65 Quotes That Will Motivate You to Reach Success

When we fail we have three options: We can choose to quit, which is the only real failure; we can choose to ignore the feedback and try again, but this is flirting with madness because to do the same thing the same way over and over again expecting different results is a definition of madness; or we can learn from our failure, adapt our approach, and try again.

Every major success is built on a solid bedrock of previous failures. Here are 65 quotes to help inspire you to keep going and make those improvements to your approach that will ultimately lead you to success.

“Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.” —John Wooden
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” —Thomas Edison
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” —Winston Churchill
“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.” —Alexandre Dumas
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” —Napoleon Hill
“You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” —Johnny Cash
“It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.” —Zig Ziglar
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” —Jack Canfield
“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” —Coco Chanel
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” —Robert F. Kennedy
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” —Janet Fitch
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” —Ken Robinson
“An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” —Charles F. Kettering
“Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —Oliver Goldsmith
“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.” —George Eliot
“A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.” —Elmer G. Letterman
“You’ll always miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” —Wayne Gretzky
“A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” —John C. Maxwell
“There are no failures–just experiences and your reactions to them.” —Tom Krause
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.” —George Bernard Shaw
“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
“It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” —Ellen DeGeneres
“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” —Chris Bradford
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas Edison
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” —Bill Gates
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.” —Richard Branson
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” —Winston Churchill
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” —Paulo Coelho
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” —Mark Zuckerberg
“No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.” —Chris Hardwick
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” —Elbert Hubbard
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” —James P. Lewis
“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” —Lance Armstrong
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” —Winston Churchill
“I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.” —Neal Shusterman
“We are all failures–at least the best of us are.” —J.M. Barrie
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” —Henry Ford
“I think you have to try and fail, because failure gets you closer to what you’re good at.” —Louis C.K.
“I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time, but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.” —Dolly Parton
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” —Steve Jobs
“Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can’t go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else’s success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.” —Kevin Bacon
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” —Michael Jordan
“Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” —Gena Showalter
“If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail…it takes backbone to lead the life you want” —Richard Yates
“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.” —Denis Waitley
“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” —C.S. Lewis
“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
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” —J.K. Rowling
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” —James Joyce
“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.” —Charlie Chaplin
“Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.” —Amelia Earhart
“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes–understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” —Arianna Huffington
“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” —Frederic William Farrar
“You have to be able to accept failure to get better.” —LeBron James
“I don’t want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.” —Emma Watson
“Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” —Benjamin Franklin
“When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures. So I did 10 times more work.” —George Bernard Shaw
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” —Henry Ford
“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.” —Criss Jami
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” —Abraham Lincoln
“Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.” —Sumner Redstone
“Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.” —Mia Hamm
“When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” —Eloise Ristad
“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” —John Green