How the Mighty Fall

The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation.

Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.

Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind: success is falling down, and getting up one more time, without end.

Be willing to change tactics, but never give up your core purpose.

Better to learn from how others fell than to repeat their mistakes out of ignorance.

Furthermore, one of the keys to sustained performance lies in understanding how greatness can be lost.

We do ourselves a disservice by studying only success.

The point of struggle is not just to survive, but to build an enterprise that makes such a distinctive impact on the world it touches.

Hope alone is not enough; you need enough resources to continue the fight.

When you abandon hope, you should begin preparing for the end.

Success creates pressure for more growth, setting up a vicious cycle of expectations.

When an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall.

There are more ways to fall than to become great.

An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall.

I have come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages.

Anyone can fall and most eventually do.

Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great.

When you are at the top of the world, your very power and success might cover up the fact that you are already on the path to decline.

History shows, repeatedly, that the mighty can fall.