Failure typically refers to a lack of success or the inability to achieve a desired goal or outcome. It is often seen as the opposite of success and can be accompanied by feelings of disappointment, frustration, or defeat. Failure can occur in various areas of life, such as personal endeavors, professional pursuits, relationships, academics, sports, and more.
Failure is a natural part of life and is experienced by everyone at some point. It can arise from a variety of reasons, such as mistakes, setbacks, challenges, or unforeseen circumstances. Failure can be perceived as a negative outcome, but it can also provide valuable opportunities for growth, learning, and resilience.
How failure is interpreted and responded to can vary depending on individual perspectives and mindsets. Some may view failure as a setback and become discouraged or disheartened, while others may see it as a stepping stone toward improvement and future success. Failure can offer important lessons, insights, and experiences that can help shape character, build resilience, and foster personal or professional development.
It’s important to recognize that failure does not define a person’s worth or capabilities. It is a temporary outcome and does not necessarily reflect a person’s overall abilities, potential, or worthiness. Embracing a growth mindset, learning from failures, and using them as opportunities for improvement can lead to resilience, personal growth, and eventual success in future endeavors.
Failure Quotes
1. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill
2. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
― Thomas A. Edison
3. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
― Robert F. Kennedy
4. “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”
― Og Mandino
5. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
― Confucius
6. “Success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom”
― George S. Patton
7. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
8. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
― Napoleon Hill
9. “Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
― Richard Branson
10. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
― Nelson Mandela
11. “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.”
― Brene Brown
12. “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.”
― Ellen DeGeneres
13. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
― Michael Jordan
14. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. “When everything seems to be going against you remember that an airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
― Henry Ford
16. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett
17. “Winners never quit. And quitters never win.”
― Vince Lombardi
18. “If you didn’t succeed, it’s just as important to keep in mind that there has never been a success story without failure and lessons along the way.”
― Eric Christian
19. “There is no doubt in my mind that there are many ways to be a winner, but there is really only one way to be a loser and that is to fail and not look beyond the failure.”
― Kyle Rote Jr
20. “One fails forward toward success.”
― Charles Kettering
21. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”
― Coco Chanel
22. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
― Jack Canfield
23. “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
24. “Don’t bury your failures, let them inspire you.”
― Robert Kiyosaki
25. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
― Bill Gates
26. “You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence.”
― George Eliot
27. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
― C. S. Lewis
28. “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”
― Charles F. Kettering
29. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
― Eloise Ristad
30. “Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.”
― Napoleon Hill
31. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston Churchill
32. “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”
― Donald Trump
33. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
― Henry Ford
34. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
― Albert Einstein
35. “If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.”
― Zig Ziglar
36. “We’re born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.”
― Whoopi Goldberg
37. “There is no thing as failure, only learning experiences.”
― Anonymous
38. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
― Truman Capote
39. “A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
40. “Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”
― Anonymous
41. “Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.”
― James Altucher
42. “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
43. “Fear regret more than failure.”
― Taryn Rose
44. “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.”
― Shah Rukh Khan
45. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes.”
― Arianna Huffington
46. “I’ve failed over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
― Michael Jordan
47. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
― Henry Ford
48. “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.”
― J.K. Rowling
49. “Failure is enriching. It’s also important to accept that you’ll make mistakes—it’s how you build your expertise. The trick is to learn a positive lesson from all of life’s negative moments.”
― Alain Ducasse
50. “Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.”
― Marilyn Monroe
51. “Don’t live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.”
― Germany Kent
52. “No matter how dysfunctional your background, how broke or broken you are, where you are today, or what anyone else says, YOU MATTER, and your life matters!”
― Germany Kent
53. “All of us learned how to walk by failing.”
― J.R. Rim
54. “You are right, I do fall down a lot. But that wouldn’t be true if I never stood back up.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich
55. “Trust is the angels smiling when I’m crying because they see the other side of the world I haven’t come around to yet.”
― Helen Edwards
56. “When setbacks arise – and they will from time to time – regroup, recharge, refocus and refine.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru
57. “Life is designed to knock you down. It will knock you down time and time again, but it doesn’t matter how many times you fall – it matters how many times you get back up.”
― Lilly Singh
58. “When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep walking.”
― Sarah Jessica Parker
59. “When life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up.”
― Les Brown
60. “Everybody, at some point in their life, has fallen down and not felt like getting back up, but you have to, no matter how difficult it is.”
― Charlie Hunnam
61. “Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.”
― Sumner Redstone
62. “An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail.”
― Edwin Land
63. “Do not fear mistakes.”
― Benjamin Franklin
64. “Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
65. “If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.
66. “You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.”
― Maxwell Maltz
67. “For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.”
― Mary Kay Ash
68. “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
― Mike Murdock
69. “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
― James Cameron
70. “Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.”
― Robert H. Schuller
71. “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.”
― Zig Ziglar
72. “There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
― Oprah
73. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho
74. “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
75. “A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
― John Burroughs
76. “Anyone who attempts is not a failure.”
― Sarah Dessen
77. “The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.”
― Stephen McCranie
78. “No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
79. “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
80. “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
81. “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”
― Zig Ziglar
82. “Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”
― Oscar Wilde
83. “You always pass failure on your way to success.”
― Mickey Rooney
84. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
― Thomas A. Edison
85. “One who fears failure limits his activities.”
― Henry Ford
86. “Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
― Suzy Kassem
87. “My grandmother once told me, ‘Don’t let failure go to your heart, and don’t let success go to your head.’”
― Will Smith
88. “Losers quit when they fail. Winners fail until they succeed.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki
89. “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”
― Oprah Winfrey
90. “If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
― H.G. Wells
91. “Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone.”
― Deepak Chopra
92. “Don’t be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.”
― Lily Tomlin
93. “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 Ven Oech
94. “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.”
― Mike Ditka
95. “Sometimes the best gain is to lose.”
― George Herbert
96. “There are many victories worse than a defeat.”
― George Eliot
97. “The way most people fail is in not keeping up the heart.”
― Lady Gregory
98. “A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”
― Elbert Hubbard
99. “Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.”
― John C. Maxwell
100. “Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”
― George Edward Woodberry
101. “There’s no reason to fear (temporary) failure. What others may call a failure is only a temporary setback if you really believe in your dreams.”
― Kory Livingstone
102. “If I fail, I try again, and again, and again. If YOU fail, are you going to try again? The human spirit can handle much worse than we realize. It matters HOW you are going to FINISH. Are you going to finish strong?”
― Nick Vujicic
103. “It is no fun to fail, but you must pick yourself up and get back in the race. The only way you can grow is to challenge yourself beyond your present circumstances.”
― Les Brown
104. “Failure is an inescapable part of life and a critically important part of any successful life.”
― Tal Ben-Shahar
105. Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
― Bruce Lee
106. “Failure is success in progress.”
― Albert Einstein
107. “The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.”
― Thomas Edison
108. “So start to change your mind, that a failure can be kind, If we allow ourselves to learn from it.”
― Julie Hebert
109. “Failures are made only by those who fail to dare, not by those who dare to fail.”
― Lester B. Pearson
110. “The truth is that our mind needs failure! No great inventions would have come into existence without failure.”
― Thibaut Meurisse
111. “Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.”
― Oprah Winfrey
112. “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes backbone to lead the life you want.”
― Richard Yates
113. “Failure is good as long as it doesn’t become a habit.”
― Michael Eisner
114. “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”
― Beverly Sills
115. “Failure is a part of the process. You just learn to pick yourself back up.”
― Michelle Obama
116. “You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
― Barack Obama
117. “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never having a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
― George Eliot
118. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
― Richard Branson
119. “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
120. “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
― John F. Kennedy
121. “There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.”
― Swami Sivananda
122. “I never fail. It’s just that the people around me succeed more than I.”
― Carroll Bryant
123. “It is not failure to fail.”
― Roshani Chokshi
124. “Never feel shame for trying and failing for he who has never failed is he who has never tried.”
― Og Mandino
125. “Failure is when you talk yourself out of becoming something amazing.”
― Rudy Francisco
126. “For some unknown reason, success usually occurs in private, while failure occurs in full view.”
― Jill Shalvis
127. “Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.”
― Dottie Walters
128. “Sometimes failure is the beginning of success.”
― Astrid Scholte
129. “There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
― Chris Bradford
130. “The difference between Success and failure is not giving up.”
― Steven redhead
131. “The one who falls and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”
― Roy T. Bennett
132. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston S. Churchill
133. “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”
― John C. Maxwell
134. “Failure is constructive feedback that tells you to try a different approach to accomplish what you want.”
― Idowu Koyenikan
135. “Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.”
― Morihei Ueshiba
136. “Failures are foundation stones of the Success Forts.”
― Invajy
137. “I don’t let failure defeat me; instead I rise above it to make me stronger.”
― Amanda Ray
138. “You can learn a lot from failure, but that requires you to continue moving forward despite having failed.”
― Darcy Oordt
139. “If you accept failure as an opportunity to learn, it will change your whole perspective.”
― Catherine Pulsifer
140. “Don’t waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
141. “Life is full of screwups. You’re supposed to fail sometimes. It’s a required part of the human existance.”
― Sarah Dessen
142. “In any case, you must not confuse a single failure with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
143. “Success or failure is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacity.”
― Walter Scott
144. “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
― James Joyce
145. “Failure is an attitude, not an outcome.”
― Harvey MacKay
146. “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”
― Tom Krause
147. “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
― Abraham Lincoln
148. “Daring to fail is the beginning to success.”
― Invajy
149. “Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.”
― Mia Hamm
150. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
― Winston Churchill
151. “It is not the failure of others to appreciate the abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.”
― Confucius
152. “Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.”
― Jawaharlal Nehru
153. “All art is a failure. How one fails is a different matter.”
― Luc Tuymans
154. “It is not in the least likely that any life has ever been lived which was not a failure in the secret judgment of the person who lived it.”
― Mark Twain
155. “Some of the biggest failures I ever had were successes.”
― Pearl S. Buck
156. “In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.”
― Joseph Heller
157. “Every failure teaches a man something if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.”
― Charles Dickens
158. “About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.”
― Tommy Lasorda
159. “Many people dream of success. To me, success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection.”
― Soichiro Honda
160. “Success and failure are equally disastrous.”
― Tennessee Williams
