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Daily Inspiration Quote by Susan B. Anthony

"Failure is impossible"

About this Quote

“Failure is impossible” lands less like optimism and more like a tactical verdict. Susan B. Anthony wasn’t selling a good-vibes mantra; she was compressing decades of organizing into a sentence designed to stiffen spines and shame hesitation. In the mouth of an activist, “impossible” isn’t a prediction about outcomes so much as a demand about posture: behave as if the win is inevitable, because movements often become what they can convincingly insist on being.

The subtext is ruthless. If failure is “impossible,” then quitting becomes illegible. Doubt turns into a kind of betrayal, not of Anthony, but of the women who can’t afford another generation of delay. That pressure matters in a political climate built to exhaust reformers: ridicule in the press, hostility from lawmakers, and the slow, grinding reality that rights campaigns spend years looking like they’re losing. Anthony’s line works because it rejects the opponent’s favorite weapon, demoralization, and replaces it with a collective narrative of momentum.

Context sharpens the edge. Anthony spoke and wrote during the long slog toward women’s suffrage, when victories were local, incremental, and constantly threatened. Calling failure “impossible” reframes setbacks as temporary weather, not a forecast. It’s movement rhetoric doing movement work: making persistence feel like realism, and making opposition feel like the side clinging to the doomed past. The brilliance is its audacity; it turns moral certainty into a practical strategy.

Quote Details

TopicNever Give Up
Source
Later attribution: Failure is Impossible! (Martha E. Kendall, 2001) modern compilationISBN: 9780822517443 · ID: gtjhyWrJwcgC
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Susan B. Anthony decided she had better things to do and cut her hair short . Doing so was a radical gesture of freedom , and few women were willing to endure the criticism it would cause . Newspapers mocked ... FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE !
Other candidates (1)
The Story of a Pioneer (Susan B. Anthony, 1915)50.0%
She ended with three words, very fitting words from her lips, expressing as they did the spirit of her life-work, "FA...
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Anthony, Susan B. (2026, February 13). Failure is impossible. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/failure-is-impossible-171234/

Chicago Style
Anthony, Susan B. "Failure is impossible." FixQuotes. February 13, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/failure-is-impossible-171234/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Failure is impossible." FixQuotes, 13 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/failure-is-impossible-171234/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Susan Add to List
Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony's Legacy
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About the Author

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Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 - March 13, 1906) was a Activist from USA.

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