Failure can hurt, but it teaches valuable lessons. For students, every setback is a opportunity to grow. Many great leaders have shared thoughts on failure, inspiring us to face it with courage. Here are 45 quotes about failure that remind us to rise stronger after every fall.
Embracing Setbacks
Failure can hurt children, but it teaches them to grow. By learning from mistakes, they build confidence. Support them, and show them that setbacks are just steps towards success. These quotes inspire students to keep going and never give up.
45 Quotes on Failure to Help You Rise Stronger
“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
Lance Armstrong
“Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of success.”
Arianna Huffington
“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.”
Brené Brown
“Every failure is a step to success.”
William Whewell
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Confucius
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
Henry Ford
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
Maya Angelou
“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
J.K. Rowling
“If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.”
Zig Ziglar
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Failure is success in progress.”
Albert Einstein
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Robert F. Kennedy
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
Vince Lombardi
“Don’t be discouraged by failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success.”
John Keats
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”
Mary Anne Radmacher
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
C.S. Lewis
“The best way out is always through.”
Robert Frost
“Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved.”
Lao Tzu
“A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
B.F. Skinner
“When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
Eloise Ristad
“If you believe it will work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you believe it won’t, you will see obstacles.”
Wayne Dyer
“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
Jim Rohn
“Success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”
George S. Patton
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
Dale Carnegie
“You always pass failure on your way to success.”
Mickey Rooney
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”
Florence Nightingale
“Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed.”
Bob Riley
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
Margaret Atwood
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Ken Robinson
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller
“Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.”
Zig Ziglar
“We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
Marie Curie
“If you hit the target every time, it’s too near or too big.”
Tom Hirshfield
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
Stephen Covey
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
Truman Capote
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
Joseph Campbell
“A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”
Chinua Achebe
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot
“Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.”
George R.R. Martin
“You be greater than your feelings. I don’t demand this of you—life does. Otherwise, you’ll be washed away by feelings. You’ll be washed out to sea and never seen again.”
Phillip Roth
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Charles R. Swindoll
“If you light a lamp for someone else, it will also brighten your path.”
Buddha
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
Anne Lamott
“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”
Nikola Tesla
Beautiful Poem on Failure
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”
“If” by Rudyard Kipling at Poetry Foundation
Source: A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1943)
