Motivational Quotes

Failure

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.

- James, William

Best Quotes about Failure

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.

Kettering, Charles F.

Everyone pushes a falling fence.

Proverb, Chinese

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.

Kettering, Charles F.

Even a tombstone says good things about a fellow who's down.

Some defeats are only installments to victory.

Riis, Jacob

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.

Kettering, Charles F.

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.

Engstrom, Ted W.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Wooden, John

We all have a few failures under our belt. It's what makes us ready for the successes.

Randy K. Milholland

10.

Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it's all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you're willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you're willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you've got the potential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.

Sugarman, Joseph

11.

Every failure is a step to success.

Whewell, William

12.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

Edward Albee

13.

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

Confucius

14.

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.

James, William

15.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

Roosevelt, Theodore

16.

Failure is an event, never a person.

Brown, William D.

17.

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.

Stein, Ben

18.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

19.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Carl Jung

20.

Sometimes the best gain is to lose.

Herbert, George

21.

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

Korda, Michael

22.

Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.

Proverb, African

23.

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

Hillyer, Robert S.

24.

Failures are divided into two classes -- those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

Salak, John Charles

25.

The greatest failure is a person who never admits that he can be a failure.

Weiskott, Gerald. N.

26.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Rohn, Jim

27.

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

Cole, Edwin Louis

28.

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.

Hubbard, Elbert

29.

I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it.

David Nicholls

30.

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.

Skinner, B(urrhus) F(rederic)

31.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

Seneca

32.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

Kennedy, Robert F.

33.

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

Eliot, George

34.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Thoreau, Henry David

35.

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.

Keats, John

36.

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

37.

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

Goizueta, Roberto

38.

Defeat should never be a source of discouragement, but rather a fresh stimulus.

South, Bishop Robert

39.

My downfall raises me to infinite heights.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

40.

He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.

Melville, Herman

41.

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.

Quentin Crisp

42.

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

Brown, Les

43.

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than I was and began diverting all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

J.K. Rowling

44.

Losing is a part of winning.

Munro, Dick

45.

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

Hill, Napoleon

46.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Gore Vidal

47.

Failure is not fatal; victory is not success.

Richardson, Tony

48.

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.

Vauvenargues, Marquis De

49.

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.

Albrecht, Karl

50.

In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try.

Viscott, David