Quotes / Failure Is the Only Option

Fiction

We're bound to fail
'cause you failed before
We're bound to fail
'cause you failed before

— Accept, "Bound to Fail"

So I found that life is just a game.
Good to know there's never been a winner.
Try your hardest, you'll still be a loser.
The world will still be turning when you're gone.

— Black Sabbath, "Wheels of Confusion"

"Another failure, Shredder? You have an almost perfect record!"

— Krang, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)

"We'll strategize this the usual way. The powerful will delegate to the untalented until failure is achieved."

— Dogbert, Dilbert

Failure is always an option.

— MythBusters manifesto

Losing is fun!

— The Dwarf Fortress motto

"You can't stop it. You never do. You always fail. It's your lot."

— Van Allen, The X-Files, "Hellbound"

Robotnik: Do we ever win?
Eggman: That depends on your definition of "win".
Robotnik: Beating Sonic!
Eggman: Oh. Well, then, no.

— Sonic Generations

"She died in her real life, and that's all the Director ever remembered of her. So now, no matter how tough she is, no matter how hard she fights, she's always going to fail, because that's what she's based on. No matter what she's doing, or what she's trying to accomplish, just when her goal is within her reach, it gets yanked away. Every. Single. Time. Can you imagine what that's like?"

— Church, describing Tex, Red vs. Blue

"You know, we can't wager on this if you lose every time."

— The Abusive Friend, Sexy Losers

"In any race for hidden treasure, it’s always the protagonists who sweat and bleed and die to overcome the many challenges inherent in finding it — only for the antagonists to seize it from them at the last minute."

— General Tarquin, The Order of the Stick

"You can try your best, do everything correct, and yet you can still fail. Just get used to it. It's the way things are gonna happen, because you can try your best to do everything right, and in the end you still wake up in the middle of the forest, abandoned and dying to death...."

— Donnie DuPre, Demo Reel

"Well, Pippin, I guess you finally realize what we knew from the beginning... that your search for perfection and fulfillment was doomed from the start."

— The Players, Pippin (final scene)

"It was never meant to be! FATE HAS CONSPIRED AGAINST US!"

— Edd, Ed, Edd n Eddy, "Don't Rain on My Ed"

"The whole universe is playing a little comic joke! 'We'll give Brain an obsession with taking over the world, and then never let him succeed!'"

— The Brain, Pinky and the Brain, "Megalomaniacs Anonymous"

"Kids, you tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try."

— Homer Simpson, The Simpsons, "Burns' Heir"

"Tony, there was no other way."

— Doctor Strange, justifying his decision to give Thanos the Time Stone just before succumbing to the Decimation, Avengers: Infinity War

"This was not about failure or success. This was always going to be horror. I should not have suggested it, and you should not have listened to me."

— Suggestion, Disco Elysium

Reviews

"Tom Batiuk: The man who watches that Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial and says 'Amateurs.'"

— Chris Sims on Funky Winkerbean

"Because nothing sets up quality television like knowing ahead of time that the heroes are doomed not only to have their hopes and dreams smashed like a glass menagerie under the feet of an angry elephant, but also a chance to witness them wallowing in the stench of their own personal failure!"

— SF Debris on Star Trek: Voyager, "Eye of the Needle"

"Mulder gives Scully a gentle kiss when they are re-united....Duchovny plays these scenes really well because there is some kind of emotional truth to them. Compare to his reaction to being reunited with his sister (again) and even the actor can't quite bring himself to invest in the idea because it has been proven false over and over. When he is asked to almost break down before her, it smacks of an actor trying to overcome his natural prejudice to the material."

— Joe Ford on The X-Files, "Redux II"

Real Life

"This hits on why the freezepeachers make me so incandescently angry. One side is spreading gussied-up-for-the-21st-century blood libel, and the freezepeachers say "It's just speech; if you don't like it, you must counter it by making a better argument."

THERE IS NO RATIONAL ARGUMENT THAT CAN COUNTER A BELIEF AS IRRATIONAL AS BLOOD LIBEL. It doesn't matter how many times you point out that the claims made by the various iterations of that conspiracy theory are ludicrous, foolish, and just plain impossible. It doesn't matter how much evidence you offer against such claims. It doesn't matter how beautifully crafted your rhetoric is, how seamless your arguments are, or how lustrous your hair is. You can't argue someone out of a willingly-embraced irrationality with rationality."

— Vucodlak, commenting on "Epistemic Nihilism", Patheos

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