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”
“Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them”
“Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time”
“Failure is an event, not a person”
“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again”
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can”
“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”
“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”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better”
“No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind”
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt”
“Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy”
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle”
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose”
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way”
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places”
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure”
“To err is human, to forgive, divine”
“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”
“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated”
“You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you”
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer”
“Don't find fault, find a remedy”
“Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit”
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run”
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”
“I always swing at the ball with all my might. I hit or miss big”
“I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying”
“If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline”
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
“The first draft of anything is shit”
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure”
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.
“Beatles Rejection: We Don't Like Their Sound. Groups of Guitars Are On Their Way Out”
ReallyDick Rowe · not Brian Epstein
“It's Easy to Quit Smoking. I've Done It a Thousand Times”
ReallyUnknown · not Mark Twain
“Lose As If You Like It, and Win As If You Are Used to It”
ReallyAnonymous · not Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Play Was a Great Success, But the Audience Was a Total Failure”
ReallyGeorge Bernard Shaw
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”
ReallyBrian Howard · not Margaret Thatcher
“Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you find that you have accomplished a purpose”
ReallyAnne Sullivan · not Helen Keller
“Biggest damfool mistake I ever made”
ReallyDwight D. Eisenhower
“Stumbling is not falling”
ReallyUnknown · not Malcolm X
“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time”
ReallyUnknown — the same sentence circulates as Og Mandino · not Malcolm X
“It Took Me Fifteen Years to Discover That I Had No Talent for Writing. Did You Quit?”
ReallyAnonymous (Puck magazine, 1912) · not Groucho Marx
“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself”
ReallyAnonymous · not Eleanor Roosevelt
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults”
ReallyAlexis de Tocqueville
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment”
ReallyAnonymous · not Will Rogers
“I've missed over 9,000 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”
ReallyJamie Barrett · not Michael Jordan
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it”
ReallyGeorge Santayana · not Edmund Burke
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world”
ReallyAnonymous · not Dale Carnegie
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”
ReallyAnonymous proverb · not John Wooden
“If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
ReallyRev. H. K. Williams · not John Wooden