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Failure Quotes

Nothing here is flagged as misattributed. Shakespeare, the judge Lord Ellenborough, Ben Carson and Frederick William Robertson lead, and the sourced lines are all older and drier than the usual motivational material. Wilde, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), says experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes, and in 1894 that ambition is the last refuge of the failure. Burns’s Scots Musical Museum (1787) has the bleakest of the three: now all is done that men can do, and all is done in vain.

If you came for the line about failing and trying again, you will not find it here. Try the Success page.

Random quote on Failure

Most quoted on failure:

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.

William Whewell

How far your eyes may pierce, I cannot tell;
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

William Shakespeare King Lear (1608)

Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.

John Locke

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

John Keats

Although strength should fail, the effort will deserve praise. In great enterprises the attempt is enough.

Propertius

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

G. K. Chesterton In The Illustrated London News (1924)

It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard!

Václav Havel

Not all who seem to fail have failed indeed,
Not all who fail have therefor worked in vain.
There is no failure for the good and brave.

Richard Chenevix Trench

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 fail by default.

J. K. Rowling Harvard address (2008)

We do not have to live the same mistakes over again if we can look at them, learn from them, and build upon them.

Audre Lorde Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Some positive persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last.

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism (1709)

When people once are in the wrong,
Each line they add is much too long;
Who fastest walks, but walks astray,
Is only furthest from his way.

Matthew Prior Alma (1718)

By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.

Cicero

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.

John Dryden

Shall error in the round of time
Still father Truth?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Other kings let their ministers make their mistakes for them, but Louis insisted on making the important mistakes personally.

Will Cuppy The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950)

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

Al Franken

The mistakes that have been most extreme in Berkshire's history are mistakes of omission. They don't show up in our figures — they show up in opportunity costs.

Charlie Munger

I have no use for men who fail. The cause of their failure is no business of mine, but I want successful men as my associates.

John D. Rockefeller

Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.

Zig Ziglar See You at the Top (2000)

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