Top 100 Failure Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best failure quotes ever written, picked out of the full failure archive on QuoteForever. You will find John C. Maxwell, Brian Tracy, Eric Hoffer and Marie Forleo among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

Don't be afraid of failure, be afraid of not trying in the first place.

2

Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes, and for your failures. You can't go blaming others, or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.

3

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.

4

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.

5

We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.

6

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

7

The one phrase you can use is that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan.

8

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.

9

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

10

the knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion.

11

You can't dwell on what happened. You can't live even a moment stewing in bitterness.

12

If I were to say, 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said, 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life.

13

Historically, defense spending cuts have preceded increased international turmoil as America's global enemies sense a failure of will.

14

The main thing is not a matter of wanting to win; the main thing is being scared to lose.

15

I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault.

16

Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply.

17

Be prepared to ride the cycles and trends of life; success is never permanent, and failure is never final.

18

Failure is a prerequisite for great success. If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.

19

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

20

One fails forward toward success.

21

In all pursuits men complain of failure when they have not attained the measure of success they proposed to themselves.

22

A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.

23

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

24

My life has been nothing but a failure.

25

Remember your past mistakes just long enough to profit by them.

26

You need to learn what people have done, but you need to learn where they have failed... Usually when they fail it is in the execution.

27

Success builds character, failure reveals it.

28

Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.

29

Great individuals make great successes out of failure.

30

If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

31

Educational institutes can no longer be prizes in church politics or furnish berths for failure in other walks of life.

32

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

33

I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.

34

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

35

Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.

36

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical

37

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

38

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life.

39

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

40

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren't where you want to be, you will always be a failure.

41

The world is divided into two categories: failures and unknowns.

42

In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain (as long as it was done out of love, not personal glory)

43

I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large.

44

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

45

Pure innovation is more gross than error.

46

The only failure is not to try.

47

There is an Eye that never sleeps, Beneath the wind of night. There is an ear that never shuts, When sinks the beams of light. There is an Arm that never tires, When human strength gives way. There is a Love that never fails, When earthly loves decay.

48

It is easier to win than to fail. Everybody sides with the winner. But the failure walks alone.

49

To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.

50

Failure may be just a step toward your eventual goal.

51

The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.

52

I have been disappointed many times, but never defeated.

53

The confirmed man of trout should resolve to get along with wood ticks. Any other procedure would fail because the wood tick is determined to get along with trout fishermen.

54

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

55

Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.

56

Any housing solution that involves paying for industrially produced building materials and commercial building contractors is doomed to certain failure. If houses are to be built at all, in sufficient quantity, they must be built without money. We must go right outside the framework of the money system, bypass the factories, and ignore the contractors.

57

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

58

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.

59

Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.

60

Nagging questions remain: Where is the line between making the most of one's potential and reaching for the unattainable? Where is the line between education as a tool and education as a kind of magic? The line is blurred and that is why when education fails, disillusionment is so bitter.

61

As an outside; don't worry about failure, because failure will take care of itself. Focus on success.

62

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

63

Every discoverer of a new truth, or inventor of the method which evolves it, makes a dozen, perhaps fifty, useless combinations, experiments, or trials for one successful one. In the realm of electricity or of mechanics there is no objection to this. But when such rejected failures involve a torture of animals, sometimes fearful in its character, there is a distinct objection to it.

64

Something is wanting, and something must be done, or we shall be involved in all the horror of failure, and civil war without a prospect of its termination.

65

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

66

When I examine the conclusion [on experiments with the electric light bulb experiments published in the Herald] which everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize as a conspicuous failure, trumpeted as a wonderful success, I [conclude]... that the writer ... must either be very ignorant, and the victim of deceit, or a conscious accomplice in what is nothing less than a fraud upon the public.

67

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

68

Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us

69

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

70

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

71

Zeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment.

72

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

73

Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure.

74

To me the greatest moment in an experiment is always just before I learn whether the particular idea is a good or a bad one. Thus even a failure is exciting, and most of my ideas have of course been wrong.

75

Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing.

76

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

77

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

78

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.

79

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

80

They who have conquered doubt and fear have conquered failure.

81

Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.

82

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.

83

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

84

Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.

85

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

86

American naturalist John Burroughs put it, “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

87

Some people will go to the opening of an envelope. They live their lives in the public eye and get off on it, they need it. They need that kind of adoration. If their name isn't in the tabloids once a week they feel like a failure.

88

You cannot learn anything from success, you only learn from failure.

89

It's not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

90

Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. "Success is dangerous," the painter Pablo Picasso said. "One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

91

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.

92

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

93

I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure.

94

You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.

95

Don't buy into the notion that mistakes can somehow be avoided. They can't be.

96

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don't want to make mistakes.

97

You are the only person who can label what you do a failure. Failure is subjective.

98

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

99

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

100

Without failure there is no achievement.

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