170 Powerful Failure Quotes That Inspire You To Success

Explore, read and take inspiration from the inspiring and powerful quotes about failure and success.

Short Motivational Quotes About Failure

1. “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be” – John Wooden

2. “I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.” Oprah Winfrey

3. “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” Robert Browning

4. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” —Henry Ford

5. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”  – Jack Canfield

6. “You don’t go into anything contemplating failure, because if you did, you wouldn’t make it.” —Simon Cowell

7. . “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy

8. . “The phoenix must burn to emerge.” – Janet Fitch

9. “Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success.” —Robert Orben

10. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Ken Robinson

11.. “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” – Gena Showalter

12. “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want” – Richard Yates

13. “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” – Ellen DeGeneres

14. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

15. “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Chris Bradford

Failure Quotes About Life

16. “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong

17. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

18. . “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

19. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

20. “I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.” – Neal Shusterman


Also Read: 150 Inspiring Quotes About Education And Learning


21. “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” – J.M. Barrie

22. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” – Henry Ford

23. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” – C.S. Lewis

24. “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” – Zig Ziglar

25. “We’re born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.” —Whoopi Goldberg

26. “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” —James Cameron

27. “It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience.” —Lupita Nyong’o

28. . “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel

Success and failure quotes

29. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a 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

30. . “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

30. “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

31. “A failure doesn’t mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.” —Leonard Mlodinow

32. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill

33. “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

34. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” – Eloise Ristad

35.  “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

Herman Melville

36. “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis

37. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. – Henry David Thoreau

38. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser

39. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” -John D. Rockefeller

40. “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” Thomas Jefferson

How to deal with failure quotes

41. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.”Ray Goforth

42. “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. Jim Rohn

43. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value– Albert Einstein

44. “Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” – Winston Churchill

45. “Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” – Tony Hsieh


Also Read: 100+ Life Lessons Quotes & Sayings That Inspire You


46. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”Winston Churchill

47. “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”G. K. Chesterton

48. “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.” Thomas J. Watson

49. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” Jim Rohn

50. “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.”Anonymous

51. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Anonymous

52. “All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” – Michael John Bobak

Inspiring Quotes About Failure

53. “People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Tony Robbins

54. “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” Robert Kiyosaki

55. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”Steve Jobs

56. “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”Barack Obama

57. “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

58. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

59. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” Walt Disney

60. “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee


Also Read: 100 Hope Quotes To Increase Your Self Confidence


61. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Colin Powell

62. “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”

— Conrad Hilton

63. “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

Jim Rohn

64. “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure–It is: Try to please everybody.”

– Herbert Bayard Swope

65. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Schweitzer


Quotes about failure and not giving up


66. “Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.”

— Unknown

67. “Fall seven times and stand up eight.”

Japanese Proverb

68. “Some people dream of success while others wake up and work.”

– Unknown

69. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

— Walt Disney

70. “The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.”

— Unknown

71. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.” — David Brinkley

72. “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” — Bill Cosby

73. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
– C. S. Lewis

74. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
– Michael Jordan

75. “No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.“
– Napoleon Hill

76. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett

77. “The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”
– Buddha

78. “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”
– Charles F. Kettering

79. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fail.”
– Confucius

80. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
– Henry Ford


Famous Failure Quotes


81. “When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.”
– George Bernard Shaw

82. “A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
– John Burroughs

83. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
– J.K. Rowling

84. “Anyone who attempts is not a failure.”
– Sarah Dessen

85. “The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.”
– Stephen McCranie

86. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
– Truman Capote

87. “Failure is success in progress.”
– Albert Einstein

88. “No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

89. “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

90. “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
– James Cameron


Failures to success quotes


91. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
– Maya Angelou

92. “You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.”
– Maxwell Maltz

93. “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.”
– Shah Rukh Khan

94. “To be wrong is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”
– Confucius

95. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
– Albert Einstein

96. “Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”
– Virgil Thomson

97. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
– Eloise Ristad

98. “Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can’t go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else’s success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.”
– Kevin Bacon

99. “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
– Douglas Adams

100. “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.”
– John Wooden


Failure Quotes to live by


101. “I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.”
– Anthony Robbins

102. “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
– George Eliot

103. “A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.”
– Elmer G. Letterman

104. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”
– George Bernard Shaw

105. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
– Bill Gates

106. “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
– Randy Pausch

107. “You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. 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

108. “Failure is an attitude, not an outcome.”
– Harvey MacKay

109. “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
– Suzy Kassem

110 . “Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
– Richard Branson


Best Quotes about failure, never give up and success


111. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
– Robert F. Kennedy

112. “I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.”
– Oprah Winfrey

113. “There is no such thing as failure, only results.”
– Tony Robbins

114. “Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”
– Malcolm X

115. “What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”
– Alfred Adler

116. “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

117. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan

118. “Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.”
– Napoleon Hill

119. “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky

120. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
– John C. Maxwell


Overcoming failure quotes


121. “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”
– Tom Krause

122. “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.”
– Mike Ditka

123. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill

124. “Life is full of screwups. You’re supposed to fail sometimes. It’s a required part of the human existance.”
– Sarah Dessen

125. “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
– Herbert Bayard Swope

126. “The best way out is always through.”
– Robert Frost

127. “Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.”
– Marilyn Monroe

128. “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
– Henry Ford

129. “Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.”
– Zig Ziglar

130. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
– Theodore Roosevelt


Failure motivational quotes


131. “It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience.”
– Lupita Nyong’o

132. “You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
– Barack Obama

133. “If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
– H.G. Wells

134. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison

135. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of a greater or equal benefit.”
– Napoleon Hill

136. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
– Mark Zuckerberg

137. “There is no failure except in no longer trying.”
– Elbert Hubbard

138. “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
– Jack Canfield

139. “All my successes have been built on my failures.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

140. “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”
– Confucius


Encouraging quotes on failure

141. “It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.”
– Zig Ziglar

142. “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
– Sophocles

143. “In any case, you must not confuse a single failure with a final defeat.“
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

144. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Oliver Goldsmith

145. “Your dream doesn’t have an expiration date. Take a deep breath and try again.”
– Unknown

146. “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

147. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard

148. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” – Mark Twain

149. “Success builds character, failure reveals it.” – Dave Checkett

150. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield


Failure Quotes to Motivate You and Help You Get Success


151. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Ken Robinson

152. “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” – Zig Ziglar

153. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” – Napoleon Hill

154. . “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” — Nikos Kazantzakis

155. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas Edison

156. “Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember–the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.” — Zig Ziglar

157. “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.”John D. Rockefeller Jr.

158. “You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.”Oprah Winfrey

159. “There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.” — Anthony Robbins

160. “The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows.”Aristotle Onassis

161. “I failed my way to success.” — Thomas Edison

162. “I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” – Estee Lauder

163. “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes. — Thomas Edison

164. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”Vidal Sassoon

165. “Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” -Charles F. Kettering

166. “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” J. K. Rowling

167. “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” Woody Allen

168. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

169. “What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.” —Malcolm Mclaren

170. “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

171. “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” —John C. Maxwell

172. . “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

173. “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

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