When life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up.
—Les Brown
How to succeed: try hard enough. How to fail: Try too hard.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
‘Failing forward’ is the ability to get back up after you’ve been knocked down, learn from your mistake, and move forward in a better direction.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Author, Speaker, Pastor
I am never a failure until I begin blaming others.
—Anonymous
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Defeat doesn’t finish a man—quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.
—Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer
Don’t buy into the notion that mistakes can somehow be avoided. They can’t be.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Author, Speaker, Pastor
He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than that you should.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
—Daniel Webster (1782–1852) American Statesman, Lawyer
Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.
—Charles J. Givens (1941–98) American Self-Help Writer
Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.
—Frederick W. Smith (b.1944) American Businessman
One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.
—Unknown
Failure is not the only punishment for laziness;
there is also the success of others.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Failures are divided into two classes—those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
—John Charles Salak
Failure is the path of least persistence.
—Unknown
Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.
—Paul Newman (1925–2008) American Actor, Philanthropist
Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.
—Emily Kimbrough (1899–1989) American Author, Journalist
Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
—Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian-born American Composer, Musician
All honor to him who shall win the prize,
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries and fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears.
—Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American Poet, Journalist
Those who take bold chances don’t think failure is the opposite of success. They believe complacency is.
—Unknown
The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.
—Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American Author
Many a man never fails because he never tries.
—Norman MacEwen (1881–1953) British Military Leader
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
—Charles F. Kettering (1876–1958) American Inventor, Entrepreneur, Businessperson
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
—Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American New Thought Writer, Physician, Entrepreneur
He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
—Joseph Heller (1923–99) American Novelist
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