Ten Quotes on Failure

I can't get over the fact that the Philippine Team to the 2008 Beijing Olympics failed to bag any medal. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is reportedly “not happy,” too, over our medal shutout in the recently-concluded Olympic games.

And why not? Look, Michael Phelps is not even a team, much less a country, but he was able to haul eight gold medals on his own! Ok, so you think I'm being unfair? Let me point you to desolate Afghanistan, which was able to win it's first ever Olympic gold medal!

I know that Filipino-Chinese 24-year-old Willy Wang won the gold for Wushu. But Wushu is only an exhibition or demonstration sport in the Olympics, so any medal won in the sport do not count in the official medal tally.

Are there lessons to be learned from our FAILURE? Let's see what we can from these quotations:

My reputation grows with every failure. –George Bernard Shaw

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Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle. –James Russell Lowell

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Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. –John Dewey

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You won't skid if you stay in a rut. –Kin Hubbard

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There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought. –Laurence J. Peter

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Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. –Oscar Wilde

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Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied. –Pearl S. Buck

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Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. –Robert F. Kennedy

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It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. –Samuel Smiles

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We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. –Samuel Smiles

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