success vs failure

Success is defined as the negation of failure. (Until something fails for a specific reason, it is considered as successful.) This negational definition makes it very hard to understand.

There is basically only one generalizable aspect of success, namely its nonlinear nature with respect to time: The longer the success period, the lower the probability of near-future failure.

It is funny how successful people go on stage and talk about their unimaginably poor grasp of their own success stories while failed people are not given a chance to speak at all. Success is one of those things that can not be spoken about. It can only be shown.

Best success stories are concatenations of "How I Almost Failed" stories. Others consist of boring generalizations. After all, as Tolstoy said, happy families are all alike while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.