Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
Interpretation
Failure is often a precursor to success, teaching valuable lessons along the way.
This quote emphasizes the idea that experiencing failure is a crucial part of achieving success. It suggests that those who ultimately succeed often do so because they have faced and overcome challenges and setbacks. If individuals never encountered defeat, they would lack the perspective and resilience necessary to appreciate and achieve significant victories in their lives.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to encourage teams facing challenges.
Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made.
We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame β that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.
If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities.
I was sixty-six years old. I still had to make a living. I looked at my social security check of 105 dollars and decided to use that to try to franchise my chicken recipe. Folks had always liked my chicken.
Unlike what most people think, entrepreneurs are not special people who know how to do special things that others don't. Entrepreneurs can be made, because we're all born with the potential - that special human quality - to create.
I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy.
I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
The door to a balanced success opens widest on the hinges of hope and encouragement.
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