Failure Quotes

I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life.

~ Jasper Johns

Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore.

~ Steven Johnson

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

~ Richard Branson

If the Gospels were truly the pattern of God’s activity, then defeat was only the beginning.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know. … Fifty to sixty thousand people walking in the rain and the mud to escape being killed, and seeing a person there beside the road dying. We saw lots of them dying. And lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes or innocent eyes, no laughing eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with my blue beret and they're saying, What in the hell happened? We were moving towards peace. You were there as the guarantor -- their interpretation -- of the mandate. How come I'm dying here? Those eyes dominated and they're absolutely right. How come I failed? How come my mission failed? How come as the commander who has the total responsibility-- We learn that, it's ingrained in us, because when we take responsibility it means the responsibility of life and death, of humans that we love.

~ Roméo Dallaire

Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.

~ Tommy Lasorda

His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.

~ Julian Barnes

Failure is not the end. In fact it is the beginning of a beautiful journey.

~ Jade Youssef

Sometimes, when we want something so badly, we fear failure more than we fear being without that thing.

~ Matthew J. Kirby

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

~ William Faulkner

Even monkeys fall from trees.

~ Chris Bradford

Stand up for the underdog, the 'loser.' Sometimes having the strength to show loving support for unacknowledged others turns the tides of our own lives.

~ Alexandra Katehakis

When you’re still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

~ Stephen King

You want to be competent? she thought. You want to learn to be in control of what goes on around you, rather than just being pushed around? Then you’ll have to learn to deal with failure.

~ Brandon Sanderson

Know that tomorrow will bring clarity where before was only fog. In the final summation, it is not other's expectations that slay us, but our over compensatory reactions in regard

~ C.b. Smith

If my attitude be on of fear, not faith, about the one who has disappointed me; if I say “Just what I expected,” if a fall occurs, then I know nothing of Calvary Love.

~ Amy Carmichael

Underestimate is the sign of getting fucked up.

~ Toba Beta

Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too.And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?

~ Leif Enger

Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they do so in an interesting way.

~ Robert Rosen

I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

~ Ernest Hemingway

An event in which you did not achieve your desired outcome (definition of failure).

~ Steven K. Scott

And failure, if you want to know, Dakota, is just another opportunity to try again.

~ Kate Jacobs

I could take a walk with my wife and try to explain the ghosts I can't stop speaking to. Or I could read all those books piling upabout the beginning of the end of understanding...Meanwhile, it's such a beautiful morning,the changing colors, the hypnotic light.I could sit by the window watching the leaves,which seem to know exactly how to fallfrom one moment to the next. Or I could loseeverything and have to begin over again.

~ Philip Schultz

You must become a free man so that you have “Sidik Paningal; Java” (lucidity and precision of sight). Later, you achieve the peak of detachment of sight (Ma’rifat), where you see something to the horizon with great clarity. Do not take another step before you are certain that the path you take is the right one. Failure is another matter; what matters is precision.

~ Emha Ainun Nadjib

Failure is another emotion I cannot stand to feel, because in adult life I have conditioned myself not to fail at anything. Failure takes me straight back to the feelings of worthlessness I grew up with as a stammering, reclusive little boy.

~ Jake Wood

Failure is when you talk yourself out of becoming something amazing.

~ Rudy Francisco

So long as the man with ambition is a failure, the world will tell him to let go of his ideal; but when his ambition is realized, the world will praise him for the persistence and the determination that he manifested during his dark hours, and everybody will point to his life as an example for coming generations. This is invariably the rule. Therefore pay no attention to what the world says when you are down. Be determined to get up, to reach the highest goal you have in view, and you will.

~ Christian D. Larson

But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?

~ Wilkie Collins

Failure happened. The trick was to accept the risk and try anyway.

~ Ilona Andrews

But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important.

~ Rick Yancey

She had always loved the stars. But tonight, she felt as if they were watching her, waiting for her to fail.

~ Sasha Alsberg

The more I try to be perfect, the more I fail.

~ Harley King

The only real failure in life is giving up. On looking back let it stand to our credit in life's balance sheet that at least we tried, and tried hard.

~ A.g. Street

So few are the easy victories as the ultimate failures.

~ Marcel Proust

As the sun shines I will make hayTo keep failure at bayFor there remaineth a payFor my honest toil each day.

~ Ogwo David Emenike

If you live to fail, then you fail to live.

~ Muhammad Mice Misrad

The ability to overcome failure--to live through it and move on--is crucial. If we are not willing to face failure--if we don't have the skills to survive it--we have precluded any real creativity or risk. Failure may never become our friend, but if we are to do meaningful work, perhaps failure needs to be our companion.

~ John Hunter

Decode the message of failure and enjoy the fortune thereof.

~ Ogwo David Emenike

Failure is not the deterrent for the next try. Rather, it is information that empowers the next step.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough