21 Quotes on Learning From Mistakes

Success is like an iceberg. When you look at it from water-level all you see is the peak but, when you look beneath the surface, you see the true mass that creates the awe-inspiring final product.

When you see success or successful people all you are seeing is the peak and you are not seeing the struggles, failure, doubt, worry, mistakes and close-to-quitting moments. They have all experienced time and time again.

What you find is rather than worrying about doing something right or perfectly, those who have succeeded embrace failure. They aren’t immune from mistakes. Their mistakes may stop them, momentarily, they may make them question their goal, their abilities and themselves overall but they keep working, regardless of how many times they fell down before.

It’s the fear of making mistakes publicly or privately that can stop one from achieving their goals before they even get started. Doubt can creep in and overtake. This should not be the case.

Here are twenty-one quotes that show mistakes and failure are a necessary part of success:

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.

– Frank Wilczek

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

– John C. Maxwell

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.

– Neil Gaiman

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

– Oscar Wilde

Looking back, you will never regret trying. You will only regret the unknown, unexplored, and the what-could-have-beens of life.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

– Scott Adams

We are products of our past but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.

– Rick Warren

Try, fail, learn, repeat. Do not wallow on what didn’t work and why. Move forward. Breathe, stretch, shake, let it go.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

– Edmund Burke

A man of genius makes no mistake; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

– James Joyce

I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work.

– Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison’s was an inventor through and through (among other things). Invention is a form of experimentation and within, one can learn as much or more from what is the wrong answer or hypothesis than the right one. Edison learned what did not work to, eventually, find what did.

When a child learns to walk and falls down 50 times, they never think to themselves: Maybe this isn’t for me?

– Various

Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

– Coco Chanel

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

– Lance Armstrong

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

– Paulo Coehlo

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

– Henry Ford

It’s not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.

– Zig Ziglar

Freedom isn’t worth having if it doesn’t include the freedom to make mistakes.

– Gandhi

We must be willing to roll the dice and lose. Prepare, at the end of the day, for none of it to work.

– Ryan Holiday

Ideally, we should not only be resilient in the face of failure and mistakes but be fully prepared for when they come. They are inevitable and preparation for them will only make one more resilient against them. Easier said than done but immensely valuable.

I do not fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?

– George Patton

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.

– Denis Waitley

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

– Eli Siegel

Truth will sooner come out of error than from confusion.

– Francis Bacon

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

– Napoleon Hill

Be willing to fail. Be prepared to fail. Be resilient enough to overcome failure and you just may succeed. Eventually.