Did Winston Churchill say "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm"?

Q: Did Winston Churchill say "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm"?

No. This line is found nowhere in Churchill's writings or speeches. Quote Investigator traces the earliest close matches to anonymous sources in 1953; the Churchill attribution only appears decades later with no citation, and roughly as many sources wrongly credit Abraham Lincoln.

Who really said it

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm

Not Winston Churchill — an anonymous saying Unknown (anonymous origin) Earliest documented 1953 · author unknown

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

This line is found nowhere in Churchill’s writings or speeches. Quote Investigator traces the earliest close matches to anonymous sources in 1953; the Churchill attribution only appears decades later with no citation, and roughly as many sources wrongly credit Abraham Lincoln.

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

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm” Anonymous saying (earliest documented 1953); popularly misattributed to Winston Churchill

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Winston Churchill — British statesman, orator & author · the quote is misattributed to him. Theme: "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm". 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 "Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm". 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 saying actually comes from

Attributed to: Winston Churchill (and, almost as often, Abraham Lincoln)
Actual origin: Anonymous
Earliest documented: How to Say a Few Words (David Guy Powers, 1953)
Verdict: Found nowhere in Churchill’s canon

Success has been defined as the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. anonymous, 1953

The 1953 wording recorded by Quote Investigator — presented as a definition “success has been defined as…,” with no author claimed.

Quote Investigator: full investigation of this saying

The paper trail

The earliest close match found by Quote Investigator is a 1953 public-speaking guide, How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers, which presents the line anonymously as a definition of success.
The International Churchill Society lists it among quotes falsely attributed to Churchill: “We can find no attribution… broadly attributed to Winston Churchill.”
Churchill bibliographer Richard Langworth confirms it is “found nowhere in his canon,” and notes an almost equal number of sources credit Abraham Lincoln with no attribution either.
Quote Investigator found further anonymous 1950s–60s variants (“advancing from failure to failure,” “staggering from failure to failure”) before the Churchill misattribution took hold in the 1980s.

The exact wording has no identifiable author: the earliest documented instances (1953) are anonymous, so no copyright or public-domain status can be responsibly asserted for the phrase itself. (The 1953 book How to Say a Few Words in which it is recorded is a separate, later work and does not claim the line.)

Fact-check

How Churchill got the credit

This is a textbook “magnet name” misattribution: an anonymous mid-century aphorism that migrated onto a famous orator once it was too good to leave unsigned.

Winston Churchill misattributed

Credited to Churchill across posters, LinkedIn and quote sites, but it appears in none of his speeches or books. The International Churchill Society and bibliographer Richard Langworth both find no attribution.

Abraham Lincoln misattributed

Roughly as many sources pin it on Lincoln — also with no citation. Quote Investigator finds no substantive evidence for either man.

The earliest documented versions, from 1953 onward, are anonymous; the saying has no known author — see Quote Investigator.

Context

Why this one sticks to Churchill

Churchill is one of the internet’s biggest quote magnets: pithy, resilient-sounding lines gravitate to him because, as Quote Investigator puts it, statements “appear to be more forceful and memorable when linked to major orators.” A definition of success built on cheerful persistence is exactly the register people expect from him — which is precisely why it was so easy to misassign.

In reality the phrase surfaced anonymously in 1950s American self-improvement and public-speaking writing and drifted through several wordings before the Churchill label stuck in the 1980s.

An anonymous 1953 definition — not a Churchill line.

Explore

Filed under

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

Failure Success Resilience Hope

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.

Quote Investigator — full origin investigationquoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative trace: earliest anonymous 1953 citations and why Churchill/Lincoln attributions fail.

Quotes Falsely Attributed to Churchillwinstonchurchill.org

The International Churchill Society's official list, which includes this saying as unattributable.

Richard Langworth — 'Success'richardlangworth.com

Churchill's leading bibliographer: the line is found nowhere in his canon.

Snopes — Churchill 'success/failure' quotessnopes.com

Fact-check context on the family of Churchill 'success and failure' misquotes.

WIST — Churchill (Spurious)wist.info

Sourced quotation database entry flagging the line as spurious.

The author

About Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

1874–1965 · British statesman, orator & author · the quote is misattributed to him

Sir Winston Churchill was Britain’s wartime Prime Minister and a Nobel laureate in Literature whose vast, meticulously documented output makes fabricated “Churchill” quotes easy to catch. Despite his fame as a phrasemaker, this saying appears in none of his works — it is listed among the “Red Herrings” of false attributions by his own editors and biographers.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented in

Anonymous, quoted in David Guy Powers, How to Say a Few Words (New York: Doubleday, 1953); earliest documented instance per Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, “Success Is Going from Failure to Failure Without Losing Your Enthusiasm,” 28 June 2014.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/success-is-going-from-failure-to-failure-without-losing