"It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success"
About this Quote
The phrasing matters. “Base” is architectural, not emotional. He’s not asking you to feel better about failing; he’s insisting that better outcomes are literally built on it. Then he piles on the adjectives: “new and different and better.” That triple-step suggests iteration rather than redemption. “New” signals breakage from old scripts; “different” implies a willingness to depart from approved paths; “better” is the only nod to conventional improvement, but it arrives after change has already been embraced. The subtext: if your definition of success never changes, you’re not learning, you’re just repeating.
Ellis’s context sharpens the intent. He wrote against a culture enamored with tidy categories of normal/abnormal. This sentence smuggles in a radical psychological ethic: progress comes from confronting the evidence of what didn’t work, including the parts of ourselves we’re trained to hide. Failure becomes not a verdict, but the necessary laboratory for a more honest success.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ellis, Havelock. (n.d.). It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-is-on-our-failures-that-we-base-a-new-and-54552/
Chicago Style
Ellis, Havelock. "It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-is-on-our-failures-that-we-base-a-new-and-54552/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-is-on-our-failures-that-we-base-a-new-and-54552/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.








