Motivational Quotes

Failure

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.

- Waitley, Denis

Best Quotes about Failure

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

Edison, Thomas A.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

Walt Whitman

Turn your scars into stars

Schuller, Robert H.

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

Loelia, Duchess

If you've never failed you've never tried.

Losing is a part of winning.

Munro, Dick

Men do not fail; they give up trying.

Root, Elihu

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

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

Salak, John Charles

10.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

11.

Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults -- Ah! there is the sting of life.

Wilde, Oscar

12.

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

Barrie, Sir James M.

13.

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

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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

Seneca

15.

Your failures won't hurt you until you start blaming them on others.

16.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Nixon, Richard M.

17.

From time to time, life as a leader can look hopeless. To help you, consider a man who lived through this: Failed in business at age 31. Defeated for the legislature at 32. Again failed in business at 34. Sweetheart died at 35. Had a nervous breakdown at 36. Defeated in election at 38. Defeated for Congress at 43. Defeated for Congress at 46. Defeated for Congress at 48. Defeated for Senate at 55. Defeated for Vice President at 56. Defeated for Senate at 58. Elected President at age 60. This man was Abraham Lincoln.

18.

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.

Clemenceau, Georges

19.

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

Clarke, J. Richard

20.

Failure is not an option.

Movie, Apollo 13

21.

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

22.

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.

Feather, William

23.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it.

J.K. Rowling

24.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

25.

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

Kettering, Charles F.

26.

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

James, William

27.

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

28.

All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

29.

The wise man realistically accepts as part of life and builds a philosophy to meet them and make the most of them. He lives on the principle of nothing attempted, nothing gained and is resolved that if he fails he is going to fail while trying to succeed.

Peterson, Wilferd A.

30.

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

South, Bishop Robert

31.

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.

Burford, Frank

32.

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.

Baldwin, James

33.

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

Chase, Ilka

34.

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.

Robbins, Anthony

35.

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.

Miller, Joaquin

36.

You can give in to the failure messages and be a bitter deadbeat of excuses. Or you can choose to be happy and positive and excited about life.

Williams, A.L.

37.

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

Dorothea Brande

38.

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

Kaufman, Herbert

39.

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

Cole, Edwin Louis

40.

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

Carl Jung

41.

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

Bristol, Claude M.

42.

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

43.

There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.

Robbins, Anthony

44.

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

Aoki, Rocky

45.

I cannot give the formula for success, but I can give you the formula of failure -- which is try to please everybody.

Swope, Herbert B.

46.

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.

Gillies, Jerry

47.

The man who fails because he aims astray or because he does not aim at all is to be found everywhere.

Swinnerton, Frank

48.

There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.

Waitley, Denis

49.

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

50.

The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.

Miller, Henry