Quotes about failure

I have always felt that although someone may defeat me, and I strike out in a ball game, the pitcher on the particular day was the best player. But I know when I see him again, I'm going to be ready for his curve ball. Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.

— Hank Aaron

The typical human life seems to be quite unplanned, undirected, unlived, and unsavored. Only those who consciously think about the adventure of living as a matter of making choices among options, which they have found for themselves, ever establish real self-control and live their lives fully.

— Karl Albrecht

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

— Thomas B. Aldrich

To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.

— James Allen

You win only if you aren't afraid to lose.

— Rocky Aoki

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

— James Baldwin

We are all failures -- at least, all the best of us are.

— Sir James M. Barrie

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

— Steve Bartkowski

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free. Tom Robbins Before you give up hope, turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.

— Bruce Barton

I wasn't afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure.

— Anne Baxter

It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.

— Anne Baxter

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

— Samuel Beckett

There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success.

— Sir Max Beerbohm

On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear.

— Bhagavad Gita

A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

— Arthur Bloch

My downfall raises me to infinite heights.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

No one ever won a chess game by betting on each move. Sometimes you have to move backward to get a step forward.

— Amar Gopal Bose

Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

— Kenneth Ewart Boulding

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

To win you've got to stay in the game.

— Claude M. Bristol

You must think of failure and defeat as the springboards to new achievements or to the next level of accomplishment.

— Les Brown

Failure is an event, never a person.

— William D. Brown

Failure is the tuition you pay for success.

— Walter Brunell

Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure, they'll stop trying.

— Frank Burford

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.

— George Washington Carver

The only people who never fail are those who never try.

— Ilka Chase

Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed.

— Lord Chesterfield

You cannot explain failure any more than you can argue with success.

— J. Richard Clarke

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed -- I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

— Georges Clemenceau

You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.

— Edwin Louis Cole

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

— Confucius

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake.

— Confucius

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face, It's nothing against you to fall down flat/ But to lie there-that's a disgrace.

— E. V. Cooke

To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.

— Francis Crawford

Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.

— Edward Dahlberg

The most important of my discoveries has been suggested to me by my failures.

— Sir Humphrey Davy

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

— Walt Disney

Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success.

— Edward Dowden

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

— Thomas A. Edison

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

— Thomas A. Edison

I have not failed. I've just found 10, 000 ways that won't work.

— Thomas A. Edison

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

— George Eliot

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

— George Eliot

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

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

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

— William Feather

If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate.

— Francois FeNelon

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.

— Ella Fitzgerald

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

— Ferdinand Foch

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

— Henry Ford

And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.

— Robert Frost

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure all your life.

— John W. Gardner

He's no failure. He's not dead yet.

— William Lloyd George

It takes a lot more energy to fail than to succeed, since it takes a lot of concentrated energy to hold on to beliefs that don't work.

— Jerry Gillies

Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.

— Charles J. Givens

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

— William E. Gladstone

The moment avoiding failure becomes your motivation, you're down the path of inactivity. You stumble only if you're moving.

— Roberto Goizueta

We fail far more often by timidity than by over-daring.

— David Grayson

Failure too is a form of death...

— Graham Greene

Failures to heroic minds are the stepping stones to success.

— Thomas C. Haliburton

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure.

— S. I. Hayakawa

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

— Joseph Heller

Sometimes the best gain is to lose.

— George Herbert

Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

— Napoleon Hill

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

— Napoleon Hill

Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

— Napoleon Hill

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

If you are doing your best, you will not have to worry about failure.

— Robert S. Hillyer

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 Hobson

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

— Eric Hoffer

There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.

— Eric Hoffer

Success is 99 percent failure.

— Soichiro Honda

I never see failure as failure, but only as the game I must play and win.

— Tom Hopkins

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.

— Tom Hopkins

Failure -- The man who can tell others what to do and how to do it, but never does it himself.

— Elbert Hubbard

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.

— Elbert Hubbard

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no insurmountable barrier except our own inherent weakness of purpose.

— Elbert Hubbard

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.

— Thomas H. Huxley

I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not. If I could, be... a great athlete and make a million a year, be a wit, a born -- vivant and a lady killer, as well as a philosopher, a philanthropist ... and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint s; the bon-vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably, at the outset of life. Be alike possible for a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more of less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully and pick out on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failure are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs carrying shame and gladness with them.

— William James

Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results.

— William James

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.

— William James

The man who tries to do something and fails is infinitely better than he who tries to do nothing and succeeds.

— Lloyd Jones

Failure is only postponed success as long as courage coaches ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.

— Herbert Kaufman

Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true.

— John Keats

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

— John Keats

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

— Charles F. Kettering

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

— Charles F. Kettering

We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently... to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

— Charles F. Kettering

We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

— Charles F. Kettering

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

— Michael Korda

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is for want of application, rather than of means that people fail,

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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

Never give a man up until he has failed at something he likes.

— Lewis E. Lawes

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

— Abraham Lincoln

Anyone seen on a bus after age thirty has been a failure in life.

— Duchess Loelia

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

— Cassius Longinus