Theme
Failure
Mistakes, setbacks, and what they teach.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
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Verified quotes about failure
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall”
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing”
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery”
“I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed”
“If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person”
“In the lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail”
“Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy”
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way”
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery”
“Don't find fault, find a remedy”
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”
No public-domain quotes on this theme yet — try another, or use an in-copyright one with attribution.
Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about failure — but misattributed
Popular failure lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
ReallyAnonymous (proverbial) · not Benjamin Franklin
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”
ReallyThomas Edison · not Thomas Edison
“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else”
ReallyTom Peters · not Leonardo da Vinci
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery”
ReallyJames Joyce
“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game”
ReallyBabe Ruth
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”
ReallySydney Smith
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”
ReallyOliver Goldsmith · not Confucius
“Pride comes before a fall”
ReallyThe Bible (Book of Proverbs)
“Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time”
ReallyJosh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) · not George Bernard Shaw
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm”
ReallyUnknown (anonymous origin)
“The first draft of anything is garbage”
ReallyErnest Hemingway
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places”
ReallyErnest Hemingway
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing”
ReallyElbert Hubbard · not Aristotle
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly”
ReallyRobert F. Kennedy