Failure sounds like a very bad word but did you know that failing is actually good for us? When we fail, we find ourselves redirected and it shows us where we shouldn’t be. It gives an opportunity to reevaluate ourselves and come back stronger than before. Failure is never the end but simply just a beginning. After we fail, we will be able to identify what exactly is that we’re aiming for. In other words, failure makes your next chances quicker, easier, and surer. We have to take failures gracefully and understand that it will teach us many things than what a lifetime of success will. The lessons we get from our failures will push us to keep on going no matter how many times we fall because, in the end, it will all be worth it.
Learning from our mistakes won’t be easy but there’s nothing wrong if we just take one step at a time. We have to trust and believe that everything goes through a process including our lives. Nothing and no one will hand you anything; we all have to work hard for it and we all have to climb the ladder to get to the top. Each failure will teach us how to perfect our craft. You and I should never be afraid of failure. We must face it head on because running away from it will only keep us away from success.
We hope that these failure quotes we prepared for you remind you of the good things failure can bring in your life if you just look beyond what the word means.
Failure Quotes
1. Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. – Colin Powell
2. Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt
3. Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble. – Shah Rukh Khan
4. There can be no failure to a man who has not lost his courage, his character, his self-respect, or his self-confidence. He is still a King. – Orison Swett Marden
5. Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill
6. Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure. – Paulo Coelho
7. Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others. – Amelia Earhart
8. Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday. – Wilma Rudolph
9. Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
10. Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough. – Og Mandino
11. 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. – Erin Cummings
12. A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life. – Christopher Morley
13. 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
14. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. – Henry Ford
15. I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison
16. It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. – Bill Gates
17. Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. – James Altucher
18. Your personal life, your professional life, and your creative life are all intertwined. I went through a few very difficult years where I felt like a failure. But it was actually really important for me to go through that. Struggle, for me, is the most inspirational thing in the world at the end of the day – as long as you treat it that way. – Skylar Grey
19. There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. – Colin Powell
20. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence. – Colin Powell
21. Sometimes by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war. Donald Trump
22. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
23. Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness. – Oprah Winfrey
24. I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. – Michael Jordan
25. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. – Steve Jobs
26. ‘No one can make you successful; the will to success comes from within.’ I’ve made this my motto. I’ve internalized it to the point of understanding that the success of my actions and/or endeavors doesn’t depend on anyone else, and that includes a possible failure. – Fabrizio Moreira
27. Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. – Calvin Coolidge
28. A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. – John Burroughs
29. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. – C. S. Lewis
30. 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
31. There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. – Brene Brown
32. If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse. – Cory Booker
33. My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. – Abraham Lincoln
34. Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable. – Joe Biden
35. You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. – Zig Ziglar
36. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas A. Edison
37. Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe. – Sumner Redstone
38. The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows. – Buddha
39. If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure. H. – Jackson Brown, Jr.
40. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. – Andy Grove
41. Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles. – Jawaharlal Nehru
42. The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. – John C. Maxwell
43. 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
44. Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure. – Aisha Tyler
45. I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it. – Kobe Bryant
46. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. – James Joyce
47. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. – Elbert Hubbard
48. 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. – E. O. Wilson
49. What strikes me is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
50. I don’t fear pain or failure anymore because I’m too grateful for the pains and failures of my past – they have made me who I am, and most of the good things in my life are a direct result of them in some way. – Scott Derrickson
51. Having the positive belief that it will all be O.K. just means that you hustle and make it work because failure is not even an option in your own mind. – Natalie Massenet
52. Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul. – Douglas MacArthur
53. The failure to invest in youth reflects a lack of compassion and a colossal failure of common sense. – Coretta Scott King
54. When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
55. Failure is a word unknown to me. – Muhammad Ali Jinnah
56. Never be afraid to fail. Failure is only a stepping stone to improvement. Never be overconfident because that will block your improvement. – Tony Jaa
57. Success and failure are both part of life. Both are not permanent. – Shah Rukh Khan
58. I’m not going to get somewhere and say, ‘OK, I’m done.’ Success is never final; I’ll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them. – Conor McGregor
59. The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities. – Benjamin E. Mays
60. Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable. – Coco Chanel
61. Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure. – John C. Maxwell
62. There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you’re not innovating enough. – Elon Musk
63. I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby
64. Every stumble is not a fall, and every fall does not mean failure. – Oprah Winfrey
65. There is no such thing as failure. There are only results. – Tony Robbins
66. If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure. – Elon Musk
67. You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don’t win, at least you can be satisfied that you’ve tried. If you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you don’t set high goals, you don’t branch out, you don’t try – you don’t take the risk. – Rosalynn Carter
68. Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them. – John C. Maxwell
69. Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest. – Chanakya
70. Being human means you will make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, because failure is God’s way of moving you in another direction. – Oprah Winfrey
71. 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
72. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down. – Mary Pickford
73. 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
74. The story of Detroit’s bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat. – Ben Shapiro
75. Progress requires setbacks; the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try. – Henry Spencer
76. I used to think that divorce meant failure, but now I see it more as a step along the path of self-realization and growth. – Alana Stewart
77. Poverty is about people lacking the tools they need to get on in life. And solving it is about tackling educational failure, antisocial behavior, debt problems and addiction, and of course, it’s about work. – Theresa May
78. They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? – Fidel Castro
79. You know, failure hurts. Any kind of failure stings. If you live in the sting, you will – undoubtedly – fail. My way of getting past the sting is to say no, I’m just not going to let this get me down. – Sonia Sotomayor
80. It’s best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes. – Anne Baxter
81. I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed. – Dolly Parton
82. Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. – Confucius
83. 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
84. One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must, therefore, be treated like a king. – Abraham Maslow
85. I don’t take success and failure seriously. The only thing I do seriously is marching forward. If I fall, I get up and march again. – Kareena Kapoor Khan
86. 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. – Tony Robbins
87. There’s always failure. And there’s always disappointment. And there’s always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums. – Michael J. Fox
88. I don’t want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about. – Emma Watson
89. Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it. – Mia Hamm
90. The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success. – Paramahansa Yogananda
91. Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. – Richard Branson
92. When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure. – Myles Munroe
93. Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure. – Henry Petroski
94. Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop. – Richard Branson
95. Failure is a success if we learn from it. – Malcolm Forbes
96. 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. – Arianna Huffington
97. 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. – Henry Knox
98. If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. – Thomas J. Watson
99. An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. – Edwin Land
100. The entrepreneurial life is one of a challenge, work, dedication, perseverance, exhilaration, agony, accomplishment, failure, sacrifice, control, powerlessness but ultimately, extraordinary satisfaction. – David S. Rose
101. Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed. – Arnold Schwarzenegger
102. Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure. – Benjamin Disraeli
103. We all have anxiety about things. We all have little insecurities, but eventually, you have to face your fears if you want to be successful, and everybody has some fear of failure. – Nick Saban
104. 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
105. Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. – John Wooden
106. Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. – Dale Carnegie
107. If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost. – Zig Ziglar
108. Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. – J. K. Rowling
109. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life. – Theodore Roosevelt
110. A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren’t proud of what you’re doing, why should anybody else be? – Richard Branson
111. It’s about not having doubt in your mind and staying focused and not having any preconceived notion about failure. It’s just looking forward and staying positive. – Freya Tingley
112. 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
113. It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
114. 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
115. We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying. – Joyce Meyer
116. Divorce is never a pleasant experience. You look upon it as a failure. But I learned to be a different person once we broke up. Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success. – Michael Crawford
117. I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure. – Gordon Ramsay
118. Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act. – Maxwell Maltz
119. Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding. – Burt Rutan
120. Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results. – William James
121. As kids, we’re not taught how to deal with success; we’re taught how to deal with failure. If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again. If at first, you succeed, then what? – Charlie Sheen
122. Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are. – Viola Davis
123. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong. – Albert Bandura
124. My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them. – Jack Kerouac
