In Britain by contrast we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes make all you can. Because remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure.

I wish I had been more prepared both for success and for failure when I was younger.

Failure is what we're all running from we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

We go there with confidence but we know there is a very fine line between success and failure in this game.

There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success.

I don't know many people if any who have had some straight line toward success. I mean they start here they work hard they've got what it takes and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.

Nothing succeeds they say like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.

I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you I think.

The pressures are intense because the rewards for success and the penalty for failure are more and more.

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.

I think that failure by your own standards is certainly a form of success.

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success because either one gets in the way of your work.

The one phrase you can use is that success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan.

Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.

So I try not to have any actual expectations for myself for any level of success or failure.

I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring.

Beside every great success are the seeds of enormous failure. In every failure there's the opportunity seeds of great success. They're not miles apart. So if they're that close together and if you're really working you're always gonna have that likelihood that something's not going to work.

Well the idea is that failure is an inevitable partner on the road to success and if you're not willing to confront failure you can never find out how good you are.

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.

So nevertheless what I'm saying is that what one is - one's parameters are constantly narrowed by one's success and my desire is to widen my field even if I risk failure.

Failure is unfortunately as common as success.

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.