62 Quotes About Failure — Why Failing Is the Key to Success
Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of it. These quotes from people who failed their way to greatness will change how you see setbacks. Every inventor, athlete, entrepreneur, and artist on this page experienced devastating failure — and then used it as fuel. If you need the courage to keep going after a setback, or the determination to try one more time, these words are for you.
Who Is J.K. Rowling?
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Born | July 31, 1965 |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Author, Screenwriter, Philanthropist |
| Known For | Harry Potter series (500+ million copies), richest author in history, Lumos Foundation |
Key Achievements and Episodes
From Welfare to the World's Bestselling Author
In 1993, J.K. Rowling was a single mother living on welfare benefits in Edinburgh, Scotland, clinically depressed and struggling to survive. She wrote the first Harry Potter manuscript in cafes while her daughter napped. She later told Harvard's 2008 graduating class, "I had failed on an epic scale. Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." She described failure as liberating because it stripped away the inessential.
Twelve Rejections Before Bloomsbury Said Yes
The completed manuscript of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was rejected by twelve publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it in 1997. The editor, Barry Cunningham, reportedly told Rowling to get a day job because there was no money in children's books. The initial print run was just 500 copies. Within five years, Harry Potter had become the bestselling book series in history, with over 500 million copies sold worldwide and translations into 80 languages.
A Billion-Dollar Literary Empire
From those twelve rejections, Rowling built a literary empire worth over $1 billion. The Harry Potter films grossed $7.7 billion at the global box office. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks attract millions of visitors annually. She has donated over $160 million to charity, including founding the Lumos Foundation for children in institutional care. Her journey from welfare to billionaire author is the most dramatic rags-to-riches story in literary history.
Quotes on Reframing Failure as Progress
The people who changed the world shared an unusual relationship with failure: they refused to let it be the final word. Edison's record-breaking persistence across 10,000 failed attempts was not stubbornness but the systematic elimination of everything that wouldn't work — a process that he understood, correctly, would eventually leave only the thing that would. The crucial shift is from "I failed" to "this approach failed" — a small grammatical change with enormous psychological consequences. Developing a growth mindset is essential for making this shift.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Thomas Edison — on inventing the light bulb
"I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."
Benjamin Franklin
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."
Henry Ford
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
Truman Capote
"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
James Joyce, Ulysses
"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."
Henry Ford
"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."
Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Quotes on Rising After Every Fall
Across vastly different cultures — from the Analects of Confucius to the folk wisdom of Japan to the speeches of Churchill — a single insight appears again and again: what distinguishes the great from the ordinary is not the absence of failure but the response to it. The Japanese proverb "fall seven times, stand up eight" was not a poetic flourish but a practical description of survival in a world that does not offer second chances to those who stay down. Resilience is a muscle that strengthens with discipline and repeated use.
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Confucius
"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
Japanese proverb (七転び八起き)
"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone."
Johnny Cash
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan — Nike commercial, 1997
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default."
J.K. Rowling — Harvard Commencement, 2008
"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
J.K. Rowling — Harvard Commencement, 2008
"Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."
Nelson Mandela
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quotes on Daring to Fail and Not Being Afraid
There is a particular quality of courage required not just to recover from failure but to take the risk of it in the first place. Kennedy's observation that only those who "dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly" was not delivered from a place of safety — it was the rallying cry of a politician who had watched his brother assassinated and was himself operating under constant threat. The willingness to risk significant failure is the prerequisite for significant achievement, because the size of the potential failure is always proportional to the size of the potential prize.
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
Robert F. Kennedy
"There is no failure except in no longer trying."
Elbert Hubbard
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."
Nelson Mandela
"Don't be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try."
Michael Jordan
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Wayne Gretzky
"I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed."
Robert H. Schuller
"The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing."
Leo Buscaglia
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
Theodore Roosevelt
Quotes on Failure Leading to Success
The connection between failure and success is not just motivational rhetoric — it is a pattern that repeats throughout history with almost scientific regularity. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for "lacking imagination." Steve Jobs was pushed out of the company he founded. Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections before winning the presidency. Oprah Winfrey was told she was "unfit for television." The pattern is always the same: a devastating failure, followed by a period of reflection, followed by a breakthrough that could not have happened without the failure. These motivational insights remind us that every setback carries a lesson.
"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
Abraham Lincoln
"All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
Walt Disney
"I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."
Steve Jobs
"Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness."
Oprah Winfrey
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
Winston Churchill
"When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important."
Ellen DeGeneres
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."
Colin Powell
"Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success."
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad
Short Failure Quotes for Students
Students face failure constantly — failed exams, rejected applications, projects that don't work out. These short, memorable quotes serve as reminders that every expert was once a beginner who refused to quit. Pin them to your wall, write them in your notebook, or set them as your phone wallpaper. The path to mastery runs directly through failure.
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
"Failure is instruction. Not the end."
Attributed to various educators
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Confucius
"The expert in anything was once a beginner."
Helen Hayes
"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Attributed to Winston Churchill
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."
Sir Ken Robinson, TED Talk, 2006
"You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over."
Richard Branson
Quotes About Failure from Scientists and Inventors
In science, failure is not just common — it is the method. The scientific process is designed around failure: you form a hypothesis, you test it, and when it fails, you learn something. Einstein spent a decade failing to unify general relativity before arriving at his field equations. Edison's lab was a factory of failure, systematically producing thousands of negative results to isolate the one positive one. For scientists, the question is never "will I fail?" but "what will my failures teach me?"
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."
Steve Jobs — Stanford Commencement, 2005
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
Thomas Edison
"Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success."
Arianna Huffington
"The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas."
Albert Einstein
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
Thomas Edison
"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
Elon Musk
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
Albert Einstein
Quotes About Failure and Perseverance
Perseverance is the bridge between failure and success. Every person who achieved something extraordinary did so not because they avoided failure, but because they refused to let failure have the last word. The determination to keep moving forward when everything seems lost is the single most reliable predictor of eventual success.
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Albert Einstein
"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense."
Winston Churchill — Harrow School, 1941
"If you fell down yesterday, stand up today."
H.G. Wells
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
Confucius
"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other."
Walter Elliot
"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"
Vincent van Gogh
"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."
Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
"I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."
Michael Jordan
"The phoenix must burn to emerge."
Janet Fitch, White Oleander
"There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period."
Brene Brown
"When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel."
Eloise Ristad
"I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy."
Tony Robbins
"Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying."
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."
Steve Jobs — Stanford Commencement, 2005
Frequently Asked Questions About Failure Quotes
What are the most famous quotes about learning from failure?
The most famous quotes about learning from failure include Thomas Edison's "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," Henry Ford's "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently," and Albert Einstein's "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." These quotes all share the same insight: failure is not an ending but a form of education. The key distinction is between failing (a temporary event) and being a failure (a permanent identity). Every great achiever in history treated failures as data points, not death sentences.
What are the best quotes about failure leading to success?
The best quotes connecting failure to success include Winston Churchill's "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts," Michael Jordan's famous admission that he missed over 9,000 shots and that this is why he succeeds, and J.K. Rowling's "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." Arianna Huffington put it most directly: "Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success." The pattern across all these quotes is that success does not happen despite failure — it happens because of it.
What are good short failure quotes for students?
The best short failure quotes for students include Samuel Beckett's "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better," Confucius's "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop," Helen Hayes's "The expert in anything was once a beginner," and Wayne Gretzky's "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." These are short enough to memorize, write on a sticky note, or use as a phone wallpaper — and each one carries a powerful reminder that failure is just a temporary station on the way to mastery.
What did Einstein say about failure?
Albert Einstein made several famous statements about failure and mistakes. His most quoted include: "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new," "The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas," "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new," and "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." Einstein's approach to failure was fundamentally scientific — he saw each mistake as an experiment that yielded useful data. He spent over a decade failing to solve general relativity before his breakthrough in 1915, proving that persistence through failure was the key to his genius.
What are the best quotes about not being afraid to fail?
The most powerful quotes about overcoming the fear of failure include Michael Jordan's "Don't be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try," Robert F. Kennedy's "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly," Theodore Roosevelt's "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed," and Nelson Mandela's "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." Vincent van Gogh asked the essential question: "What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" The consistent message is that the fear of failure is more destructive than failure itself. For more on this theme, see our collection of courage quotes.
You Might Also Enjoy
If these failure quotes inspired you, explore these related collections:
- Courage Quotes — The bravery to take the first step even when failure seems likely.
- Discipline Quotes — The daily habits that turn failure into lasting growth.
- Motivational Quotes — Words to fuel your drive when setbacks threaten to stop you.
- Determination Quotes — The stubborn refusal to quit that separates the great from the good.
- Growth Mindset Quotes — The belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.