Quotes About Failure

When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, 'So what did you guys fail at this week?' If we didn't have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he'd high-five me. What I didn't realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn't the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'I didn't try that because I was scared,' that is failure.

I was shocked when I found out who the biggest failure in the Bible actually is...The biggest one in the whole Bible is God...I mean, He lost His top-ranking, most anointed angel; the first man He ever created; the first woman He ever created; the whole earth and all the fullness therein; a third of the angels, at least - that's a big loss, man....Now, the reason you don't think of God as a failure is He never said He's a failure. And you're not a failure till you say you're one.

Failure plus failure plus failure equals success. You only fail when you quit.

The terror of failure can make you feel like a failure. So a bunch of people think you're not very good at your thing. How much do you invest in what they say? How much do you care? Failure is not putting yourself on the line.

I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

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.

Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it; you need to appreciate the failure and use it.

What can you or I do? Alone, almost nothing. Yet one person - you alone - can make the difference. . . . The failure of just one person to join, to participate, to do whatever he or she can - your failure or my failure - may mean that there is just one too few to win the fight for sanity, and so leave the world on the road to destruction. Each of us, all of us, must do what we can.

The George W. Bush universe of threats is a constantly expanding universe as he moves to politically higher ground, escaping from failure after failure. He's not only radical, but the consequences of his radicalism have been catastrophic.

People love to make excuses, forget all the excuses, if it doesn't work out, failure is the best thing that can happen to somebody, people are extremely scared of failure.

We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.

Both half success and half failure must be considered as a full failure!

I always assume that nothing that I make is going to be a success, that everything I make is going to be a failure - not a failure but not some huge box- office success. If something is an artistic success, I'll be happy, but I'll maybe be the only person that's happy.

Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through-that is, the fear of not being heard.

Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.

Don't be afraid of failure. That's not an easy lesson for teenagers - especially teenage girls - to learn. Our society sends us a lot of messages that imply we're supposed to be ashamed when we fall short. But I think we should be throwing each other failure parties!

I had a lot of successes, but what really made me fearless was my complete failure at Zidd-Davis. Once you've lived through that, you know you can survive, and you're not as scared... There's nothing to build confidence like real achievement, but also like real failure.

Failure does not exist. Failure is simply someone else's opinion of how a certain act should have been completed. Once you believe that no act must be performed in any specific other-directed way, then failing becomes impossible.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding

Failure hurts pretty bad. But when you got good people around you they remind you that failure is actually just a lesson. It's how not to walk so you don't fall again.

The man who meets with a failure attributes this failure rather to the ill will of another than to fate.

The failure of political leaders to help uplift the poor will be judged a moral failure.

Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.

According to the spirit of this age, the ultimate sin is no longer the failure to honor and thank God but the failure to esteem oneself. Self-abasement, not God-abasement, is the evil. And the cry of deliverance is not "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?" but "O worthy man that I am, would that I could only see it better"!

Kipling said that Success and Failure are both imposters, and we should all listen to Kipling, if only because none of us are likely to know anybody else named Rudyard. But having been bitten in my life by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.

I train so hard to make sure failure doesn't happen. If I do everything I can, and run as fast as I possibly can and someone still beats me, I don't think of that as failure.

Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life.

What we've also got to think about is the limitations of military power. Maybe it's time to focus on the economic issues, and most of all the political issues, because the political failure in Iraq right now is almost worse than the military failure. And the two are intertwined.

You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.

Failure does not shape you; the way you respond to failure shapes you.

There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.

The success or failure of any relationship depends not just on how we feel about each other, but on how we make each other feel about ourselves.

My headshot is a scratch and sniff, it smells like failure and onions.

What is the most profitable? Fellowship with the good. What is the worst thing in the world? The society of evil men. What is the greatest loss? Failure in one?s duty. Where is the greatest peace? In truth and righteousness. Who is the hero? The man who subdues his senses. Who is the best beloved? The faithful wife. What is wealth? Knowledge. What is the most perfect happiness? Staying at home.

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.

Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

It is important not to allow ever wider coalition-building to become an end in itself. As we saw in the Gulf War of 1990, international pressures, particularly those exerted from within an alliance, can result in the failure to follow actions through and so leave future problems unresolved.

Leaders, true leaders, take responsibility for the success of the team and understand that they must also take responsibility for the failure.

If you can meet success and failure and treat them both as impostors, then you are a balanced man, my son.

A man obsessed with failure has succeeded better than others in portraying it.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.

Dwight Eisenhower has been underestimated, which may relate to his advanced age in office, his somewhat uneven communications skills, and his failure to present a forward-looking vision on the rising issue of civil rights.

I will commit not the terrible crime of aiming too low. I will do the work that a failure will not do. I will always let my reach exceed my grasp.

Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

Success is failure with the dirt brushed off.

A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war.

Other people are as alive as you are. Cruelty is a failure of imagination.