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Who really said it

Failure is not an option

Not Gene Kranz — a line written for the movie William Broyles Jr. & Al Reinert Screenwriters, Apollo 13 (1995) · from a remark by flight controller Jerry Bostick
Disputed In copyright

The line was written for Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995) and spoken on screen by Ed Harris playing Kranz — the real Kranz never said it during the mission. It grew out of an interview remark by FIDO flight controller Jerry Bostick: “when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them.” Kranz liked the line well enough to make it the title of his 2000 memoir, which is why the world credits it to him.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Failure is not an option” written by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert for the film Apollo 13 (1995), spoken on screen by Ed Harris as Gene Kranz. The real Gene Kranz never said it during the mission; he later used it as the title of his 2000 memoir.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Gene Kranz. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Universal City Studios (Apollo 13 screenplay, William Broyles Jr. & Al Reinert); Simon & Schuster / the Gene Kranz estate for the 2000 memoir). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of William Broyles Jr. — Screenwriter, journalist & founding editor of Texas Monthly. Theme: "Failure is not an option". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Failure is not an option". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Origin
Apollo 13 (1995), screenplay
Written by
William Broyles Jr. & Al Reinert
Spoken on screen by
Ed Harris, as Gene Kranz
Seed remark
Jerry Bostick, Apollo 13 flight dynamics officer (FIDO)

We’ve never lost an American in space; we’re sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option. Hollywood, not Mission Control

The line as delivered in the film by Ed Harris. What the real Gene Kranz says he told his flight controllers was different: “I have never lost an American in space, sure as hell aren’t going to lose one now. This crew is coming home. You got to believe it. Your team must believe it. And we must make it happen.”

Memoir (borrowable scan)
Borrow Failure Is Not an Option at the Internet Archive
Wikipedia: Failure is not an option — origin of the phrase

The paper trail

  • Wikipedia’s article on the phrase ↗ states plainly that although Kranz is often credited with speaking those words during the mission, he did not actually say the phrase — it was the tagline of the 1995 film, spoken by Ed Harris.
  • Wikiquote lists it under “Misattributed” ↗: “Statement attributed to him in the film Apollo 13 (1995), which he had not actually used in that crisis. He later used the phrase as the title of his autobiography.”
  • Jerry Bostick’s own account, given to Magnolia State Live ↗: asked whether anyone panicked, he replied “No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them” — whereupon Bill Broyles started screaming, “That’s it! That’s the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option.”
  • Kranz himself has said the filmmakers came up with the line ↗, and that he does not regret never saying it: “No — I’m satisfied with what I said.”
In copyright

The wording first appears in the screenplay for Apollo 13, released by Universal Pictures on 30 June 1995 ↗, and again as the title of Kranz’s memoir, published by Simon & Schuster on 12 April 2000 ↗ — both well after 1931, so both works remain under copyright in the United States. As a practical observation, a five-word phrase of this kind is unlikely to be protectable on its own, but the film and the book that carry it are not in the public domain.

Fact-check

How the credit went wrong

This is an unusually clean case: a scriptwriter’s tagline that migrated onto a real historical figure, who then embraced it. Almost every layer of the popular story is off by one.

Gene Kranz, during Apollo 13 (April 1970) Never said it

The phrase was not spoken in Mission Control. Wikiquote files it under “Misattributed” ↗ as a “Statement attributed to him in the film Apollo 13 (1995), which he had not actually used in that crisis.” Kranz’s real exhortation was longer and blunter: “I have never lost an American in space, sure as hell aren’t going to lose one now.”

Jerry Bostick, FIDO flight controller Seed, not author

Bostick supplied the raw material, not the slogan. By his own account ↗ he said only that “failure was not one of them” — it was Broyles who compressed that into the tagline and decided who would say it on screen.

Kranz’s 2000 autobiography Consequence, not evidence

The book Failure Is Not an Option is routinely cited as proof Kranz said it, but the causation runs the other way: the film came first (1995), the book five years later (Simon & Schuster, 12 April 2000 ↗). Kranz took the title from the movie because he felt it captured Mission Control’s creed.

The sentiment is authentically Mission Control’s; the sentence is authentically Hollywood’s. As This Day in Quotes puts it ↗, the phrase was created for the 1995 film and never spoken during the crisis — and Kranz, asked whether he minds, said he is satisfied with what he actually said.

Context

Why the line stuck anyway

Screenwriters Broyles and Reinert did what screenwriters do: they interviewed the people who were there and listened for the sentence that carried the room. What they got from Jerry Bostick was not a slogan but a description of temperament — controllers who met catastrophe by enumerating options rather than panicking. The tagline is a compression of that temperament into five words, and its accuracy as characterisation is precisely why it has proved impossible to dislodge.

The irony is that the real Kranz already had his own version, and it is arguably the better speech. “This crew is coming home. You got to believe it. Your team must believe it. And we must make it happen” is a working flight director talking to people with consoles in front of them. “Failure is not an option” is what that sounds like from the cheap seats — which is why it became a motivational poster, and his sentence did not.

The sentiment is authentically Mission Control’s. The sentence is authentically Hollywood’s.

Read the full story

Kranz has never claimed the line, and has been consistent in saying the filmmakers wrote it. He nonetheless titled his 2000 memoir after it, describing it as a creed Mission Control lived by — an endorsement of the sentiment, not of the attribution.

One caution for researchers: it is sometimes asserted that the exact phrase circulated before 1995. Quotle could not verify this. The one source we found making the claim offered no dated example, so we make no assertion about pre-1995 usage — only that the film is what put the phrase into general circulation and welded it to Kranz’s name.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Success

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Failure is not an option — origin of the phraseen.wikipedia.org

The dedicated article on the phrase: states Kranz did not say it, traces it to the film's screenwriters and Bostick's remark, and notes Kranz's memoir title.
Gene Kranz — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced entry files the line under Misattributed: attributed to him in the 1995 film, not used in the actual crisis.
Jerry Bostick, the man who inadvertently created the linemagnoliastatelive.com

Bostick's first-person account of the screenwriters' interview and Broyles shouting the tagline.
Some Apollo 13 movie quotes were fiction, not factirishnews.com

Kranz on the record saying the filmmakers came up with the line, plus his actual words to flight controllers.
"Houston, we have a problem" — and "failure is not an option"thisdayinquotes.com

Quote-history treatment of both famous Apollo 13 lines and how each was altered or invented for the film.
Failure Is Not an Option (Kranz memoir, 2000)archive.org

Borrowable scan of Kranz's autobiography — the book that cemented the phrase to his name five years after the film.

Who actually wrote the line

The screenwriter who coined it

William Broyles Jr.

b. 8 October 1944 · Screenwriter, journalist & founding editor of Texas Monthly

William Broyles Jr. founded Texas Monthly in 1972 and edited Newsweek before turning to screenwriting; he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay with Al Reinert for Apollo 13 (1995), and later wrote Cast Away and Jarhead. The tagline was distilled from a remark by Jerry Bostick, the real Apollo 13 flight dynamics officer, during the writers’ research interviews with Mission Control veterans. By Bostick’s account it was Broyles who seized on the phrase — the words are Hollywood’s, but the attitude they describe was genuinely NASA’s.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert, screenplay for Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard (Universal Pictures, released 30 June 1995). Phrase later adopted as the title of Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (New York: Simon & Schuster, 12 April 2000).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Failure is not an option’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/failure-is-not-an-option

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