle that you are alive at all. What would one not do to acknowledge that miracle in some way?

The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same.

In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler's successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges. Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France's failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain's failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact - as we have seen Hitler admitting - bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by. For France, it was the beginning of the end. Her allies in the East, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, suddenly were faced with the fact that France would not fight against German aggression to preserve the security system which the French government itself had taken the lead in so laboriously building up. But more than that. These Eastern allies began to realize that even if France were not so supine, she would soon not be able to lend them much assistance because of Germany's feverish construction of a West Wall behind the Franco-German border. The erection of this fortress line, they saw, would quickly change the strategic map of Europe, to their detriment. They could scarcely expect a France which did not dare, with her one hundred divisions, to repel three German battalions, to bleed her young manhood against impregnable German fortifications which the Wehrmacht attacked in the East. But even if the unexpected took place, it would be futile. Henceforth the French could tie down in the West only a small part of the growing German Army. The rest would be free for operations against Germany's Eastern neighbors.

Among the factors that the schema of the differing severity of mental illness fails to take into account is an ephemeral something in the individual patient which might be called 'a will to grow.' It is possible for an individual to be extremely ill and yet at the same time possess an equally strong 'will to grow,' in which case healing will occur. On the other hand, a person who is only mildly ill, as best as we can define psychiatric illness, but who lacks the will to grow, will not budge an inch from an unhealthy position. I therefore believe that a patient's will to grow is one crucial determinant of success or failure of psychotherapy. Yet it is a factor that is not at all understood or even recognized by contemporary psychiatric theory.

Don't ever think that life is unfair. People may be different in status and identity, but what matters most is your personality. God created all humans with equal love and attention. In times that you think you are alone, remember that He is always there for you. He will never leave you because He loves you. Always bear in mind that all of us are His children and He is our father. And in times of need, hold on to Him because He will never let you suffer. Even though life varies in some circumstances, all will experience a composition of victory and failure. Victory as a reward and failure as a lesson. If you are born poor, do everything to achieve your dreams and strive for success. If you are born rich, be charitable to others and keep your feet on the ground. Everyone is special. Everyone is unique. Everyone is blessed. But not everyone knows how to value it. Be the best that you can become, always acquire happiness and live your life to the fullest!

What is the Sabbath?2 A reminder of every man’s royalty; an abolition of the distinction of master and slave, rich and poor, success and failure. To celebrate the Sabbath is to experience one’s ultimate independence of civilization and society, of achievement and anxiety. The Sabbath is an embodiment of the belief that all men are equal and that equality of men means the nobility of men. The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince. The Sabbath is an assurance that the spirit is greater than the universe, that beyond the good is the holy.

If you’re going to make an error in life, err on the side of overestimating your capabilities (obviously, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize your life). By the way, this is something that’s hard to do, since the human capacity is so much greater than most of us would ever dream. In fact, many studies have focused on the differences between people who are depressed and people who are extremely optimistic. After attempting to learn a new skill, the pessimists are always more accurate about how they did, while the optimists see their behavior as being more effective than it actually was. Yet this unrealistic evaluation of their own performance is the secret of their future success. Invariably the optimists eventually end up mastering the skill while the pessimists fail. Why? Optimists are those who, despite having no references for success, or even references of failure, manage to ignore those references, leaving unassembled such cognitive tabletops as “I failed” or “I can’t succeed.” Instead, optimists produce faith references, summoning forth their imagination to picture themselves doing something different next time and succeeding. It is this special ability, this unique focus, which allows them to persist until eventually they gain the distinctions that put them over the top. The reason success eludes most people is that they have insufficient references of succeeding in the past. But an optimist operates with beliefs such as, “The past doesn’t equal the future.” All great leaders, all people who have achieved success in any area of life, know the power of continuously pursuing their vision, even if all the details of how to achieve it aren’t yet available. If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.

Eradication represents a complete change of philosophy and a recognition of the equal rights of all citizens to protection from infection, no matter where they live. Eradication, by its very nature, is public health with a conscience. The public health control officer can sleep tranquilly, salving his conscience with the thought that most of his responsibility has been discharged – that he did not have enough money to do any more. The eradicator knows that his success is not measured by what has been accomplished but, rather, is the extent of his failure indicated by what remains to be done. He must stamp out the last embers of infection in his jurisdiction. His slogan must be: ANY IS TOO MANY.

The Kingly Man My master said: That which acts on all and meddles in none - is heaven . . . The Kingly Man realizes this, hides it in his heart, Grows boundless, wide-minded, draws all to himself. And so he lets the gold lie hidden in the mountain, Leaves the pearl lying in the deep. Goods and possessions are no gain in his eyes, He stays far from wealth and honour. Long life is no ground for joy, nor early death for sorrow Success is not for him to be proud of, failure is no shame. Had he all the world's power he would not hold it as his own, If he conquered everything he would not take it to himself. His glory is in knowing that all things come together in One And life and death are equal.

That the deprecating attitude of a mass movement toward the present seconds the inclinations of the frustrated is obvious. What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more -- and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. It is as if they said: 'Not only our blemished selves, but the lives of all our contemporaries, even the most happy and successful, are worthless and wasted.' Thus by deprecating the present they acquire a vague sense of equality.

I’ve written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn’t simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn’t make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you’re risk-averse, you won’t do it. And that’s a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure.

Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip’s eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

In the absence of expert [senior military] advice, we have seen each successive administration fail in the business of strategy - yielding a United States twice as rich as the Soviet Union but much less strong. Only the manner of the failure has changed. In the 1960s, under Robert S. McNamara, we witnessed the wholesale substitution of civilian mathematical analysis for military expertise. The new breed of the "systems analysts" introduced new standards of intellectual discipline and greatly improved bookkeeping methods, but also a trained incapacity to understand the most important aspects of military power, which happens to be nonmeasurable. Because morale is nonmeasurable it was ignored, in large and small ways, with disastrous effects. We have seen how the pursuit of business-type efficiency in the placement of each soldier destroys the cohesion that makes fighting units effective; we may recall how the Pueblo was left virtually disarmed when it encountered the North Koreans (strong armament was judged as not "cost effective" for ships of that kind). Because tactics, the operational art of war, and strategy itself are not reducible to precise numbers, money was allocated to forces and single weapons according to "firepower" scores, computer simulations, and mathematical studies - all of which maximize efficiency - but often at the expense of combat effectiveness. An even greater defect of the McNamara approach to military decisions was its businesslike "linear" logic, which is right for commerce or engineering but almost always fails in the realm of strategy. Because its essence is the clash of antagonistic and outmaneuvering wills, strategy usually proceeds by paradox rather than conventional "linear" logic. That much is clear even from the most shopworn of Latin tags: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war), whose business equivalent would be orders of "if you want sales, add to your purchasing staff," or some other, equally absurd advice. Where paradox rules, straightforward linear logic is self-defeating, sometimes quite literally. Let a general choose the best path for his advance, the shortest and best-roaded, and it then becomes the worst path of all paths, because the enemy will await him there in greatest strength... Linear logic is all very well in commerce and engineering, where there is lively opposition, to be sure, but no open-ended scope for maneuver; a competitor beaten in the marketplace will not bomb our factory instead, and the river duly bridged will not deliberately carve out a new course. But such reactions are merely normal in strategy. Military men are not trained in paradoxical thinking, but they do no have to be. Unlike the business-school expert, who searches for optimal solutions in the abstract and then presents them will all the authority of charts and computer printouts, even the most ordinary military mind can recall the existence of a maneuvering antagonists now and then, and will therefore seek robust solutions rather than "best" solutions - those, in other words, which are not optimal but can remain adequate even when the enemy reacts to outmaneuver the first approach.

Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation; secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and common-school training were necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success. In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

Equal protection under the law is not a hard principle to convince Americans of. The difficulty comes in persuading them that it has been violated in particular cases, and of the need to redress the wrong. Prejudice and indifference run deep. Education, social reform, and political action can persuade some. But most people will not feel the sufferings of others unless they feel, even in an abstract way, that 'it could have been me or someone close to me'. Consider the astonishingly rapid transformation of American attitudes toward homosexuality and even gay marriage over the past decades. Gay activism brought these issues to public attention but attitudes were changed during tearful conversations over dinner tables across American when children came out to their parents (and, sometimes, parents came out to their children). Once parents began to accept their children, extended families did too, and today same-sex marriages are celebrated across the country with all the pomp and joy and absurd overspending of traditional American marriages. Race is a wholly different matter. Given the segregation in American society white families have little chance of seeing and therefore understanding the lives of black Americans. I am not black male motorist and never will be. All the more reason, then, that I need some way to identify with one if I am going to be affected by his experience. And citizenship is the only thing I know we share. The more differences between us are emphasized, the less likely I will be to feel outrage at his mistreatment. Black Lives Matter is a textbook example of how not to build solidarity. There is no denying that by publicizing and protesting police mistreatment of African-Americans the movement mobilized supporters and delivered a wake-up call to every American with a conscience. But there is also no denying that the movement's decision to use this mistreatment to build a general indictment of American society, and its law enforcement institutions, and to use Mau-Mau tactics to put down dissent and demand a confession of sins and public penitence (most spectacularly in a public confrontation with Hillary Clinton, of all people), played into the hands of the Republican right. As soon as you cast an issue exclusively in terms of identity you invite your adversary to do the same. Those who play one race card should be prepared to be trumped by another, as we saw subtly and not so subtly in the 2016 presidential election. And it just gives that adversary an additional excuse to be indifferent to you. There is a reason why the leaders of the civil rights movement did not talk about identity the way black activists do today, and it was not cowardice or a failure to be "woke". The movement shamed America into action by consciously appealing to what we share, so that it became harder for white Americans to keep two sets of books, psychologically speaking: one for "Americans" and one for "Negroes". That those leaders did not achieve complete success does not mean that they failed, nor does it prove that a different approach is now necessary. No other approach is likely to succeed. Certainly not one that demands that white Americans agree in every case on what constitutes discrimination or racism today. In democratic politics it is suicidal to set the bar for agreement higher than necessary for winning adherents and elections.

You will promote harmony in your words and actions. You will not compete with other leaders or compare to them. You will work together with others to make meaningful changes. You will not measure success in numbers: dollars, followers, ranks, sales, reviews, Facebook likes. Rather, you will measure by people helped, connections made, and moments savoured. You will help people accept themselves by being real with them. You will not show up on the pulpit for attention or approval. You will show up because you have something important to say. You will build tribes instead of cults. You will see your followers as equals. You will learn with them, and they will trust you. And there is nothing like the trust of people who resonate with your most authentic, vulnerable self to push you, every day, to do your best. It will hold you to a higher standard of behaviour. As a self-aware leader, you can be honest. This is the missing element in so many ineffective and addictive doctrines. You can tell people the things that are true but hard to hear. Not everyone will be brave enough to sidestep idealism, but those who do will appreciate your honesty. If you do not describe the darkness and the light, the voyager who has followed in your footsteps will believe he is lost. He will blame himself or blame you for teaching him lies. By being honest about what the journey looks like—failures, warts, and all—your teachings will become sources of consolation rather than frustration. As that voyager travels down the crooked, lonely paths within him, he may find a dark, terrifying cave, but if you mentioned it, he will feel elated. Yes, he will think, it looks horrifying, but at least I’m on track if I’ve found this awful thing. Your honesty may be bitter medicine, but when it digests, it’ll provide such potent healing that its taste will become a distant memory.

Between the extreme limits of this series would find a place all the forms of prestige resulting from the different elements composing a civilisation -- sciences, arts, literature, &c. -- and it would be seen that prestige constitutes the fundamental element of persuasion. Consciously or not, the being, the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought. This imitation, moreover, is, as a rule, unconscious, which accounts for the fact that it is perfect. The modern painters who copy the pale colouring and the stiff attitudes of some of the Primitives are scarcely alive to the source of their inspiration. They believe in their own sincerity, whereas, if an eminent master had not revived this form of art, people would have continued blind to all but its naïve and inferior sides. Those artists who, after the manner of another illustrious master, inundate their canvasses with violet shades do not see in nature more violet than was detected there fifty years ago; but they are influenced, "suggestioned," by the personal and special impressions of a painter who, in spite of this eccentricity, was successful in acquiring great prestige. Similar examples might be brought forward in connection with all the elements of civilisation. It is seen from what precedes that a number of factors may be concerned in the genesis of prestige; among them success was always one of the most important. Every successful man, every idea that forces itself into recognition, ceases, ipso facto, to be called in question. The proof that success is one of the principal stepping-stones to prestige is that the disappearance of the one is almost always followed by the disappearance of the other. The hero whom the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted to-day should he have been overtaken by failure. The re-action, indeed, will be the stronger in proportion as the prestige has been great. The crowd in this case considers the fallen hero as an equal, and takes its revenge for having bowed to a superiority whose existence it no longer admits.

General R. E. Lee, Commanding Army of Northern Virginia: Yours of the 8th instant has been received. I am glad to find that you concur so entirely with me as to the want of our country in this trying hour, and am happy to add that after the first depression consequent upon our disasters in the West, indications have appeared that our people will exhibit that fortitude which we agree in believing is alone needful to secure ultimate success. It well became Sidney Johnston, when overwhelmed by a senseless clamor, to admit the rule that success is the test of merit, and yet there has been nothing which I have found to require a greater effort of patience than to bear the criticisms of the ignorant, who pronounce everything a failure which does not equal their expectations or desires, and can see no good result which is not in the line of their own imaginings. I admit the propriety of your conclusions, that an officer who loses the confidence of his troops should have his position changed, whatever may be his ability; but when I read the sentence I was not at all prepared for the application you were about to make. Expressions of discontent in the public journals furnish but little evidence of the sentiment of an army.… But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to admit, with all their implications, the points which you present, where am I to find that new commander who is to possess the greater ability which you believe to be required? I do not doubt the readiness with which you would give way to one who could accomplish all that you have wished, and you will do me the justice to believe that if Providence should kindly offer such a person for our use, I would not hesitate to avail of his services. My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to discover such hidden merit, if it exists, and I have but used to you the language of sober earnestness when I have impressed upon you the propriety of avoiding all unnecessary exposure to danger, because I felt our country could not bear to lose you. To ask me to substitute you by someone in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army or of the reflecting men in the country, is to demand of me an impossibility. It only remains for me to hope that you will take all possible care of yourself, that your health and strength may be entirely restored, and that the Lord will preserve you for the important duties devolved upon you in the struggle of our suffering country for the independence which we have engaged in war to maintain. As ever, very respectfully and truly yours, JEFFERSON DAVIS

There are many types of teachers out there from many traditions. Some are very ordinary and some seem to radiate spirituality from every pore. Some are nice, some are indifferent, and some may seem like sergeants in boot camp. Some stress reliance on one’s own efforts, others stress reliance on the grace of the guru. Some are very available and accessible, and some may live far away, grant few interviews, or have so many students vying for their time that you may rarely get a chance to talk with them. Some seem to embody the highest ideals of the perfected spiritual life in their every waking moment, while others may have many noticeable quirks, faults and failings. Some live by rigid moral codes, while others may push the boundaries of social conventions and mores. Some may be very old, and some may be very young. Some may require strict commitments and obedience, while others may hardly seem to care what we do at all. Some may advocate very specific practices, stating that their way is the only way or the best way, while others may draw from many traditions or be open to your doing so. Some may point out our successes, while others may dwell on our failures. Some may stress renunciation or even ordination into a monastic order, while others seem relentlessly engaged with “the world.” Some charge a bundle for their teachings, while others give theirs freely. Some like scholarship and the lingo of meditation, while others may never use or even openly despise these formal terms and conceptual frameworks. Some teachers may be more like friends or equals that just want to help us learn something they happened to be good at, while others may be all into the hierarchy, status and role of being a teacher. Some teachers will speak openly about attainments, and some may not. Some teachers are remarkably predictable in their manner and teaching style, while others swing wide in strange and unpredictable ways. Some may seem very tranquil and mild mannered, while others may seem outrageous or rambunctious. Some may seem extremely humble and unimposing, while others may seem particularly arrogant and presumptuous. Some are charismatic, while others may be distinctly lacking in social skills. Some may readily give us extensive advice, and some just listen and nod. Some seem the living embodiment of love, and others may piss us off on a regular basis. Some teachers may instantly click with us, while others just leave us cold. Some teachers may be willing to teach us, and some may not. So far as I can tell, none of these are related in any way to their meditation ability or the depths of their understanding. That is, don’t judge a meditation teacher by their cover. What is important is that their style and personality inspire us to practice well, to live the life we want to live, to find what it is we wish to find, to understand what we wish to understand. Some of us may wander for a long time before we find a good fit. Some of us will turn to books for guidance, reading and practicing without the advantages or hassles of teachers. Some of us may seem to click with a practice or teacher, try to follow it for years and yet get nowhere. Others seem to fly regardless. One of the most interesting things about reality is that we get to test it out. One way or another, we will get to see what works for us and what doesn’t, what happens when we do certain practices or follow the advice of certain teachers, as well as what happens when we don’t.

I have since gathered data from more than five hundred individuals about their experience on more than one thousand teams. I asked them to answer a series of questions about a time when they had worked on a unified team, what the experience was like, what role their manager played, and what the end result was. Then I had them contrast this with a time when they had been on a disunified team and what that was like, what role their manager played, and how it affected the end result. The results of this research were startling: when there was a high level of clarity of purpose, the teams and the people on it overwhelmingly thrived. When there was a serious lack of clarity about what the team stood for and what their goals and roles were, people experienced confusion, stress, frustration, and ultimately failure. As one senior vice president succinctly summarized it when she looked at the results gathered from her extended team: “Clarity equals success.

parallel to all other ages, not a chronological series of events. Indeed, one of the great marvels of God’s gracious activity toward us is that it occurs in real time without being prejudiced in favor of any particular age. Just because we are the latest does not mean we are the best. The effects of sin prevent any age—including ours—from being “golden,” at least in the spiritual sense. Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It reveals important truths about the end times. But it is also last in another important sense—it calls on all the hermeneutical courage, wisdom, and maturity one can muster in order to be understood properly. In many ways it serves as a graduation exercise for the NIV Application Commentary Series, an opportunity to fully apply the many lessons we have learned in the Bridging Contexts sections of previous volumes. God’s time is his, not ours. The story of God’s gracious activity on our behalf will be fulfilled in a great and glorious conclusion. But all Christians, everywhere and at all times, have equal access to the time. That access has been and is made possible by God’s message in the book of Revelation. Terry C. Muck Author’s Preface AS A NEW CHRISTIAN recently converted from atheism, I eagerly hurried through Paul’s letters, reaching Revelation as soon as possible. Once I reached it, however, I could hardly understand a word of it. I listened attentively to the first few “prophecy teachers” I heard, but even if they had not contradicted one another, over the years I watched as most of their detailed predictions failed to materialize. Perhaps six years after my conversion, as I began to read Revelation in Greek for the first time, the book came alive to me. Because I was now moving through the text more carefully, I noticed the transitions and the structure, and I realized it was probably addressing something much different from what I had first supposed. At the same time, I catalogued parallels I found between Revelation and biblical prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. I also began reading an apocalypse contemporary with Revelation, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), to learn more about the way Revelation’s original, first-century audience may have heard its claims. Yet even in my first two years as a Christian, Revelation and other end-time passages proved a turning point for me. As a young Christian, I was immediately schooled in a particular, popular end-time view, which I respectfully swallowed (the

Nobody played poker with Mike Walsh--at least, not twice--but people fought to get aboard Constellation. Her command record since Mike took her was almost the equal of Enterprise's for danger, daring, and success not only snatched from the jaws of failure, but afterward used to beat failure over the head.

Much of the current debate focuses not on success but on failure. There is a shelf-load of books discussing flawed states such as ‘Why Nations Fail?’, ‘Is Democracy Dying?’ and ‘What’s Killing Liberalism?’. But as Harvard University’s Steven Pinker reminds us, ‘There are so many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right’, making success far more valuable to explain than failure. Have we not heard enough about failure? After all, history shows that unlike lotteries, progress is usually a matter of finding something which works and reverse-engineering it.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Napoleon Hill

But without the prospect of rewards upon success to balance the risk of failure, leaders may coast and settle for the status quo – an error of omission. An unequal distribution of something is almost always better than an equal distribution of nothing.

… … …”Under Richard G. Opper's hand, each character's feelings of success and failure, their nightmares and ambitions, and the different ways they reconcile their pasts and presents come to satisfying life. The result is a crime story especially recommended for readers seeking memorable female leads whose lives and abilities equal their male counterparts, atmospheric settings firmly centered in a sense of place, and purposes that develop not just from monetary ambitions, but from the heart.” D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

children equally well for success in all other cultures. If we want to improve outcomes for immigrants and the poor in a free-market, service-oriented capitalist economy such as ours, Wax and Alexander argued, it would be useful to talk about bourgeois culture.

The researchers concluded that failure is “ego threatening, which causes people to tune out.” Further support for this explanation came from the fifth study, where participants observed others take similar tests—rather than taking them themselves. This time they learned equally from the failures (and the failure feedback) as from the successes. Without the ego threat, the shortcomings of failure feedback were erased. It seems we’re pretty good at learning from other people’s failures! In real life, however, we often don’t hear about them.

THE SECOND MAJOR THEME running through the Tea Party movement is the call for personal responsibility. The founding documents built institutions that allowed for individuals to chase their dreams and be responsible for their own successes and failures. Tea Partiers value equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. For us, it is all about the rights of the individual over the collective.

why there is any need to bother with Spain at all. ‘Why Spain?’ was a question that I had to answer for myself even as I attempted to answer it for others. My own answer, as it has evolved over the years, is that this is an endlessly fascinating country whose history, made up of striking successes and equally striking failures, embraces topics of universal import. Here is a country and a people whose past saw the construction and subsequent deconstruction of complex religious and ethnic relationships as it stood poised between the worlds of Christianity, Judaism and Islam; a country that took the lead among European powers in conquering and governing a vast overseas empire, and that has persistently sought, and never quite succeeded, in reconciling the conflicting demands of unity and diversity on its own territory; and a country whose religious, cultural and artistic achievements over the course of the centuries have made an enormously rich if often controversial contribution to human civilization.

a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history. As

I'm amused when financial planners and academics talk about methods that predict a 40-year success rate of, say, 95%. If you think about it, this implies that our political and financial institutions will remain intact for about the next millenium (40 years divided by a failure rate of 5% equals 800 years). Considering the history of human civilization, this is a pretty heroic assumption.

All goals are not created equal; the size of the goal matters but it isn’t as important as the passion behind the goal.

Success and failure are options equally available to all, the dividing line is your choices and opportunities harnessed or missed.

Quotes   1)  There's always a way – if you're committed.   2)  The path to success is to take massive, determined action.   3)  There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.   4)  The quality of your life is the quality of your communication, with yourself as well as with others.   5)  Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.   6)  The past doesn't equal the future.   7)   Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.   8)  Repetition is the mother of skill.   9)  It is not knowing what to do; it's doing what you know.   10)  Determination is the wake-up call to the human will.

In short, if you want innovation in your company, you need to reward people for taking intelligent action, not just for talking about the virtues of failure, experimentation, or risk taking. It might not even be enough to give equal rewards for success and intelligent failures. The excessive value that our culture places on success means that people who succeed may still get more kudos than they deserve from peers and outsiders, and those who fail may get more blame than they deserve. To offset this bias, perhaps this weird idea should be “Reward failure even more than success, and punish inaction.

It’s a mistake to act as though we’re not created equal. It’s another mistake not to correct the first one. Blaming others nurtures failure. Helping others reaps a share of their success.

Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail.

Quotes = Success Music = Success Failure = Success Loyalty = Success Books = Success Mistakes = Success ... These are the lessons for today, try to put them in your bag and start using them one by one!

Success is not always equal to profit, Failure is not always equal to loss.

Oakeshott believed that civil association has been increasingly displaced by enterprise, under pressure from political elites, managers, parties and ideologues. It is not only socialists with their goals of equality and social justice who have contributed to this displacement. The liberal attempt to adopt the contours of an abstract and universal idea of justice and human rights; the supposedly conservative pursuit of economic growth as the root of social order and the goal of government – these too have a tendency to displace civil association with a new kind of political practice, in which the institutions of society are bent towards a goal that may be incompatible with their inner dynamic. The distinction between civil and enterprise association is not hard and fast: many of our social spheres partake of both arrangements. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that enterprise tends in a different direction from ordinary forms of community. In enterprise there are instructions coming down from above; there are rivalries and rebellions; there is ruinous failure as well as temporary success. The whole depends on a forward-going energy that must be constantly maintained if things are not to fragment and fall apart. Hence the invocations of ‘progress’, of ‘growth’, of constant ‘advance’ towards the goal which, however, must remain always somewhere in the future, lest the dedication of the citizens cease to be renewed by it.

The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn’t make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you’re risk-averse, you won’t do it. And that’s a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure.

Experts have been revered—and well paid—for years for their “It is my opinion that ... ” judgments. As James March has stated, however, such reverence may serve a purely social function. People and organizations have to make decisions, often between alternatives that are almost equally good or bad. What better way to justify such decisions than to consult an expert, and the more money he or she charges, the better. “We paid for the best possible medical advice,” can be a palliative for a fatal operation (or a losing legal defense), just as throwing the I Ching can relieve someone from regretting a bad marriage or a bad career choice. An expert who constructs a linear model is not as impressive as one who gives advice in a “burst” of intuition derived from “years of experience.” (One highly paid business expert we know constructs linear models in secret.) So we value the global judgment of experts independently of its validity. But there is also a situational reason for doubting the inferiority of global, intuitive judgment. It has to do with the biased availability of feedback. When we construct a linear model in a prediction situation, we know exactly how poorly it predicts. In contrast, our feedback about our own intuitive judgments is flawed. Not only do we selectively remember our successes, we often have no knowledge of our failures—and any knowledge we do have may serve to “explain” them (away). Who knows what happens to rejected graduate school applicants? Professors have access only to accepted ones, and if the professors are doing a good job, the accepted ones will likewise do well—reinforcing the impression of the professors’ good judgment. What happens to people misdiagnosed as “psychotic”? If they are lucky, they will disappear from the sight of the authorities diagnosing them; if not, they are likely to be placed in an environment where they may soon become psychotic. Finally, therapy patients who commit suicide were too sick to begin with—as is easily supported by an ex post perusal of their files.

Under ground, under ground! Down in the safe soft womb of earth, where there is no getting of jobs or losing of jobs, no relatives or friends to plague you, no hope, fear, ambition, honour, duty - no duns of any kind. That was where he wished to be. Yet it was not death, actual physical death, that he wished for. It was a queer feeling that he had. It had been with him ever since that morning when he woke up in the police cell. The evil, mutinous mood that comes after drunkenness seemed to have set into a habit. That drunken night had marked a period in his life. It had dragged him downward with strange suddenness. Before, he had fought against the money-code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself - to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being underground. He liked to think about the lost people, the underground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition.

You cannot hit a target that you refuse to see. You cannot hit a target if you do not take aim. And, equally dangerously, in both cases: you will not accrue the advantage of aiming, but missing. You will not benefit from the learning that inevitably takes place when things do not go your way. Success at a given endeavor often means trying, falling short, recalibrating (with the new knowledge generated painfully by the failure), and then trying again and falling short—often repeated, ad nauseam.

The most astonishing, countercultural truth in the kingdom of Jesus is that love and acceptance have zero basis in worth or accomplishment. A billionaire in the Upper East Side in New York City is no more worthy of love and acceptance than the schizophrenic homeless man sleeping in an alley in the Bronx. Before any of us build a business or declare bankruptcy, before we earn a PhD or drop out of high school, before we establish a soup kitchen or star in a porn video, we are equally loved by the God who shows no favoritism. Our personal success does not attract his love, nor does our failure expand or contract it. The God who is love loves us indiscriminately, passionately, furiously. That love was on cosmic display when, atop a Roman tree of crucifixion, Jesus became the millionaire and the addict, the nun and the stripper, the newborn baby and the wrinkled octogenarian. All humanity—with its sores and wounds and twisted souls and barren lives and evil-infested pasts—he became, that all humanity might become, in him, resplendent in the eyes of the Father.

Oh creator of all things, help me. For this day I go out into the world naked and alone, and without your hand to guide me I will wander far from the path which leads to success and happiness. I ask not for gold or garments or even opportunities equal to my ability; instead, guide me so that I may acquire ability equal to my opportunities. You have taught the lion and the eagle how to hunt and prosper with teeth and claw. Teach me how to hunt with words and prosper with love so that I may be a lion among men and an eagle in the market place. Help me to remain humble through obstacles and failures; yet hide not from mine eyes the prize that will come with victory. Assign me tasks to which others have failed; yet guide me to pluck the seeds of success from their failures. Confront me with fears that will temper my spirit; yet endow me with courage to laugh at my misgivings. Spare me sufficient days to reach my goals; yet help me to live this day as though it be my last. Guide me in my words that they may bear fruit; yet silence me from gossip that none be maligned. Discipline me in the habit of trying and trying again; yet show me the way to make use of the law of averages. Favor me with alertness to recognize opportunity; yet endow me with patience which will concentrate my strength. Bathe me in good habits that the bad ones may drown; yet grant me compassion for weaknesses in others. Suffer me to know that all things shall pass; yet help me to count my blessings of today. Expose me to hate so it not be a stranger; yet fill my cup with love to turn strangers into friends. But all these things be only if thy will. I am a small and a lonely grape clutching the vine yet thou hast made me different from all others. Verily, there must be a special place for me. Guide me. Help me. Show me the way. Let me become all you planned for me when my seed was planted and selected by you to sprout in the vineyard of the world. Help this humble salesman. Guide me, God.

Magic is not a theory. It is not just a striking sunset, or a synchronistic moment, or a perfect day. Magic is not a rarefied phenomenon nor does it serve us to treat it as such. There is magic in the tragedy, the shitty hair days, the excruciating pain, the arbitrary. There’s magic in the hustle, in the success and the failure. Allow yourself to see magic in every square inch and your life changes. The light and goodness are as equally sacred as the dark and the muck. To live a magical life is not synonymous with living a flawless life, or even a righteous one. Rather, it is accepting, embracing and surrendering to all of it. To the beautiful mess of being a human with a body and also a soul.

Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character. According to the ideology of individualism, race is irrelevant. Of course, we do occupy distinct race, gender, class, and other positions that profoundly shape our life chances in ways that are not natural, voluntary, or random; opportunity is not equally distributed across race, class, and gender. On some level, we know that Bill Gates’s son was born into a set of opportunities that will benefit him throughout his life, whether he is mediocre or exceptional. Yet even though Gates’s son has clearly been handed unearned advantage, we cling tightly to the ideology of individualism when asked to consider our own unearned advantages.

Although it was never conceptualized by a Czech movement, paradoxically enough, Czech 'organic work' in economic, social, and cultural modernization advanced strikingly during these decades. The Czech lands, politically and administratively subordinated provinces of Austria without any kind of cultural or political autonomy, flourished economically and culturally. The Czech provinces achieved by far the highest level of economic advancement in Central and Eastern Europe. Rapid and successful industrialization, social modernization, and the highest literacy rate in the region made the Czech lands more similar to the West than any other part of it. In other words, Bohemia and Moravia profited a great deal from being a hereditary province of the Habsburg empire and as a consequence enjoyed an equal status with Austria proper. Rapid economic progress certainly contributed to the further failure of Czech national demands during the 1860s and 1870s. The boycott of the imperial Diet and Reichsrat in 1867 in favor of the reestablishment of the statni pravo, or a Rechtsstaat, that is, equal legal-political status with Hungary, was again rejected. The Bohemian Declaration of August 1868 that renewed this demand generated mass rallies of support around the country. The imperial cabinet of Count Karl Hohenwart was ready to accept the concept of a 'trialist' reorganization of the empire and granted cultural autonomy to the Czech people, although not equal status with Hungary, in the fall of 1871. Emperor Franz Josef, a hard-nosed defender of Austro-Hungarian 'dualism,' rejected the 'trialist' Austro-Hungarian-Slav concept, however, and dismissed the Hohenwart cabinet. The Bohemian and Moravian representatives in the imperial Diet renewed their boycott of it. As before, such passive resistance was ineffective. It did not shake the empire, and the prosperous Czech provinces were not ready for violence. The Moravian Czechs gave up the boycott in 1873, and a split in the Czech national movement in September 1874 led to the reentry of the 'Young Czechs,' a newly organized National Liberal party, into parliament. In the fall of 1878, even the 'Old Czech' National party joined. The peaceful Czech national movement lost momentum and dried up for several decades. 'Organic work' nevertheless became more vigorous and successful than ever.

He does not define yoga as doing exercise or taking sanyāsa, rather Lord is in favour of working and fulfilling one’s duties, but there is only one condition. That condition is while performing action one should remain equal towards success and failure, and then automatically we become rooted in meditation or devotion.

Had imprisonment been freedom of another kind? She could not make her own decisions, which meant she had not had to think, or consider, take any responsibility for the results. The excuse was perfect. “I had no choice. I couldn’t fail because I was not allowed to try!” If no success were possible, then equally, neither was any failure. As an errant wife if she had left him then the law would have brought her back, if he had wished it. Perhaps he would not have. She had not tried. How childlike, in the ugliest way. It was not innocence; it was the abdication of responsibility.

Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character. According to the ideology of individualism, race is irrelevant. Of course, we do occupy distinct race, gender, class, and other positions that profoundly shape our life chances in ways that are not natural, voluntary, or random; opportunity is not equally distributed across race, class, and gender.

So, if your primary concerns are expansion of the state, material equality, reduction of American power in the world, making America and Europe secular societies, removal of Judeo-Christian influence, substitution of internationalism for nationalism, and making ethnicity and race important values, the left has been a wild success. On the other hand, if your primary concerns are fighting evil, making people nobler, morally elevating societies, and creating conditions for prosperity, the left has been a failure.

The morning you wake up doing business is not equal to the morning you wake up praising laziness.

Esk, of course, had not been trained, and it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.

I don't have a college degree, I don't come from money or from an academic family, I didn't have any resourceful acquaintance to speak of, yet today I am at the forefront of humankind's struggle for inclusion, justice and equality. All I had was a vision and an unending persistence. Each failure made me even more stubborn towards my vision - each failure gave me an inexplicable bliss that carried me further.

A way to appreciate the daily grind of work is to reframe our job as a daily opportunity to define and express ourselves; to grow in failure and success, and to learn to celebrate equally the small and great victories.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

While Americans are more likely to attribute individual successes to their own abilities and their failures to external factors, the Japanese tend to do just the opposite.

each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character. According to the ideology of individualism, race is irrelevant. Of course, we do occupy distinct race, gender, class, and other positions that profoundly shape our life chances in ways that are not natural, voluntary, or random; opportunity is not equally distributed across race, class, and gender. On some level, we know that Bill Gates’s son was born into a set of opportunities that will benefit him throughout his life, whether he is mediocre or exceptional. Yet even though Gates’s son has clearly been handed unearned advantage, we cling tightly to the ideology of individualism when asked to consider our own unearned advantages.

The racist idea of an achievement gap lived on into the new millennium through George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and Obama’s Race to the Top and Common Core—initiatives that further enlarged the role of standardized testing in determining the success and failure of students and the schools they attended. Through these initiatives and many, many others, education reformers banged the drum of the “achievement gap” to get attention and funding for their equalizing efforts.

THE COLOR LINE FOUND NECESSARY' ...As attendance of the colored people would increase, proportionately the number of the whites would decrease; for explain it how we will, a majority of whites prefer not to intermingle closely with other races. Recognizing that it meant either the success of the failure of the enterprise of the Drama as respects the whites, we have been compelled to assign the colored friends to the gallery, which, however, is just as good for seeing and hearing as any other part of The Temple. Some were offended at this arrangement. We have received numerous letters from the colored friends, some claiming that it is not right to make a difference, other indignantly and bitterly denouncing us as enemies of the colored people. Some, confident that Brother Russell had never sanctioned such discrimination, told that they believe it would be duty to stand up for equal rights and always help the oppressed, etc. ... We again suggested that if a suitable place could be found in which the Drama could be presented for the benefit of the colored people alone, we would be glad to make such arrangements, or to co-operate with any others in doing so. Our explanations were apparently entirely satisfactory to all of the fully consecrated. To these we explained that it is a question of putting either the interests of God's cause first, or else the interests of the race first. We believe it is our duty to put God first and the truth first--at any cost to others or to ourselves! ... it is only a question of whether our giving to them in one way would entirely deprive us of giving the truth to others. ... In answer to the query as to how our course of conduct squared with the Golden Rule, we replied that it squares exactly. We would wish others to put God first. ... We reminded one dear sister that the Lord enjoins humility...If nature favors the colored brethren and sisters in the exercise of humility it is that much to their advantage, if they are rightly exercised by it. ... A little while, and the Millennial kingdom will be inaugurated, which will bring restitution to all mankind--restitution to the perfection of mind and body, feature and color, to the grand original standard, which God declared 'very good,' and which was lost for a time through sin, but which is soon to be restored by the powerful kingdom of Messiah.

Mediation, formulae for settlement: "When a peacemaker moves to lay down the conceptual framework from a settlement, this action tends to rule out and discredit the obvious alternatives. Ripening cannot take place until a consensus develops — not only about the need for a negotiated deal, but also for a specific kind of deal. If a number of approaches remain in play and appear to be equally viable and attractive, the conflict remains unripe. The peacemaker's move may cause the parties to collude tacitly against him, escaping behind the cover of each other's non-cooperation. If this keeps happening, he can prepare his moves with one side first, and claw his way toward agreement like a skipper tacking toward the wind. There may be times when a proposed framework of principles drives the parties towards another approach which has merit. The original initiative will still have served a useful purpose by shaking things up and injecting some movement into the picture. But the most important reason for taking the initiative is to block the parties' unilateral options and discredit their wishful thinking." — Chester A. Crocker, 1992 Mediation, leverage in: "The richest source of leverage for the peacemaker may already be built into the existing situation. How badly are the parties hurting, and how can they be persuaded that a settlement is their best option? What is it that one or the other side really wants but cannot get on its own? Is one or more of the parties isolated and eager to gain external support for its positions? can their standing and legitimacy be put in question if they fail to cooperate? What pressures are built into the military situation, and what can be done to strengthen or accelerate the necessary stalemate?" — Chester A. Crocker, 1992 Mediation, motivations of peacemakers: "Peacemakers typically invertene in conflicts precisely because their interests are affected, and they tend to act in support of a settlement compatible with those interests. By the same token, parties are more likely to respond to a peacemaker whose clout and prestige demand that he be taken seriously — even if that response is largely tactical and defensive. Bias (in the sense of having an interest in the issues and a preference about the outcome) is not an obstacle to success. But ignorance or prejudice will guarantee failure. ... It will not be possible to design a 'fair' (win-win) formula without a feel for each party's way of thinking and priorities. This is why the peacemaker must, first invest in knowledge; no one should know the brief better than he. Procedural even-handedness and fair play are important because they signal a readiness to listen, to learn, and to protect the parties' soft parts. They also protect the peacemaker from his own parochialism. There is little room for 'liking' or naively 'trusting.' If the various parties were not in some sense opposed to what he is doing, there would be no need for peacemaking!" — Chester A. Crocker, 1992

It taught me that success was always temporary, and failure, a lesson about self. It taught me that winning and losing were essentially the same and the secret was to treat each with equal detachment.

Smart people, like himself, who had acquired money and power weren’t nice because they had learned that caring about and helping others made them exposed and vulnerable, which led to failure. One had to look out for number one to get “the money” and “the power” the cabbie spoke of. Dale knew that money and power were finite. They were limited resources you couldn’t simply spread around the world for everyone to enjoy. Crafty, competitive people knew this and fought hard to get their share of it. People like the cabbie were naïve enough to think everyone would be happy sharing an equal amount of the pie. They lived in a fantasy world that socialism and communism touted. If the pie had been equally divided to everyone in the world, each person would hold a tiny sliver after the distribution was complete. Then everyone would be miserable and all those naïve people who had fought to make it happen would finally learn what they already knew—life was miserable with only a sliver of the pie. Of course the cabbie had suicidal thoughts and dreamed about shit towers piling high up into the sky; he was one of the caring people who had tried so hard to become another tile on the floor under the feet of cunning people, like himself, who were moving toward success by walking upon the altruistic pathway naïve people had constructed out of themselves. And that was more than fine with Dale. The greater number of people who thought like the cabbie the better, because it made it easier for people like himself to snatch up a bigger piece of the pie.