Success and Failure

Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Nothing is difficult to those who have the will.

Unknown, (motto of the Dutch Poet's Society), in Success and Failure

Official Project Stages: (1) Uncritical Acceptance. (2) Wild Enthusiasm. (3) Dejected Disillusionment. (4) Total Confusion. (5) Search for the Guilty. (6) Punishment of the Innocent. (7) Promotion of the Non-participants.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Once you've tried to change the world you find it's a whole bunch easier to change your mind.

Unknown, in Altruism and Cynicism and Success and Failure

Only those who do not expect anything are never disappointed. Only those who never try, never fail.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

Perfection is only achieved on the point of collapse.

Unknown, (from Bjarne Stroustrup's book on C++), in Success and Failure

With love and patience, nothing is impossible.

Daisaku Ikeda, in Success and Failure

Delay is preferable to error.

Thomas Jefferson, in Success and Failure

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Thomas Jefferson, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

If someone had told me I would be pope one day, I would have studied harder.

Pope John Paul I, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

Every man wishes to rule the world. Unfortunately, the world rules every man.

Jeremy Preston Johnson, in Success and Failure

He who hesitates is a damned fool.

Mae West, in Success and Failure

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.

Bert Whitney, in Success and Failure

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Oscar Wilde, in Success and Failure and Vice and Virtue

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Oscar Wilde, in Success and Failure

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Elbert Hubbard, in Success and Failure