Failure Quotes

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Sir Winston Churchill
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.
– Confucius
In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
– Bill Cosby
Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul.
– James Bryant Conant
Congealed thinking is the forerunner of failure... make sure you are always receptive to new ideas.
– George Crane
The proposition is this: that in a time of war the commander of an armed force... has the power... to suspend all civil rights and their remedies, and subject citizens... to the rule of his will... If true, [our] republican government is a failure, and there is an end of liberty regulated by law.
– David Davis
It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination... If we were to judge nature by common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed.
– Annie Dillard
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Our success or failure won't be measured in charts or graphs or budget tables, but in the fulfillment of their dreams [people of Wisconsin].
– Jim Doyle
The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
– James Dale Davidson
I had a mother who taught me there is no such thing as failure. It is just a temporary postponement of success.
– Buddy Ebsen
Polls find young blacks less likely to call racism America's No. 1 issue. A Time/CNN poll found 89 percent of black teens consider racism in their own lives to be a small problem or not a problem at all. Twice as many black teens as white believe that failure to take advantage of available opportunities is a bigger problem for blacks than discrimination.
– Larry Elder
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
– George Eliot
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
No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
– William Feather
The latest test failure of the missile defense system - the second since December 15th - demonstrates once again that we are rushing to deploy a system that is unproven, too costly, and inadequate for our national security needs in the post-September 11th world.
– Dianne Feinstein
The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down as a failure.
– B. C. Forbes
Failure is success if we learn from it.
– Malcolm Forbes
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
– Henry Ford
Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
– Benjamin Franklin
One good lesson is not to be afraid of failure because failure was kind of obvious in my life.
– Debbie Fields
War remains the decisive human failure.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
Those who will not heed themselves perish. To understand this principle is not to be impatient, not to reproach fate, not to blame others. He who understands the doctrine of self-help blames himself for failure.
– Mahatma Gandhi
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
– John W. Gardner
My life, my career has been like a roller coaster. I've either been an enormous success or just a down-and-out failure.
– Judy Garland
I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.
– J. Paul Getty
I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.
– Nikki Giovanni
At the end of what is called the sexual life the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.
– Graham Greene
I am willing to take risks, and willing to tolerate failure as long as we admit it, can learn from it and keep moving forward.
– Christine Gregoire
I think tolerating a certain degree of failure-not because it's good for you but because it's a necessary part of growth-is a very important part of the message the leadership can give.
– Howard Gardner
He's no failure. He's not dead yet.
– William Lloyd George
This President is a miserable failure.
– Dick Gephardt
Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.
– Dr. Rob Gilbert
You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.
– Alexander Haig
I wasn't going to be one of those people who died wondering what if? I would keep putting my dreams to the test - even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
– Alex Haley
The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade.
– Stephen Harper
Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.
– Joseph Heller
My perspective on the second Bush Administration is, that for all of his big talk, it's going to be a failure. He is not going to get out of Iraq with clear-cut victory or clear-cut reconstruction, during his second term. It's going to take longer, if at all. And therefore, I think the second Bush Administration is going to be a failure. And probably, a disaster.
– Arthur Hertzberg
Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel
Before beginning I should put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.
– David Hilbert
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
– Napoleon Hill
Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.
– Napoleon Hill
Failure should be nothing more than an embarrassment, like ending up in a gravel trap, rather than spending weeks in hospital.
– Damon Hill
The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.
– Elbert Hubbard
Great things are rarely easy things. They are most often risky things, with just as great a chance for failure as for success.
– Mike Huckabee
Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blossom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.
– Frances Watkins Harper
We are ready to kill to keep our automobiles running. We're ready to kill to keep up our materialistic, wasteful economy... I am sick and tired of 18-year-olds being coerced into bearing the burden of the failure of politicians to face the tough economic choices needed to end our dependency on foreign oil.
– Mark Hatfield
The first proof of a person's incapacity to achieve, is their endeavoring to fix the stigma of failure on others.
– B. R. Hayden
Success is 99 percent failure.
– Soichiro Honda
Mr. Gonzales' failure to respond to questions legitimately posed to him by the Senate raises grave doubts in my mind as to his fitness to serve the people of the United States as their Attorney General.
– Daniel Inouye
What we have most to fear is failure of the heart.
– Sonia Johnson
Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
– John Harvey-Jones
Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.
– Victor Kiam
The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.
– Michael Korda
This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure.
– Michael Korda
The U.S. can and should remain strongly engaged internationally, because regional instability will not solve itself. But we must choose our tools very carefully, for the stakes do not allow failure. Power is a finite quantity; if we expend it all over the world, we diminish ourselves.
– John Kasich
Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
– Herbert Kaufman
About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.
– Tommy Lasorda
We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.
– General Robert E. Lee
Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.
– Jack Lemmon
The A's are held to the standard of the Yankees in a funny kind of way. That if they don't win the World Series it is regarded as a failure.
– Michael Lewis
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
– Abraham Lincoln
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.
– Elmer G. Letterman
I thank God I live in a country where dreams can come true, where failure is sometimes the first step to success, and where success is only another form of failure if we forget where our priorities should be.
– Harry Lloyd
Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage.
– George Horace Lorimer
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
– Og Mandino
Sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is... the highway to success.
– Og Mandino
I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society.
– Marilyn Manson
Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.
– Orison Swett Marden
Jurors who are opposed to capital punishment are more likely to believe that a defendant's failure to testify is indicative of his guilt, more hostile to the insanity defense, more mistrustful of defense attorneys and less concerned about the danger of erroneous convictions.
– Thurgood Marshall
I fear that our true motivation is about oil and our own flailing economy; about the failure to destroy Al Qaeda and about revenge.
– Dave Matthews
While it is important for people to see your promise you must also remember that hope is the keeper of both happiness and disappointment, the father of both progress and failure.
– Bryant H. McGill
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
– H. L. Mencken
No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.
– Henry Miller
The panic of 1837, the contest of the United States Bank with President Jackson, its defeat, and its subsequent failure as a state bank, the consequent distress in local financial circles--all conspired to shift the monetary center of the country to New York.
– John Moody
A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.
– Christopher Morley
Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second.
– S. L. A. Marshall
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your thing.
– Warren Miller
I picture my epitaph: Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.
– Paul Newman
Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.
– Flower A. Newhouse
The Internet is an important cultural phenomenon, but that doesn't excuse its failure to comply with basic economic laws. The problem is that it was devised by a bunch of hippie anarchists.
– Thomas Nolle
Don't think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success.
– Robert Orben
I do not fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?
– George S. Patton
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.
– Norman Vincent Peale
If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
– Mary Pickford
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
– Colin Powell
It was the first clear failure in our history.
– Bruce Palmer, Jr.
Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act.
– Ronald Reagan
Ladies and gentlemen, public schools throughout Pennsylvania are in crisis, and while it is true that money alone cannot fix these problems, it is also true that if we fail to adequately invest in our children, then we will succeed only in purchasing Pennsylvania's economic failure on the installment plan.
– Edward G. Rendell
I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault.
– Branch Rickey
Kids in our urban schools, most of them minorities, are not succeeding at anywhere near the rate of their counterparts in the suburbs. And let me be clear: the failure of our urban schools to prepare our children today for the challenges of tomorrow is the civil rights issue of our generation.
– Mitt Romney
I think that the industry's failure to embrace and create a legal form of downloading is contributing to an already acute problem.
– Don Rose
One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.
– Robert Townsend
It's sometimes distractingto see a group of girls staring and giggling. You are a part of their life, and there is a lot that is owed them. But it's difficult because you want to make eveyone happy. If you try to do that, you're setting yourself up for failure.
– Jonathan Taylor Thomas
Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.
– Morihei Ueshiba
Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
– Denis Waitley
Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.
– Denis Waitley