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Who really said it

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying

Attributed to Michael Jordan b. 1963 · American basketball player, six-time NBA champion
Attributed In copyright

Jordan put his name to a 1994 HarperSanFrancisco book called I Can’t Accept Not Trying — literally the second half of this sentence — and Wikiquote’s Michael Jordan entry credits the line to it, though it appends a bracketed editorial gloss, ‘[no hard work]’, that LibQuotes reproduces as ‘(no hard work)’. The book’s text is not openly readable, the page number every aggregator repeats cannot exist in a book this short, and shorter variants circulate under the same citation, so we stop at ‘attributed’ rather than claim we have seen the page.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying” I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. — Michael Jordan, attributed to I Can't Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); exact page unconfirmed. Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil / HarperCollins (HarperSanFrancisco imprint)). 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 Michael Jordan — American basketball player and six-time NBA champion. Theme: "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying". 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 "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying". 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 is said to come from

Cited source
I Can’t Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence
Published
HarperSanFrancisco, 1994 — with Mark Vancil; photographs by Sandro Miller
Extent
36 pages in Open Library’s record; the Internet Archive’s restricted lending scan of the same edition counts 58. Either way there is no page 129
Verification
Cited by Wikiquote’s Michael Jordan entry, which has no sourced/unsourced split; the book’s text was not readable to us

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. Primary text not read

No fuller passage could be confirmed. Every sourced citation we found reproduces the line on its own, and the book itself — a short, photograph-led volume that sets Jordan’s sentences as display type — is not openly readable.

Open Library record for the 1994 edition

How we checked

  • Wikiquote’s Michael Jordan entry ↗ credits the line to Jordan’s 1994 book — but it prints the sentence as ‘…But I can’t accept not trying [no hard work]’, bundled in one bullet with a second quote and an inline ‘(p. 20, 24)’, which reads as one page each and is perfectly plausible for a short book. The citation beneath the bullet gives ‘p. 129’, which is not. The entry also has no sourced/unsourced split — every Jordan quote sits in one list, so the citation is the only vetting signal there is.
  • Open Library’s record ↗ puts the book at 36 pages, HarperSanFrancisco, 1994; the Internet Archive’s scan record for the same edition counts 58. The two disagree — but a page 129 exists in neither.
  • AZQuotes ↗ and LibQuotes ↗ reproduce the wording with the identical ‘p. 129’ — the signature of one citation copied outward rather than several people checking a book.
  • The Internet Archive holds a 1994 copy ↗ — a scan its own record puts at 58 pages, against Open Library’s 36 — but its text files return an authorisation error and its search-inside endpoint reports the item unavailable. The one check that would settle this — reading the page — was not open to us.
In copyright

The wording is credited to a book first published in 1994, which places it well inside US copyright — nothing published that recently is public domain, whatever the quote sites imply by reprinting it freely. Treat it as a short attributed excerpt, not as free text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually goes wrong with this one

Nobody credits this line to the wrong person — Jordan’s name is on the cover of the book it is said to come from. What goes wrong is the wording, the paperwork, and which Jordan quote you are actually holding.

Michael Jordan — a trimmed version Shortened

A shorter form, ‘I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying,’ drops the middle clause entirely and is credited to the same 1994 book on Goodreads ↗. Both forms circulate widely; only one can be the sentence on the page.

The ‘no hard work’ gloss Extra clause

A third form runs longer, not shorter. Wikiquote ↗ prints the sentence as ‘…But I can’t accept not trying [no hard work]’, and LibQuotes ↗ carries the addition as plain prose, ‘(no hard work)’ — under the identical p. 129 citation. Our headline wording is the version without it.

The ‘page 129’ reference Impossible page

Wikiquote, AZQuotes ↗ and LibQuotes all point to p. 129 of a book that Open Library ↗ records as 36 pages. The citation is being copied, not consulted.

Michael Jordan — the ‘9,000 shots’ line Conflated

This gets blended with ‘I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career… and that is why I succeed’, which Wikiquote ↗ records only as ‘quoted in’ Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh (1998), p. 49 — a reproduction, not a claim about where the line started. A separate statement with a separate trail.

The safe statement: the phrase is Jordan’s own — it is the title of his 1994 book ↗, published under his name with Mark Vancil — but nobody has yet shown the exact sentence on an actual page.

Context

Why the trail goes fuzzy

Jordan spent the early 1990s becoming a publishing property as well as a player. Rare Air: Michael on Michael (1993) and I Can’t Accept Not Trying (1994) were both assembled with the writer Mark Vancil — short, photograph-led books that turned his talk about fear and preparation into display type.

That format is precisely why the provenance blurs. A sentence set alone on a page in a slim gift book is easy to shorten, re-punctuate and re-cite, and once a single page number entered the quote web every aggregator copied it — including one that cannot exist.

The title of his own book is the second half of the sentence.

Read the full story

Quote Investigator ↗, the usual court of appeal for lines like this, has never covered it — a site search for the phrase returns nothing. That is not a verdict either way; it means no specialist has done the archival work, so the wording and the page remain open.

The one check that would close the case is mundane: open a physical copy of the 1994 book and read the ‘Fears’ section. Until someone does, ‘attributed’ is the honest label — the attribution is about as strong as an unread source can be, and the wording is still unconfirmed.

Explore

Filed under

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

Failure Courage Character

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.

Internet Archive — the 1994 bookarchive.org

Catalogue record and restricted lending scan of I Can't Accept Not Trying (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), by Michael Jordan with Mark Vancil.
Open Library — bibliographic recordopenlibrary.org

Publisher, date, ISBN and the 36-page extent that the widely copied 'p. 129' citation contradicts.
Wikiquote — Michael Jordanen.wikiquote.org

The entry crediting this line to the 1994 book — with a bracketed '[no hard work]' gloss, and no sourced/unsourced split — plus the separate 'quoted in' Nike Culture (1998) citation for the '9,000 shots' line.
Internet Archive — Rare Air (1993)archive.org

The companion Jordan/Vancil volume from the year before, the other home of Jordan's published first-person material.
Quote Investigator — site searchquoteinvestigator.com

Returns nothing: the specialist quote-tracing site has never investigated this line.
Wikipedia — Michael Jordanen.wikipedia.org

Career facts: born 17 February 1963, fifteen NBA seasons between 1984 and 2003, six titles with the Chicago Bulls.

The author

Who was Michael Jordan?

Michael Jordan

Born 1963 · American basketball player and six-time NBA champion

Michael Jordan played fifteen NBA seasons between 1984 and 2003, winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls across two three-peats — 1991–93 and 1996–98. By the mid-1990s he was also a publishing brand: Rare Air (1993) and I Can’t Accept Not Trying (1994) were both built with the writer Mark Vancil. That is why so many ‘Jordan quotes’ trace to a short illustrated book rather than to a transcript, a press conference or a locker-room interview.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available citation

Michael Jordan with Mark Vancil, I Can’t Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). Cited as the source by Wikiquote’s Michael Jordan entry, whose text adds a bracketed ‘[no hard work]’; the exact page could not be confirmed, and the widely repeated ‘p. 129’ is not possible in this book.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-can-accept-failure-everyone-fails-at-something-but-i-cant/

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