Neal Stephenson Quotes

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

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.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

Finding out exactly what went wrong is key toward preventing future debacles.

You learn more from the flops than from the hits.

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.

It's not about the failure, it's about learning from the failures. Failure itself cannot be celebrated.

Try not to say, 'I'm a failure.' Instead, ask, 'What can I do better? What did I do wrong?' Then re-approach.

'Debug' is '2001' from Hal's perspective.

I never would wish technology failing on any sort of opponent or enemy.

You need to learn what people have done, but you need to learn where they have failed... Usually when they fail it is in the execution.

You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.

Failure's relative. I've always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something's not right about that. It's how you treat failure, too. There's something to learn from it. I've had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures: What kind of failure was it? A failure because it's misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself?

Really, you should always discuss the defeats because you can learn much more from failure than from success.

You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.

Don't waste a good mistake, learn from it.

To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.

I do take defeats well. However, I don't just leave them at that. I take time to analyze why I was defeated and make sure I don't make the same mistakes again. I think it is important to learn from one's mistakes.

No experiment is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example.

We are able to learn from a failure, but perhaps not much from a success!

Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.

Where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.

Failures teach you more, there's always something fundamental about them.

Just as we may learn from our successes (how to do it) so also can we learn from our mistakes (how not to do it). It just isn't in the cards that anybody should get by forever without making mistakes and perhaps sometimes making costly ones.