Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill
For more about Winston Churchill, keep reading....
About the Quote
An approach like this would not work in sports, where continued failure is rewarded with termination of service for the team or organization. Even a head coach who had delivered multiple championships to the team can find himself (or herself) on the unemployment line after consecutive losing seasons.
This would be similar in the entertainment field, where we find award-winning actors milking their decades-old honors for a big payday today. It had been so long since the actor's performance coincided with the reputation that many people don't even realize the honors and awards the actor had won long ago. I wan't name any names, but we can identify several of these actors (and directors, and performers).
So in which context would the quote by Winston Churchill make sense? Politics and government. Had Churchill lived long enough to meet King Charles III, he would have become familiar with a phrase too-common to many of us: failing upward. People who should be living the rest of their days in ignominy as a result of the incorrect positions they held-- think Afghanistan and Iraq-- are instead rewarded with promotions. These people had become insulated from failure to the point where all that matters is the length of their resume.
Some (More) Information about Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill's father was the Lord Randolph Churchill, one of the leading Tory politicians of his day. They were descendants of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough; he was a hero in the early 18th Century wars against the Sun King himself, King Louis XIV of France.
Winston Churchill's mother was an American, Jennie Jerome. She was the daughter of Leonard W. Jerome, who was a a noted financier in New York as well as an enthusiast of horse racing.
His childhood years were maked by unhappiness and neglect; only the love and care he received from his devoted nurse, Mrs. Everest, helped him get through this period of his life. Due to bad grades he received at a school named Harrow, his father decided that the younger Churchill would embark on a career in the army. It took Winston Churchill three attempts to pass the entrance examination for the Royal Military College Sandhurst before he was admitted. Although he had a hard time getting admitted, Churchill applied himself academically and ranked 20th in a class of 130 students when he graduated.
1895 was a mixed year for Winston Churchill. On one hand, he began his military service with the 4th Hussars. On the other hand, his father died tragically. At that time, not much was happening on the war front for the British empire, so Churchill spent a couple of months of leave writing for the Daily Graphic of London to report on Cuba's war of independence from Spain.
In 1896 his regiment was called to duty in India on the North-West Frontier. There, Churchill was both soldier and journalist.
-- Source
Post Details
- Index4INDEX image made by @magnacarta using MS Paint.
- Quotes I use for Index4INDEX are stored in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. Recently I added database functionality for limited searching.
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