Famous Failure Quotes

• You cannot have the intensity of the joy of success without tasting the bitterness of failure a few times.
  —Gary Cantrell, founder of the Barkley Marathons, March 2018

• Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
  —Winston Churchill

• I'm the master of low expectations.
  —President George W. Bush (June 4, 2003, aboard Air Force One)

• Failure is impossible.
  —Susan B. Anthony

• A man can fail many times in life but he’s never a failure if he tries to get up.
  —Found on stuntman Evel Knievel’s headstone

• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
  —Thomas Alva Edison

• Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
  —Eleanor Roosevelt

• If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
  —Thomas H. Palmer

• I hope he fails.
  —Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, referring to incoming president Barack Obama, January 16, 2009.

• Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
  —Robert F. Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney General

• There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
  —Ken Olson, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

• If at first you don’t succeed, try reading the instructions.
  —Evan Esar

• I’m sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me.
  —George W. Bush, December 1, 2008

• If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
  —John Kenneth Galbraith

• If you want to succeed, you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
  —John D. Rockefeller

• If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
  —Edward Albee

• There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurements.
  —Lord Kelvin, 1900

• People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
  —Darryl F. Zanuck, Hollywood studio executive, 1946

• If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.
  —W.C. Fields

• If at first you do succeed, try, try not to be insufferable.
  —Franklin P. Jones