Failure Quotes

ONE MAN’S ROAD THROUGH LIFE Failed in business at age 22 Defeated for Legislature at 23 Failed again in business at 24 Suffered nervous breakdown at 27 Defeated for Speaker at 28 Defeated for Elector at 31 Defeated for Congress at 34 Defeated again for Congress at 39 Defeated for Senate at 46 Defeated for Vice President at 47 Defeated for Senate at 49 Elected President at 51 Guess Who? Abraham Lincoln If all this happened to you what paradigm might you develop? How might that paradigm affect you in terms of your life from that point on? What does this tell you about Abe?

An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates form college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

Don’t listen to those who say, ‘You’re taking too big a chance.’ Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today. Most important, don’t listen when the little voice of fear inside you rears its ugly head and says. ‘They’re all smarter than you out there. They’re more talented, they’re taller, blonder, prettier, luckier, and they have connections. I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live, the chances are you’ll be a person worthy of your own respects.

When you fail, don’t give up. These people didn’t: – R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on. – Novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published the first of his 564 books. – Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in the early grades when the teachers decided he could not do the work. – Harry S. Truman failed as a haberdasher. – When Bob Dylan performed at high school talent show, his classmates booed him off the stage. – W. Clement Stone, successful insurance company executive and founder of Success magazine, was a high school dropout.

The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball. They fight no fights. They make no mistakes, because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they attempt many things. The person who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He is the one who never, never tries anything new. He is the brake on the wheel of progress. The very fact that he tries nothing, takes no chances, does nothing except criticize those who try is, perhaps, the biggest possible error in a life-time.

Turning FAILURE into SUCCESS: Ivory Soap wasn’t meant to float, but a manufacturing error became its top selling point. Kleenex failed as a cold cream remover. Repackaged as a disposable handkerchief, its success remains nothing to sneeze at.

When bad things happen to you, use the Ready, SET, Go approach: S – See it as temporary (will this be a big deal 10 years from now?) E – Externalize (step back and see the big picture; don’t take it personally) T – Take action (make plan/formula for correction, focus on things you can control) This will generate a positive frame of mind that is future oriented.

When an ERROR occurs, then: 1. Acknowledge it 2. Correct it 3. Learn from it 4. Continue on … If you follow this procedure, then ERRORS will never become FAILURES.

Whenever you fail, remember: The greatest quarterbacks complete only six of 10 passes. The best basketball players make only 50% of their shots. The top oil companies, with all their geologists, drill 10 dry holes for every wet one. And even the most successful actors flunk 29 auditions for a television commercial before they land one.

At 10 minutes to seven on a dark, cool evening in Mexico City in 1968, John Stephen Akwari of Tanzania painfully hobbled into the Olympic Stadium – the last man to finish the marathon. The winner had already been crowned, and the victory ceremony was long finished. So the stadium was almost empty and Akwari – alone, his leg bloody and bandaged – struggled to circle the track to the finish line. When asked why he had continued the grueling struggle, the young man from Tanzania answered softly: “My country did not send me 9,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 9,000 miles to finish the race.”

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

You can’t live without an eraser.

Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?

While man’s desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

When you fall, don’t get up empty handed.

When the ship misses the harbor, it’s not the harbor’s fault.

When one door closes, one or more will open.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

When it is darkest, the stars come out.

What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.

We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently…, to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

To me a winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses those skills to accomplish his goals. Even when I lost, I learned what my weaknesses were, and I went out the next day to turn those weaknesses into strengths.

To err is human, And stupid.

To err is human; to blame it on others is even more human.

Thomas Edison viewed each setback he encountered in making a light bulb simply as another way NOT to make a light bulb.

There IS no failure – save in giving up.

There are two fatal errors that keep great projects from coming to life: 1) Not finishing 2) Not starting

There are no failures, only lessons to be learned.