Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.

Nehru’s line frames “failure” not as an external defeat but as an internal lapse: the moment a person or movement abandons its guiding ideals, clear objectives, and ethical principles. The triad suggests a hierarchy—ideals (vision), objectives (practical aims), and principles (moral constraints)—and implies that success requires keeping all three aligned under pressure. Read in a political key, it warns that a liberation or reform project can lose its meaning even if it wins power, if it compromises its foundational values. Read personally, it argues that setbacks are survivable; what is truly ruinous is forgetting what one stands for and why one acts.