Failure Quotes

It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition-and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing that gives out and then that-"Bugs"as such little faults and difficulties are called show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached.

Those who won't take a chance don't have a chance.

We hoped to land a wild cat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche. Instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping about in the water.

A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is. And lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you'll go out of business.

Fall forward. Here's what I mean: Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in his career - the most in the history of baseball. But you don't hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward. Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn't either - because number 1,001 was the light bulb. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

Conquering the world and changing it, I do not think it can succeed.

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now

It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.

Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.

There was never any fear for me, no fear of failure. If I miss a shot, so what?

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

The greatest accomplishment is not in never failing, but in rising again after you fall.

The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Success is outliving your failures

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.

Failing is another stepping-stone to greatness.

Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.

The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything. Do not be afraid to make mistakes providing you do not make the same one twice.

The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.

I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

Success is a miserable teacher. It tempts intelligent people to believe they cannot lose. And it is an unreliable guide to the future.

The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.

As long as you are trying your very best, there can be no question of failure.

I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all futility.

Failure is often the line of least persistence.

One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed.

Each success brings with it the potential of failureand each failure brings with it the potential of success.

Don't be afraid to fail big, to dream big.

We want to avoid pain and have pleasure, so if our early attempts to achieve our dreams fail, we want to avoid the pain of future failure and rejection, so we stop trying and write it off with a broadbrush, "I'm just not driven enough, not well educated enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough."

We are not a failure just because we fail at something. Nobody is a failure unless they quit trying!

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Success often lies just the other side of failure.

Human nature is the same everywhere; it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.

What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

I had become so accustomed to succeeding that I no longer even remembered what it was like to fail.

If you worry about yesterday's failures, then today's successes will be few. The future depends on what we do in the present

Some falls the means are happier to rise.

A reporter called on Edison to interview him about a substitute for lead in the manufacture of storage batteries that the scientist was seeking. Edison informed the man that he had made 20,000 experiments but none had worked. "Aren't you discouraged by all this waste of effort?" the reporter asked. Edison: "Waste! There's nothing wasted. I have discovered 20,000 things that won't work."

The road to the promised land runs past Sinai. The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims up on them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man - and I will show you a failure.

Success and happiness spring from facing failure after failure with enthusiasm.

I didn’t fail ten thousand times.I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times,materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.

The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

You must always be prepared. Make sure to look at things from all angles. If you are not prepared you will fail.

I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

The most painful thing to experience is not defeat but regret

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don't always feel like I'm a success. That's right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I've just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I'm trying to communicate with.

Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow-never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.

It's too bad failures don't give seminars. Wouldn't that be valuable? If you meet a guy who has messed up his life for forty years, you've just got to say, 'John, if I bring my journal and promise to take good notes, would you spend a day with me?'

Failure is a signpost to turn you in another direction.

To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

You fail in your thoughts, or you prevail in your thoughts only.