George Matthew Adams

George Matthew Adams was an American columnist who founded the George Matthew Adams Newspaper Service, syndicating columns and comic strips to newspapers for five decades. His 1921 essay Finality carried the line “Your success is not final—nor is your failure. You may always begin again,” the earliest documented statement of the thought under a named author. He did not write the familiar modern sentence — that full wording surfaces later, in anonymous 1930s advertising copy.