Quotes About Failure

Success is a public affair.  Failure is a private funeral.

-- Rosalind Russell

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

 --Robert F. Kennedy

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which, is--try

to please everybody.

--Herbert Bayard Swope

Not failure, but low aim, is crime

--James Russell Lowell

I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating.

--Sophocles

The greatest failure is the failure to try.

--William A. Ward

It is not a disgrace to fail.  Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

--Charles F. Kettering

Flops are a part of life's menu and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.

--Rosalind Russell

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.

--Jules Renard

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.

--Ellen Glasgow

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

--Truman Capote

There is much to be said for failure.  It is much more interesting than success.

--Max Beerbohm  

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.

--Confucius

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Then quit.  There's no use being a damn fool about it.

--W. C. Fields

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.  We get very little

wisdom from success, you know.

--William Saroyan

Failure has gone to his head.

--Wilson Mizner (attrib.), on a bankrupt businessman who remained incorrigibly optimistic

An important task of a manager is to reduce his people's excuses for failure.

--Robert Townsend

Never give a man up until he has failed at something he likes.

--Lewis E. Lawes

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

--Newt Heilscher

I was fired from my first three jobs, which in a funny way gave me the courage to go into business for myself.

--Alfred C. Fuller