Failure - Quotes

Failure does not mean you …

… accomplished nothing; It means you have learned something.

… are inferior; It means you are not perfect.

… do not have it; It means you have to do something in a different way.

… have been a fool; It means you had a lot of faith.

… have been disgraced; It means you were willing to try.

… should give up; It means you must try harder.

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

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

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

A failure usually establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough. - Christian Nestell Bovee

A man may fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. - John Burroughs

Better to fail in the pursuit of the noble, than to succeed in the search for the mean. - Ivan Panin

Companies fail when they continue doing for too long that which made them successful in the past. - John Young

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. - Sivananda

Do not thin of today’s failure, but of the success that may come tomorrow. - Helen Keller

Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s okay to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. - H. Stanley Judd

Don’t be embarrassed by your failures. Learn from them and start again. - Sir Richard Branson

Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. - Louis E. Boone

Don't fear failure – Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. - Bruce Lee

Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try. - Sherman Finesilver 

Every failure is a step to success. - William Whewell

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure. - George Eliot

Failures are a part of life. If you don’t fail, you’ll never learn. If you don’t learn, you’ll will never change. - Unknown

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure. It just means you haven't succeeded yet. - Robert Schuller

Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence. - Zig Ziglar

Failure is a chance to rediscover and improve yourself. Every failure lets you discover your strengths and weaknesses and gives you an opportunity to work on them. - Unknown

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. - Zig Ziglar

Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you’ve got something to share. - Steve Harvey

Failure is a teacher – a harsh one, but the best. - Unknown

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes. - John Dewey

Failure is just another part of the culture of innovation. Accept it and become stronger. - Albert Yu

Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up. - Unknown

Failing is not just an option when you quit. It is inevitable. - Michelle A. Homme

Failure is not the enemy, but a life-changing experience. It is a human experience, and it prepares the way for us to grow and transform our lives. - Sobonfu Somé

Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success. - Arianna Huffington

Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. - Denis Waitley

Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again. - Henry Ford

Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success. - Leigh Mitchell Hodges

Failure is success if we learn from it. - Malcolm S Forbes

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. - Truman Capote

Failure is the mother of success. - Unknown

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

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. - Unknown

Failures are but mileposts on the road to success. - Unknown

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement. - C. S. Lewis

Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial. - H. Ross Perot

Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

Few things are impracticable in themselves; and 'tis for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. - Denis Waitley

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping. - Augustus Hare

Hast thou fallen? Do not groan and lament: rather be thankful for the opportunity given thee to rise once more. - Ivan Panin

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – try to please everybody. - Herbert Bayard Swope

I don't believe in failure, because simply by saying you've failed, you've admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who never try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them. - Sarah Dessen

If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress. - Calvin Coolidge

If you are doing your best, you will not have time to worry about failure. -Robert Silliman Hillyer 

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down. - Mary Pickford

If you must fail ... fail spectacularly! - Ransom Riggs

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. - Thomas J. Watson, Snr

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative. - Woody Allen 

In some attempts, it is glorious even to fail. - Longinus

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

It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again. -Charles Kettering

It is better to try and fail than never to have tried at all. - Unknown

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 fail by default. - J.K. Rowling

It is okay to experience a stay in the ‘house of failure’ as long you do not get the thrill of staying there permanently. - Unknown

It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success. - Charlotte Whitton

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. - Barack Obama

Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. - Ken Kesey

Many great people have experience some kind of failure. They build on the lessons from failing to become great. - Lailah Gifty Akita

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison

Many people are afraid to fail, so they don't try. They may dream, talk, and even plan, but they don't take that critical step of putting their money and their effort on the line. To succeed in business, you must take risks. Even if you fail, that's how you learn. There has never been, and will never be, an Olympic skater who didn't fall on the ice. - Donald Trump

Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth. - Richelle E. Goodrich

Most important thing in life ... is learning how to fall. - Jeannette Walls

Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. - Eckhart Tolle

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

No man fails who does his best. - Orison Swett Marden

No man is a failure who is enjoying life. - William Feather

Nobody else is paying as much attention to your failures as you are… To everyone else, it’s just a blip on the radar screen, so just move on. - Jerry Zucker

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. - Napoleon Hill

One great cause of failure is the lack of concentration. - Unknown

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. - Robert Kennedy

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits. - Robert Louis Stevenson

Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself. - Marquis De Vauvenargues

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

Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure. - Edward Eggleston

Pull your failures to pieces looking for the reason. - Unknown

Remember that failure is an event, not a person. - Unknown 

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. - Roger von Oech

So, you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that 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. - Tom Robbins

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

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting. - William James

The failures of the past prepare the triumphs of the future. - Max Muller

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure. - Chinese Proverb

The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find. - E. H. Chapin

The hallmark of a failure is, almost without exception, a person who is indecisive and changes his decisions very often. - Unknown

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail. - Napoleon Hill

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by failures. - Sir Humphry Davy

The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying. - John C. Maxwell

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows. - Buddha

The only thing in life achieved without effort is failure. - Unknown

The only time you do not fail is the last time you try anything – and it works. - William Strong

The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth the power and will to succeed. - Edwin Percy Whipple

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. - Paramahansa Yogananda

There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self-respect, or his self-confidence. - Orison Swett Marden

There is no failure except in no longer trying. - Elbert Hubbard

There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient. - Sivananda

There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that – to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. - George Eliot

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. - Robert F. Kennedy

Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is. - Bill Wilson

Time and again we fail ... and each time we fail, we rise up again and continue, determined this time to fail better. - Paul McCauley

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give. - W. Somerset Maugham

To fail is a natural consequence of trying. To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again. - David Viscott

To many men, moderate success is only another aspect of failure. - Charles Tomlinson

To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been. - Chester Barnard

We are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities. - Unknown

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

We learn from failure, not from success! - Bram Stoker

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

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. - Unknown

You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still do not win, at least you can be satisfied that you tried. - Rosalynn Carter

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. - Johnny Cash

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. - Johnny Cash

You can't let your failures define you – you have to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next time. - Barack Obama

You must expect failure after failure after failure before you succeed. - Edwin H. Land

You never fail until you stop trying. - Unknown

You only fail if you do less than your best! - Unknown