Reggie Jackson struck out 2600 times in his career, which is the most in the history of baseball.
Before Leonardo DiCaprio was signed for his first movie, he went on 46 auditions without getting a job.
Beyonce won 24 grammy’s, but lost 46 times.
And even though you’re as successful as Arianna Huffington, her second book was still rejected by publishers 36 times.
Also, at the beginning of Giselle Bundchen’s modelling career, she received 42 rejections by the age of 16. Although she is one of the most well-known super models in the world, it wasn’t a smooth start.
Another campus story is about Thomas Edison. When a reporter asked him on how he felt about the 1000 failed experiments that he conducted, he replied with the answer that he didn’t consider it as failure because he tried 1000 different ways and found out that the 1001st was the lucky shot.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, failed many times as well. In this interview he mentioned how there where 24 people applying for a job at KFC, 23 people were taken except for him. Ma also applied 10 times for Harvard but they didn’t take him.
I love to highlight these failures because what often looks as an overnight success, had a lot of challenges along the way. As the highly successful people show us, despite their failures they never gave up. It’s inspiring to see how they continued to fail so many times and how there is this thin line between success and failure. Read on for my top 10 favourite quotes about failure.
My favourite quotes about failure
I.
Wes Moore’s sister about the regret that comes from not trying:
‘My definition of hell would be one day God is showing me everything that I could have accomplished, had I only tried. […]’
II.
Haruki Murakami on how our challenges shape us:
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Source: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
III.
Author Martin Luther King, Jr. on making sure you take action before you feel ready:
‘Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.’
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr. Also cited in the October 2025 issue.
IV.
V.
Courage is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
Source: Winston Churchill
V.
Being human means you will make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, because failure is God’s way of moving you in another direction.
Source: Oprah Winfrey
V.
“Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You are not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side, telling you, “Look here! This way!” That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
Source: A.H. Almaas
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Source: Denis Waitley
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
Source: Henry Ford
X.
Source: Albert Einstein
Last note
Thank you for reading. It was a pleasure to hand-pick these inspirational quotes about failure for you. In the Tiny Bits newsletter, I share a thoughtful and inspirational quote every month, as I’ve collected many of them along the way. Sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t yet.
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