It seems that failure tends to be more public than success. Or at least that’s what we perceive it to be. We fret it, we try to avoid it, and we question ourselves every time we have unconventional ideas. But the simple truth is – no great success was ever achieved without failure. It may be one epic failure. Or a series of failures – such as Edison’s 10,000 attempts to create a light bulb or Dyson’s 5,126 attempts to invent a bagless vacuum cleaner. But, whether we like it or not, failure is a necessary stepping stone to achieving our dreams.
Several months ago I gave a short, TED-style talk on the topic. And today I wanted to share this collection of 30 quotes that will hopefully inspire you to look at failure differently.
- “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be” – John Wooden
- “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield
- “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
- “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
- “The phoenix must burn to emerge.” – Janet Fitch
- “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Ken Robinson
- “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” – Gena Showalter
- “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want” – Richard Yates
- “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
- “When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” – Ellen DeGeneres
- “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” – Ellen DeGeneres
- “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Chris Bradford
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
- “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho
- “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong
- “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
- “I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.” – Neal Shusterman
- “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” – J.M. Barrie
- “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford
- “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” – C.S. Lewis
- “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.” – Robert T. Kiyosaki
- “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
- “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” – Johnny Cash
- “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” – J.K. Rowling
“No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.” – Chris Hardwick- “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” – Eloise Ristad
- “With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.” – Criss Jami
- “What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” – John Green
Originally posted in Forbes