Quotes
Instructive Quotes About Failure
I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.
Michael Jordan
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
Bill Gates
If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
Zig Ziglar
My reputation grows with every failure.
George Bernard Shaw
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas A. Edison
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.
Jim Rohn
Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.
Napoleon Hill
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Steve Jobs
We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.
Robert E. Lee
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
Zig Ziglar
If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.
Coco Chanel
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
George Eliot
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
George Bernard Shaw
The wisest of the wise may err.
Aeschylus
There is no failure except in no longer trying.
Elbert Hubbard
I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.
Paulo Coelho
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
Zig Ziglar
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
Lyndon B. Johnson
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.
Nikki Giovanni
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.
J. K. Rowling
There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.
Tony Robbins
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
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher
To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.
Denis Waitley
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
B. F. Skinner
It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.
Charles Kettering
Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.
Orison Swett Marden
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
Woody Allen
Sometimes the best gain is to lose.
George Herbert
Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.
Lily Tomlin
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.
Tony Robbins
See also