If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- High ambition requires accepting a high failure rate as part of the pursuit of excellence.
- In plain terms
- Aim high enough that you fail most of the time.
- What can you take from it?
- Fail often because you are aiming high.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Are you aiming high enough?
- How do you handle failure?
Another view
Frequent failure can demoralize teams without psychological safety.
More from Alan Kay
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Permalink to quote #1 By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed…
Permalink to quote #3 Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
Permalink to quote #4
Related quotes
Don't fear failure. - Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
Bruce LeeBruce Lee quote #74 Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much…
Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt quote #5 The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.
Billy CorganBilly Corgan quote #8