The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence shortages of food water and educational opportunities discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom.

One of the darkest deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

Go on failing. Go on. Only next time try to fail better.

It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all in which case you have failed by default.

One's only rival is one's own potentialities. One's only failure is failing to live up to one's own possibilities. In this sense every man can be a king and must therefore be treated like a king.

If you're not failing every now and again it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be and how dangerous it is to trust them.

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing you're not growing.

Succeeding is not really a life experience that does that much good. Failing is a much more sobering and enlightening experience.

Scotland is my country the nation that shaped me that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality.

We're failing our children with education we're failing our environment.

One of the great failings of our education system is that we tend to focus on those who are succeeding in exams and there are plenty of them. But what we should also be looking at and a lot more urgently is those who fail.