The Heart of the Matter
October 13, 2008
Failure Is Not What You Think It Is

If you're inspired and have an idea you think will make a difference in the world, chances are good that you are feeling two things -- excitement and a fear of failure.

You're excited because you're motivated from the inside and see how your idea can help. At the same time, you're hesitating, because you don't want to fail.

This is the same challenge all people face. It's been going on for thousands of years. Failure? The only failure that can happen is you choosing not to act because you are afraid to fail.

Take a risk! Step up to the plate. The force is with you! As a great pundit once put it, "If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?

But hey, don't take my word for it. Click below for some juicy quotes on the topic -- everyone from Miles Davis to Thomas Edison.

"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots." -- Charles Kettering

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." -- Miles Davis

"The way to succeed is to double your failure rate."
-- Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."
-- Henry Ford

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius

"Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it." -- Horace

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby

"I have not failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work." -- Thomas Edison

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
-- Robert F. Kennedy

"No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." -- Sir Laurence Olivier

"If your life is free of failures, you're not taking enough risks."
-- H. Jackson Brown

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." -- Beverly Sills

"I failed my way to success." -- Thomas Edison

"99 percent of success is built on failure." -- Charles Kettering

"Act as if it were impossible to fail." -- Dorothea Brande

"Failure is success if we learn from it." -- Malcolm Forbes

"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." -- John Barrymore

"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success." -- Paramahansa Yogananda

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." -- Mary Pickford

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." -- Winston Churchill

"We are not retreating -- we are advancing in another direction."
-- Douglas MacArthur

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." -- Thomas A. Edison

"Fall seven times, stand up eight." -- Japanese Proverb

"Stumbling is not falling." -- Portuguese Proverb

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at October 13, 2008 12:37 PM

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