"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"
About this Quote
The intent is partly personal-brand wisdom, partly newsroom-tested realism. As a journalist turned media executive, Huffington built a career on iteration: pitch, publish, get dragged, adjust. That rhythm is baked into modern work, where public mistakes are archived forever and the pressure is to appear frictionless. Her phrasing anticipates that anxiety. "Accept" is doing quiet labor here: not "fix" or "avoid", but absorb the inevitability without letting it calcify into shame.
The subtext is also a rebuke to perfectionism as a status performance. Admitting you fail reads as authenticity in an attention economy, but it also grants permission to keep moving, to keep producing, to keep trying new bets. The line’s most persuasive move is redefining the binary: success/failure stops being moral (good/bad) and becomes procedural (input/output). That’s comforting, yes, but it’s also mobilizing. If failure is part of success, then the only real failure is opting out - which neatly aligns resilience with ambition, and self-compassion with hustle.
Context matters: Huffington’s post-HuffPost reinvention as a wellness evangelist gives the quote an extra edge. It’s less “grind harder” than “recover faster,” a doctrine for high performers who can’t afford to break, but can afford to reframe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: There Is Greatness Within You (John Paul Carinci, 2021) modern compilationISBN: 9781665714211 · ID: OqFMEAAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... 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 , author , businesswoman ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Huffington, Arianna. (2026, February 15). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-need-to-accept-that-we-wont-always-make-the-46405/
Chicago Style
Huffington, Arianna. "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." FixQuotes. February 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-need-to-accept-that-we-wont-always-make-the-46405/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 15 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-need-to-accept-that-we-wont-always-make-the-46405/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.




