Top 462 Failure Quotes

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

What I try to get physically healthy people to understand is that they're going to die someday. There is no way out. And dying isn't failure, but not living is, so make use of your time. Don't keeping waiting.

My father believed strongly, and taught me, that you can't let yourself get too high on a success or too low on a failure. In this volatile business, that's useful to know.

Too often we just look at these glistening successes. Behind them in many, many cases is failure along the way, and that doesn't get put into the Wikipedia story or the bio. Yet those failures teach you every bit as much as the successes.

I grew up in a household where I learned five things from my old man. You know what they were? You're no good. You're a failure. You're not going to amount to anything. Don't trust nobody, and don't tell nobody your business. When I lost to Larry Holmes in 1982, I felt all five of those things smacked me right across the face.