Quotes & Sayings About Business Failures

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. — Richard Branson

Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and success, than what other people think, say, or do. It is more important than appearance, ability, or skill. It will make or break a business, a home, a friendship, an organization. The remarkable thing is I have a choice every day of what my attitude will be. I cannot change my past. I cannot change the actions of others. I cannot change the inevitable. The only thing I can change is attitude. Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it. — Charles R. Swindoll

The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the wins and the losses. Successes have many fathers, failures have none. — Philip Caldwell

Surviving a failure gives you more self-confidence. Failures are great learning tools.. but they must be kept to a minimum. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Eli Willard just looked at her for a long moment, and then he announced, 'Lady of the Lake strikes iceberg in mid-Atlantic; 215 drown. New York City fire destroys 700 buildings. Japanese earthquake kills 12,000. Worldwide cholera epidemic kills millions. Wages rise, but prices rise faster. Financial crash occurs on Van Buren's 36th day in office. Nation begins first great depression. Bank failures and closings spread like plague. 200,000 are unemployed. Business bankrupt; only pawnbrokers prosper. Van Buren declares ten-hour days on all federal jobs. There. Does that make you feel any better? — Donald Harington

The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business. — John C. Maxwell

The world needs peak performers like you to set the example of how to accept failures, dust off, and move on with your head held high. Whether you face a business failure, a divorce, a missed opportunity, a lost sale, a fumbled business presentation, or all of the above, own it, learn from it, and envision a successful future. — Michelle McCullough

My friend, temporary setbacks and failures are prerequisites to success. They aren't signs that, "maybe it's just not supposed to be. — Clay Clark

Most so called FAILURES are only temporary defeats — Napoleon Hill

I've often felt there might be more to be gained by studying business failures than business successes. — Warren Buffett

When we build on our strengths and daily successes - instead of focusing on failures - we simply learn more. — Tom Rath

Well first of all it's a business and it's a tough business, and you have to have the strength to survive all the set backs all the failures that make this a mean business, that's getting meaner and meaner every year in my opinion. — Robert Redford

As marriage was woman's business, unmarried women, though doubtless unfortunate, must simply be considered as business failures: harsh, doubtless, but in tune with the sink-or-swim capitalist times. — Ruth Brandon

I've had many failures in terms of technological ... business ... and even research failures. I really believe that entrepreneurship is about being able to face failure, manage failure and succeed after failing. — Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Many of my biggest business endeavors were failures before they became a success. Some failed for as long as six years before they hit. Everyone around me thought I was crazy. You just have to stay at it. — Russell Simmons

If a bank fails in China, they behead the men at the top of it that was responsible ... If we beheaded all of ours that were responsible for bank failures, we wouldn't have enough people left to bury the heads. — Will Rogers

Here I am, a not over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion. In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you. — Charles M. Schwab

Women are not as sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspoken poetry of nature, being less poetical, and having less imagination; they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make fewer failures in business. — Charles Dudley Warner

The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me — Richard Branson

My profession brought me in contact with various minds. Earnest, serious discussion on the condition of woman enlivened my business room; failures of banks, no dividends from railroads, defalcations of all kinds, public and private, widows and orphans and unmarried women beggared by the dishonesty, or the mismanagement of men, were fruitful sources of conversation; confidence in man as a protector was evidently losing ground, and women were beginning to see that they must protect themselves. — Harriot Kezia Hunt

The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction. — Harvey MacKay

In general, an asset should be sold when it has greater value to a buyer. This happens when a buyer has a complimentary business or capability that would enable them to do more with that business. Many businesses we have exited were not failures, but had simply reached a point in their life cycle where they no longer provided a core capability or served as a platform for growth. — Charles Koch

The people who blame everything and every body else for their lack of success, tended to continue to have a lack of success.
Your Proactive, problem solving minded, assertive and responsible approach is going to carry you much further than whining, blaming, pointing fingers and justifying your failures. — Loren Weisman

My advice to women is the same advice I would give to any young man trying to make it in the business of making film: Engage your fans and turn your fans into your community. Realize that we all have failures and can turn those failures into successes through tenacity and through being open to changing. Stick to your story, and choose subject matter that is close to you, touches your heart and your agenda in life, listen carefully and don't give up. Don't sacrifice your vision. Be open but don't sacrifice - for anything, actually. — Ondi Timoner

How much real comfort every one might enjoy if he would be contented with the lot in which heaven has cast him, and how much trouble would be avoided if people would only "let well alone." A moderate independence, quietly and honestly procured, is certainly every way preferable even to immense possessions achieved by the wear and tear of mind and body so necessary to procure them. Yet there are very few individuals, let them be doing ever so well in the world, who are not always straining every nerve to do better; and this is one of the many causes why failures in business so frequently occur among us. — Grace MacGowan Cooke

The acceleration of the marketing process, the concentrating of manufacturing, greater diversification, increased international competition, have in turn speeded up product improvements, product innovations and new product introductions. The stakes are high, the failures costly. — Tom Sutton

For my part, I rather distrust men or concerns that rise up with the speed of rockets. Sudden rises are sometimes followed by equally sudden falls. I have most faith in the individual or enterprise that advances step by step. A mushroom can spring up in a day; an oak takes 50 years or more to reach maturity. Mushrooms don't last; oaks do. The real cause for an enormous number of business failures is premature over-expansion, attempting to gallop before learning to creep. Sudden successes often invite sudden reverses. — B.C. Forbes

Information is a significant component of most organizations' competitive strategy either by the direct collection, management, and interpretation of business information or the retention of information for day-to-day business processing. Some of the more obvious results of IS failures include reputational damage, placing the organization at a competitive disadvantage, and contractual noncompliance. These impacts should not be underestimated. — Institute Of Internal Auditors

The markets were now run by technology, but the technologists were still treated like tools. Nobody bothered to explain the business to them, but they were forced to adapt to its demands and exposed to its failures - which was, perhaps, why there had been so many more conspicuous failures. — Michael Lewis

I believe in a business boarding up early. If you make a mistake, you put the boards in the window of the store and say, "Hey, I made a mistake." Let me take two shots in the arm and a punch on the nose and let me get on to the next thing. I don't believe in worrying over failures. I worry about successes. This is opposite from most people. Most people zero in on their failures. I try to keep all my attention on a pyramid type philosophy rather than the averaging-down philosophy. — Al McGuire

As an entrepreneur building a multimillion-dollar business, your failures are going to be your greatest assets, provided you have a philosophy that addresses mistakes, strives to understand them, learns the key elements in them, and turns them into successes. — Ryan Blair

Frequent risk-takers have had their fair shares of failures and successes, hence, being confident in reaching their goals, they will usually seem insensitive to whether or not they look foolish or cool to other people. — Criss Jami

Look for the failures in your successes and the successes in your failures. — Bob Sutton

It doesn't matter how many times you fail. It doesn't matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are. — Mark Cuban

Having a support system is huge for writers. My parents were always encouraging and told me they were behind me, whether or not I made it in the business. My wife was always there for my successes and failures. — Stephen J. Cannell

A company at the top of its game has accumulated a number of rules of thumb - implicit assumptions and beliefs about what has been central to its success. New technologies and business models belie or change some of those assumptions, but they only seem sensible if the management team can become aware of those implicit assumptions and mind-sets and suspend them for a moment to contemplate the change. It's very hard to do that with the inherited wisdom, experience, and lore of a company. This is why the failures of incumbents to capture the benefits of disruptive innovations are a result not of bad managers, but of good managers practicing what they have done best. Incremental innovations can quickly be scaled and incorporated. Disruptive innovations require changes in customer sets, business models, or performance metrics that are no longer consistent with what led to success in the past. — Stefan Heck

Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century: We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And, with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields - from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That — Atul Gawande

Business schools are failing to teach the students about the risks of market failures. We need to include some material on market failures in the core of curriculum. — Pankaj Ghemawat

Modern novels have become part of the do-it-yourself business, and they come in a very small number of standard kits. ( ... ) In this wilderness cries the voice of Patrick White, Australian extraordinary, who has quite other, more austere and indeed prophetic ambitions. ( ... ) (H)is failures are certainly the equivalent, and perhaps the measure, of other men's success. — David Pryce-Jones

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites. — Rick Falkvinge