Failure
see also Success; Mistakes
- Accept failure as a normal part of living. View it as part of the process of exploring your world; make a note of its lessons and move on.--Tom Greening and Dick Hobson
- Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can--and surely will at times--fail. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.--Joyce Brothers
- All honor to him who shall win the prize,
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries and fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears.--Joaquin Miller
- All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.--William Faulkner
- All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success.--Dorthea Brande
- And remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand.--Emily Kimbrough
- Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.--Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
- Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.--Frances Watkins Harper
- The baby rises to its feet, takes a step, is overcome with triumph and joy--and falls flat on its face. It is a pattern for all that is to come! But learn from the bewildered baby. Lurch to your feet again. You'll make the sofa in the end.--Pam Brown
- Because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage--and that's the same thing.--George Lorimer
- Being afraid to fail is what prevents many of us from trying something new, putting ourselves out on a limb. It often stops us singing, running, working for an exam or telling a joke in company. Fear of failure can also stop us trying to pray. Just in case nothing happens. Just in case we feel foolish. Just in case we make a mess of it.--The Reverend Lucy Winkett ("Thought for the Day," August 16, 2016)
- Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.--Marilyn vos Savant
- Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.--Charles F. Kettering
- The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.-- Charles Kettering
- The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes)
- Defeat doesn't finish a man--quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits.--Richard M. Nixon
- Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. No human being can avoid failures.--Lawrence G. Lovasik (The Hidden Power of Kindness)
- Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing.--H. Stanley Judd
- Don't think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success.--Robert Orben
- Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.--Samuel Beckett
- Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.--Napoleon Hill
- Every failure is a step to success...--William Whewell
- Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.--Florence Scovel Shinn
- Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.--Babe Ruth
- Everyone fails. But that doesn't mean you must identify yourself as a failure. Failure applies to a situation, a particular time and place. If you don't let it devastate you, failure can be an opportunity: for learning, for recovery, for the creation and demonstration of character. No one wins all the time. Learn to take your losses, learn from them if possible, and move on.--Gary Ryan Blair (Mind Munchies : A Delicious Assortment of Brain Snacks!)
- Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?--Robert Browning ("The Last Ride Together" Men and Women)
- Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.--George Eliot
- Failure can be divided into those who thought and never did and into those who did and never thought.--Rev. W.A. Nance
- A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.--John Christian Bovee
- Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.--Dottie Walters
- Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes)
- Failure is impossible.--Susan B. Anthony
- Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.--John Dewey
- Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.--Daniel Webster
- Failure is success if we learn from it.--Malcolm S. Forbes
- Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.--Truman Capote
- Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.--Jack Lemmon (interview on Signiture television program, 1987)
- Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.--Denis Waitley
- Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.--Mike Murdock
- Failures are like skinned knees--painful, but superficial.--Ross Perot
- Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.--Denis Waitley
- The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.--Michael Korda
- Giving up is the only sure way to fail.--Gena Showalter
- Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.--William Saroyan
- The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.--Vince Lombardi
- The greatest failure is a person who never admits that he can be a failure.--Gerald. N. Weiskott
- Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.--Augustus (and Julius) Hare
- He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.--Archbishop Richard Whately
- He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.--Paul Tillich
- I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.--Chief Justice Earl Warren
- I am never a failure until I begin blaming others.--Anonymous
- I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.--Thomas A. Edison
- I believe that none of us ever fails at anything. Every time we create something we are successful at creation. However, we do make some poor choices about what we create.--Anonymous
- I do not fear failure. I only fear the "slowing up" of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, "Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?"--George S. Patton
- I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.--Bill Cosby
- I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.--George Burns
- I think success has no rules, but you can learn a lot from failure.--Jean Kerr (Mary, Mary)
- If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men ever know.--Thomas Wolfe
- If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress.--Calvin Coolidge
- If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.--Florence Scovel Shinn
- If people aren't laughing at you, you aren't saying anything very unusual. So let your voice be loud and strong, dare to try things that may fail.--Joline Godfrey
- If you're not big enough to lose, you're not big enough to win.--Walter Reuther
- If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure.--H. Jackson Brown
- If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.--Woody Allen
- In a total work, the failures have their not unimportant place.--May Sarton
- In some attempts, it is glorious even to fail.--Longinus
- In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try.--David Viscott
- An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.--Charles Kettering
- It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.--Samuel Smiles
- It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.--Peter Marshall
- It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.--Theodore Roosevelt
- It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated...it is finished when it surrenders.--Ben Stein
- It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.--Charles F. Kettering
- It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.--Roger Babson
- It will generally be found that men who are constantly lamenting their ill luck are only reaping the consequences of their own neglect, mismanagement, and improvidence, or want of application.--Samuel Smiles
- It’s easier to go from failure to success than it is to go from excuses to success.--John Maxwell (Sometimes you Win - Sometimes you Learn)
- I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.--Anthony Robbins
- Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.--Anne Sullivan
- Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.--Barbara Grizzuti Harrison ("Secrets Women Tell Each Other" McCall's, Aug 1975
- The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it--so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it.--Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.-- John Burroughs
- A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed--I well know. For it is a sign that he has tried to surpass himself.--Georges Clemenceau
- The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.--Lloyd Jones
- More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.--Billy Sunday
- The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.--Humphrey Davy
- Most people achieved their greatest success one step beyond what looked like their greatest failure.--Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
- Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.--Ross Perot
- My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.--Abraham Lincoln
- Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.--Thomas A. Edison
- Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.--George Washington Carver
- Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.--Reinhold Niebuhr
- One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.--James Long
- One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.--Robert F. Kennedy
- Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You're the only one who can do it permanently.--Zig Ziglar (Zig Ziglar's Little Book of Big Quotes)
- Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.--Oliver Goldsmith
- Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.-- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.--Nikola Tesla
- People fail forward to success.--Mary Kay Ash
- People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.--Lao-Tzu (fl. 600 B. C.)
- People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning. Then there will be no failure.--Lao-tzu
- The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.--Dr. Joyce Brothers
- Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.--Sophocles
- Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.--Roger von Oech
- Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.--Maxwell Maltz
- Restlessness is discontent--and discontent is the first necessities of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.--Thomas A. Edison
- Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.--Lao-tzu
- The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.--Paramahansa Yogananda
- Some people fail because they never begin. More people fail because they never finish. Stick-to-it-ive-ness wins oftener than genius or luck.--Frank Crane
- Strong people make as many and as ghastly mistakes as weak people. The difference is that strong people admit them, laugh at them, learn form them. This is how they become strong.--Richard Needham
- Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.--Joseph Heller
- Success is ideal but failure is not unexpected. What matters is that I try to be the best I can.--Tim Stanley ("Thought for the Day," March 1, 2016)
- Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "Failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.--Mary Pickford
- Take every failure as an experience, cause to be successful you need experience.--Jonathan Daniels
- The test is to recognize the mistake, admit it and correct it. To have tried to do something and failed is vastly better than to have tried to do nothing and succeeded.--Dale Turner
- There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.--Colin Powell
- There are no such things as excuses. There are reasons that why a particular decision was reached, and why that decision was not a good one. There is a discernible path that can be followed to find the reasons why a failure occurred. There are no excuses, only wrong decisions.--Andy Hutchison
- There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.-- Erich Fromm
- There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.--Max Beerbohm
- There is no failure except in no longer trying.-–Elbert Hubbard
- There is no sorrow I have thought about more than that - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.--George Eliot
- There is no such thing as failure – failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.--Oprah Winfrey
- There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.--Sivananda
- There's only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that's if we quit.--Craig Breedlove
- Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.-- Oprah Winfrey
- Thinking "I failed" is a copout! It lets you off the hook. Game over, dude. I am not about to let you off so easily. Reframe your setbacks as signals for change and the opportunity to improve. This method of thinking requires a lot more energy than "I blew it." Instead, explode your limiting mindset. What would happen if you replaced the concept of failure with that of opportunity?-Devora Zack (Networking for People Who Hate Networking)
- Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.--John F. Kennedy
- Thoughts of doubt and fear are pathways to failure. When you conquer negative attitudes of doubt and fear you conquer failure.--Bryan Adams
- The timid and fearful first failures dismay,
but the stout heart stays trying by night and by day.
He values his failures as lessons that teach
The one way to get to the goal he would reach.--Edgar A. Guest
- To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.--W. Somerset Maugham
- To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.--David Viscott
- Try and fail, but don't fail to try.--Stephen Kaggwa
- Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them.--Sam Harris (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion)
- We are all failures--at least, the best of us are.--James Matthew Barry
- We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.--Robert E. Lee
- We have 40 million reasons for failure, but not one single excuse.--Rudyard Kipling
- We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.--Samuel Smiles
- We must expect to fail...but fail in a learning posture, determined no to repeat the mistakes, and to maximize the benefits from what is learned in the process.--Ted W. Engstrom
- We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.--Samuel Smiles
- What does so-called success or failure matter if only you have succeeded in doing the thing you set out to do. The doing is all that really counts.--Eva Le Gallienne
- What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.--Wendell Phillips
- Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.--Bernard Baruch
- When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.--Napoleon Hill
- When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.--Katherine Mansfield
- When we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel.--Eloise Ristad
- When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people's excuse for failure.--Robert Townsend
- While we are young the idea of death or failure is intolerable to us; even the possibility of ridicule we cannot bear.--Isak Dineson
- The wisest person is not the one who has the fewest failures but the one who turns failures to best account.--Richard R. Grant
- A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after a success.--Unknown
- Would you like me to give you a formula for ... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure... You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... You can be discouraged by failure--or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side.--Thomas J. Watson
- You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.--Orison Swett Marden
- You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.--Beverly Sills
- You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, and you don't branch out, you don't try--you don't take the risk.--Rosalynn Carter
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