Failure & regret

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?

77 answers answered between 1910 and 2026

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Theodore Roosevelt 26th President of the United States, 1901–1909; Governor of New York 1899–1900; Assistant Secretary of the Navy 1897–1898
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Recorded Sorbonne, Paris, The American Presidency Project, University of California Santa Barbara, 23 April 1910 source ↗

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