Quotes about failure
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Rabindranath Tagore photo

“My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

28
Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912)

Leon Trotsky photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Virginia Woolf photo
George Washington photo
Zig Ziglar photo
Zig Ziglar photo

“Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

See You at the Top (2000)

Zig Ziglar photo
Zig Ziglar photo

“Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Variant: Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

Zig Ziglar photo

“Failure is an event not a person”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Variant: Failing is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.

Zig Ziglar photo
Alfred Adler photo

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is fro+m among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

Source: What Life Could Mean to You

Hamis Kiggundu photo

“The gap between success and failure is reason based on reality.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his speech during the launch for his book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_As_The_World_Masterpiece, "Reason as the World Masterpiece" https://www.amazon.co.uk/REASON-AS-WORLD-MASTERPIECE-UGANDAS/dp/9970652001 in Kampala, Book launch Speach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKAoWtWgP2U (March 10 2021)
2020s

Vikram Sarabhai photo

“He said that failures compos us more as compared to successes.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Orison Swett Marden photo
Ben Shapiro photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“There is no such thing as “safe” Socialism. If it's safe, it's not Socialism. And if it's Socialism, it's not safe. The signposts of Socialism point downhill to less freedom, less prosperity, downhill to more muddle, more failure. If we follow them to their destination, they will lead this nation into bankruptcy.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Central Council ("The Historic Choice") (20 March 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102990
Leader of the Opposition

Margaret Thatcher photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Attributed to Winston Churchill in The Prodigal Project : Book I : Genesis (2003) by Ken Abraham and Daniel Hart, p. 224 and other places, though no source attribution is given. It actually derives from an advertising campaign for Budweiser beer in the late 1930s.
Misattributed
Variant: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/03/success-final/

LeBron James photo
Swami Samarpanananda photo

“Wonder not at the failures, rather learn to marvel at success.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Junglezen Sheru ( Page 89 )

James Baldwin photo

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Hamis Kiggundu photo

“Ones ability to adapt or transform in line with the prevailing circumstances is the main path to actual prosperity or failure in life.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.96 (July 2018)

“How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted – on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness…”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.
Paul Churchland. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. (1st ed.). MIT Press. 1995. pp. 181: Talking about Freudian analysis.

Johnny Cash photo

“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 (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Variant: You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sone. 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.

John C. Maxwell photo
T. B. Joshua photo

“I cannot define failure because I don't believe in failure. There is no failure in my book. All I see is success, directed by the Spirit of God.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

In an interview about his biography - "Untold Story Of A Mystery Prophet TB Joshua" https://www.modernghana.com/news/210061/untold-story-of-a-mystery-prophet-tb-joshua.html Modern Ghana (April 6 2009)

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

7 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)
Context: The white races did, of course, give some things to the natives, and they were the worst gifts that they could possibly have made, those plagues of our own modern world-materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism and syphilis. For the rest, since these peoples possessed qualities of their own which were superior to anything we could offer them, they have remained essentially unchanged. Where imposition by force was attempted, the results were even more disastrous, and common sense, realizing the futility of such measures, should preclude any recourse to their introduction. One solitary success must be conceded to the colonizers: everywhere they have succeeded in arousing hatred, a hatred that urges these peoples, awakened from their slumbers by us, to rise and drive us out. Indeed, it looks almost as though they had awakened solely and simply for that purpose! Can anyone assert that colonization has increased the number of Christians in the world? Where are those conversions en masse which mark the success of Islam? Here and there one finds isolated islets of Christians, Christians in name, that is, rather than by conviction; and that is the sum total of the successes of this magnificent Christian religion, the guardian of supreme Truth! Taking everything into consideration, Europe's policy of colonization has ended in a complete failure.

Carl Sandburg photo
Mark Manson photo
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed photo
Karl Popper photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“Failure inspires winners.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Maya Angelou photo
E.M. Forster photo

“With this type of person knocking about, and constantly crossing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to feel, the experiment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.
With this type of person knocking about, and constantly crossing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to feel, the experiment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure. But it may well be hailed as a tragedy, the tragedy being that no device has been found by which these private decencies can be transmitted to public affairs. As soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays.

Henri Fayol photo
Theodore Kaczynski photo

“Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.”

"The Power Process", item 36
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

As quoted in The World's Religions (1976) by Sir James Norman Dalrymple Anderson, p. 61

Tom Kenny photo
Soichiro Honda photo
Sri Chinmoy photo
C. A. R. Hoare photo

“Failures are much more fun to hear about afterwards; they are not so funny at the time.”

C. A. R. Hoare (1934) British computer scientist

The Emperor's Old Clothes

Kiichiro Toyoda photo

“The thieves may be able to follow the design plans and produce a loom. But we are modifying and improving our looms every day. They do not have the expertise gained from the failures it took to produce the original. We need not be concerned. We need only continue as always, making our improvements.”

Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1952) Japanese businessman

Kiichiro Toyoda in The Toyota Way, 2001: Quoted in: "Toyota quotes," New York Times, Feb. 10, 2008.
Comment by Kiichiro Toyoda after thieves had stolen the plans for a new loom from his father's workshop.

Jimmy Carter photo

“Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, " I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Confucius photo
Hesiod photo

“But he who neither thinks for himself nor learns from others, is a failure as a man.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: Works and Days and Theogony

George Carlin photo

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, that we've enjoyed some good times this evening, and enjoyed some laughter together, I feel it is my obligation to remind you of some of the negative, depressing, dangerous, life-threatening things that life is really all about; things you have not been thinking about tonight, but which will be waiting for you as soon as you leave the theater or as soon as you turn off your television sets. Anal rape, quicksand, body lice, evil spirits, gridlock, acid rain, continental drift, labor violence, flash floods, rabies, torture, bad luck, calcium deficiency, falling rocks, cattle stampedes, bank failure, evil neighbors, killer bees, organ rejection, lynching, toxic waste, unstable dynamite, religious fanatics, prickly heat, price fixing, moral decay, hotel fires, loss of face, stink bombs, bubonic plague, neo-Nazis, friction, cereal weevils, failure of will, chain reaction, soil erosion, mail fraud, dry rot, voodoo curse, broken glass, snake bite, parasites, white slavery, public ridicule, faithless friends, random violence, breach of contract, family scandals, charlatans, transverse myelitis, structural defects, race riots, sunspots, rogue elephants, wax buildup, killer frost, jealous coworkers, root canals, metal fatigue, corporal punishment, sneak attacks, peer pressure, vigilantes, birth defects, false advertising, ungrateful children, financial ruin, mildew, loss of privileges, bad drugs, ill-fitting shoes, widespread chaos, Lou Gehrig's disease, stray bullets, runaway trains, chemical spills, locusts, airline food, shipwrecks, prowlers, bathtub accidents, faulty merchandise, terrorism, discrimination, wrongful cremation, carbon deposits, beef tapeworm, taxation without representation, escaped maniacs, sunburn, abandonment, threatening letters, entropy, nine-mile fever, poor workmanship, absentee landlords, solitary confinement, depletion of the ozone layer, unworthiness, intestinal bleeding, defrocked priests, loss of equilibrium, disgruntled employees, global warming, card sharks, poisoned meat, nuclear accidents, broken promises, contamination of the water supply, obscene phone calls, nuclear winter, wayward girls, mutual assured destruction, rampaging moose, the greenhouse effect, cluster headaches, social isolation, Dutch elm disease, the contraction of the universe, paper cuts, eternal damnation, the wrath of God, and PARANOIAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Henry Miller photo

“Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.”

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Jack Ma photo

“If you don’t give up, You still have a Chance to Win. Giving up is a Great Failure.”

Jack Ma (1964) Chinese businessman

Source: Jack Ma Quotes That Will Change Your Life Forever https://www.yourselfquotes.com/jack-ma-quotes/

Jiri Lev photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“People who avoid failure also avoid success.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Bill Cosby photo
Howard Zinn photo

“Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards, Ch. 24

Benjamin Creme photo
Molière photo
Robin Hobb photo
Roméo Dallaire photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“We reject the dissent's contention that our approach, by "largely return[ing] the task of defining the contours of Eighth Amendment protection to political majorities," leaves "‘[c]onstitutional doctrine [to] be formulated by the acts of those institutions which the Constitution is supposed to limit,'" […] By reaching a decision supported neither by constitutional text nor by the demonstrable current standards of our citizens, the dissent displays a failure to appreciate that "those institutions which the Constitution is supposed to limit" include the Court itself. To say, as the dissent says, that "‘it is for us ultimately to judge whether the Eighth Amendment permits imposition of the death penalty,'" (quoting Enmund v. Florida) -- and to mean that as the dissent means it, i. e., that it is for us to judge, not on the basis of what we perceive the Eighth Amendment originally prohibited, or on the basis of what we perceive the society through its democratic processes now overwhelmingly disapproves, but on the basis of what we think "proportionate" and "measurably contributory to acceptable goals of punishment" -- to say and mean that, is to replace judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Stanford v. Kentucky (1989) (plurality part, case later overruled by Roper); decided June 26, 1989.
1980s

Chris Martin photo

“What changed for me was – I don’t want to go through life being scared of it, being scared of love, being scared of rejection, being scared of failure.”

Chris Martin (1977) musician, co-founder of Coldplay

On a Zane Lowe interview, 2014. source https://youtube.com/watch?v=9pF7bS_4JnE

Aga Khan IV photo
Michael Jordan photo

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Variant: I can appect failure, but I cannot accept not trying.

Slavoj Žižek photo

“Darcy wants to present himself to Elizabeth as a proud gentleman, and he gets from her the message 'your pride is nothing but contemptible arrogance.' After the break in their relationship each discovers, through a series of accidents, the true nature of the other - she the sensitive and tender nature of Darcy, he her real dignity and wit - and the novel ends as it should, with their marriage. The theoretical interest of this story lies in the fact that the failure of their first encounter, the double misrecognition concerning the real nature of the other, functions as a positive condition of the final outcome: we cannot say 'if, from the very beginning, she had recognized his real nature and he hers, their story could have ended at once with their marriage.' Let us take a comical hypothesis that the first encounter of the future lovers was a success - that Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal. What would happen? Instead of being bound together in true love they would become a vulgar everyday couple, a liaison of an arrogant, rich man and a pretentious, every-minded young girl… If we want to spare ourselves the painful roundabout route through the misrecognition, we miss the truth itself: only the working-through of the misrecognition allows us to accede to the true nature of the other and at the same time to overcome our own deficiency - for Darcy, to free himself of his false pride; for Elizabeth, to get rid of her prejudices.”

67
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Albert Bandura photo

“Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.”

[Self-efficacy: The exercise of control, Bandura, Albert, w:Albert Bandura, 1997, W. H. Freeman, New York, 9780716728504, http://books.google.com/books?id=eJ-PN9g_o-EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bandura+isbn:9780716728504&hl=en&ei=HAwYTbKsLpTmsQPp8cCPCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] (p. 77)

Coco Chanel photo

“Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

As quoted in Believing in Ourselves (1992) by Armand Eisen, p. 15

Mahadev Govind Ranade photo
Yohji Yamamoto photo

“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion. If I can feel those things in works by others, then I like them.”

Yohji Yamamoto (1943) Japanese fashion designer

Kiyokazu Washida. The Past, the Feminine, the Vain in Talking to Myself (2002), Ch. 2: The Feminine, or the Gap Which Cannot be Filled.

Hidetaka Miyazaki photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Emil M. Cioran photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Book of Delusions (1936)

Chester W. Nimitz photo

“Is the proposed operation likely to succeed?
What might be the consequences of failure?
Is it in the realm of practicability in terms of matériel and supplies?”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

"Three favorite rules of thumb" Nimitz had printed on a card he kept on his desk, as quoted in LIFE magazine (10 July 1944)

John Wooden photo

“The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court

John Wooden photo

“Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and Off the Court (1997)

John Wooden photo

“You are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Source: Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organizaion

B.F. Skinner photo
Ayn Rand photo

“I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.”

Variant: Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
Source: Anthem

Paul A. Samuelson photo
Moira Lister photo

“I do feel one learns more from one's failures than from one's successes”

Moira Lister (1923–2007) actress

Sunday Times interview (1983)