Failure Quotes
Failure is delay not defeat. It is almost certain that we will experience failure in the pursuit of success, but the ability to bounce back and keep trying is key. The truth remains that no great success was ever achieved without failure at some point.
Below you will find an array of failure quotes and sayings. We hope these quotes will encourage you to keep trying no matter how many times you fail.
70 Powerful Quotes About Failure & Not Giving Up
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”– Bill Gates
“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
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”– Confucius
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”– C. S. Lewis
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”– Barack Obama
“No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.“– Napoleon Hill
“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”– Buddha
“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 master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.”– Stephen McCranie
“Failure is success in progress.”– Albert Einstein
“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
– Denis Waitley
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”– Maya Angelou
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”– Albert Einstein
“When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”– Eloise Ristad
“I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.”– Anthony Robbins
“A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.”– Elmer G. Letterman
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”– Richard Branson
“I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.”– Oprah Winfrey
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”– Michael Jordan
“There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”– Tom Krause
“Life is full of screwups. You’re supposed to fail sometimes. It’s a required part of the human existance.”– Sarah Dessen
“Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.”– Marilyn Monroe
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”– Theodore Roosevelt
“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”– H.G. Wells
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of a greater or equal benefit.”– Napoleon Hill
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”– Michael Jordan
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”– Samuel Beckett
“An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”– Charles F. Kettering
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”– Henry Ford
“A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”– John Burroughs
“Anyone who attempts is not a failure.”– Sarah Dessen
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”– Truman Capote
“No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”– James Cameron
“Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.”– Shah Rukh Khan
“Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”– Virgil Thomson
“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.”– Kevin Bacon
“There is no failure except in no longer trying.”– Elbert Hubbard
“All my successes have been built on my failures.”– Benjamin Disraeli
“It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.”– Zig Ziglar
“In any case, you must not confuse a single failure with a final defeat.“– F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Your dream doesn’t have an expiration date. Take a deep breath and try again.”– Unknown
“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”– George Eliot
“Failure is an attitude, not an outcome.”– Harvey MacKay
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”– Robert F. Kennedy
“Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”– Malcolm X
“Success builds character, failure reveals it.”– Dave Checkett
“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”– Zig Ziglar
“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”– Napoleon Hill
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”– Mark Twain
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”– Ken Robinson
“Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.”– Napoleon Hill
“Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.”– Mike Ditka
“I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”– Herbert Bayard Swope
“Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.”– Zig Ziglar
“It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience.”– Lupita Nyong’o
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”– Thomas Edison
“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”– Jack Canfield
“Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”– Confucius
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”– Sophocles
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”– Oliver Goldsmith
“No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.”– Chris Hardwick
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”– Mark Zuckerberg
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”– Winston Churchill
“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”– John C. Maxwell
“Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”– Robert T. Kiyosaki
“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”– Suzy Kassem
“You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. 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
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”– George Bernard Shaw
“Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.”– John Wooden