Challenges & Adversity: Failure Quotes

Failure can feel final, yet it often marks the start of deeper learning. These quotes highlight how missteps, rejections, and stalled efforts can refine purpose, sharpen skills, and reveal courage under pressure. Use them for perspective when results fall short, for comfort after a setback, or for motivation to try again with wisdom. Let each line encourage patience, experimentation, and resilience, turning obstacles into feedback and progress. A steady, honest look at failure can open the door to growth and renewed confidence.

Similar topics:Hope Overcoming Obstacles Resilience Stress Tough Times

"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"I wasn't afraid to fail. Something good always comes out of failure"

Anne Baxter, Actress

Anne Baxter

"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success"

Paramahansa Yogananda, Leader

Paramahansa Yogananda

"If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure"

Dan Quayle, Vice President

Dan Quayle

"A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself"

Gertrude Stein, Author

Gertrude Stein

"It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world"

Charles F. Kettering, Inventor

Charles F. Kettering

"I've never been afraid to fail"

Michael Jordan, Athlete

Michael Jordan

"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else"

John Burroughs, Author

"Success represents the 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is called failure"

Soichiro Honda, Businessman

"If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously"

Cate Blanchett, Actress

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure"

Abraham Lincoln, President

Abraham Lincoln

"Well, I screwed it up real good, didn't I?"

Richard M. Nixon, President

Richard M. Nixon

"Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

Gustave Flaubert

"I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money"

Beth Henley, Playwright

Beth Henley

"Don't think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success"

Robert Orben, Entertainer

"Nothing fails like failure"

Margaret Drabble, Novelist

"Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it"

Thomas Hunt Morgan, Scientist

"Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial"

Ross Perot, Businessman

Ross Perot

"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself"

Charlie Chaplin, Actor

Charlie Chaplin

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor"

Truman Capote, Novelist

Truman Capote

"There is no such thing as failure. There are only results"

Tony Robbins, Author

Tony Robbins

"Remember that failure is an event, not a person"

Zig Ziglar, Author

"No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out"

Al Gore, Vice President

Al Gore

"Better than succeeding little by little is failing at one go"

Jose Bergamin, Writer

Jose Bergamin

"A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature"

Paul Getty, Businessman

Paul Getty

"It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed"

Herman Cain, Businessman

"You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk"

Rosalynn Carter, First Lady

"Failure's not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger"

Billy Dee Williams, Actor

Billy Dee Williams

"The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide"

James A. Baldwin, Author

James A. Baldwin

"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement"

C. S. Lewis, Author

C. S. Lewis

"Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day"

Jim Rohn, Businessman

Jim Rohn

"Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day"

Jim Rohn, Businessman

Jim Rohn

"Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?"

Ernest Hemingway, Novelist

"I let the American people down"

Richard M. Nixon, President

Richard M. Nixon

"Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again"

W. Clement Stone, Businessman

W. Clement Stone

"There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house"

Eric Hoffer, Writer

Eric Hoffer

"One failure is worth seven and a half successes"

Eli Khamarov, Writer

Eli Khamarov

"Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?"

Robert Browning, Poet

Robert Browning

"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible"

William Faulkner, Novelist

William Faulkner

"The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become"

Ashley Montagu, Scientist

Ashley Montagu

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