83 Best Quotes About Failure

We usually perceive our failures to be more public than our success and often try to avoid anyone knowing about them.  

At some point, we all struggle and doubt ourselves and often question our unconventional ideas for fear of failure.

Many great people and businesses failed many times before making a success of themselves.  

Take Thomas Edison, for example; he failed 10,000 times before finally creating a successful incandescent light bulb.

Another example is Dyson, pioneered by James Dyson, who created 5,127 prototypes and failed on 5,126 of them before successfully making the fantastic bagless vacuum cleaner.

The famed J. K. Rowling, the author of the “Harry Potter” series, was rejected 12 times by publishers before seeing the promise in her books and decided to publish them. One of my favorite stories.

Through these many lessons of failure by great people, I hope you can see that failure is a part of life. Through our journey, we will have many failures before getting to that point of great success.

Today I wanted to share my favorite failure quotes with you that help me get through tough times when things aren’t going right, and I fail at something.  

I hope these quotes about failure will help you see that failure is useful in life.

quotes about failure

Quotes About Failure

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Thomas A. Edison

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Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.

John Wooden

Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

Coco Chanel

Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Jack Canfield

Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better how you react to it.

Mia Hamm

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

John C. Maxwell

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

Ken Robinson

Failure is success in progress.

Albert Einstein

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

Brene Brown

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.

Andy Grove

Failure is an attitude, not an outcome.

Harvey MacKay

Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.
Marilyn Monroe

Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.

Arianna Huffington

We are all failures – at least the best of us are.

J. M. Barrie

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Christ Bradford

Giving up is the only sure way to fail.

Gena Showalter

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

C.S. Lewis

It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.

Zig Ziglar

When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.

Eloise Ristad

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.

Confucius

Don’t be afraid to fail be afraid not to try.
Michael Jordan

What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.

Malcom Mclaren

It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Bill Gates

There is no success without failure and losses.

John C Maxwell

To be ready to fail is to be prepared for success.

Jose Bergamin’

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

John F Kennedy

I’d rather be partly greater than entirely useless.

Neal Shusterman

Failure is an important part of your growth. Don’t be afraid to fail.
Michelle Obama

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

Lance Armstrong

When you take risks you learn there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.

Ellen Degeneres

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

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

Failure Quotes

With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.

Criss Jami

If you fail, never give up, because F.A.I.L. means first attempt in learning.

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam

Failure is an option whenever you take a leap of faith. In every risk there can be success or a lesson.

James Cameron

Failure is the tuition you pay for success.

Walter Brunell

Failure is success if we learn from it.
Malcolm Forbes

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.

Dale Carnegie

Failure is the key to success; Each mistake teaches us something.

Morihei Ueshiba

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 the with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.

Chris Hardwick

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

Henry Ford

If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail. It takes back bone to lead the life you want.

Richard Yates

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

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

A failure doesn’t mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.

Leonard Mlodinow

You try, you fail. You try, you fail. The real failure is when you stop trying.

Anonymous

Most so called failures are only temporary defeats.

Napoleon Hill

The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.

Stephen McCranie

You are not a failure and you need to quit telling yourself that you could have avoided failing because no successful person ever avoids the pain in hopes for the gains.

Anonymous

There is only ne thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

Paulo Coelho

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

It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.

Ellen DeGeneres

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

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

Woody Allen

Each mistake teaches you something new about yourself. There is no failure, remember, except in no longer trying. It is the courage to continue that counts.

Christ Bradford

Never let success get to your head; never let failure get to your heart.

Anonymous

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.
Michael Jordan

Try. Fail. Learn.

Amanda Hill

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

Og Mandino

What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?

John Green

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Napoleon Hill

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

We’re born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.

Whoopi Goldberg

Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.

Henry Ford

Don’t fear failure — not failure, but low aim is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.
Bruce Lee

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

Do not judge me by my successes; judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.

Nelson Mandela

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Barack Obama

Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.

Oprah Winfrey

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.

Confucius

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

Failure is success in progress.

Albert Einstein

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

Courage allows the successful woman to fail and learn powerful lessons from the failure. So that in the end, she didn’t fail at all.

Maya Angelou

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

Final Failure Thoughts

I hope you can see and be reminded that success comes from failure, many failures in-fact throughout life.

Failure makes us who we are, and choosing to give up when we fail or learn from our mistakes and succeed is how we move forward in life, and it’s what makes us the person we become.

Embrace failure, don’t let it take you down and quit, keep striving to move forward and achieve your goals. Rise and be all you can be.

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