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After Thomas Edison's first 5,000 experiments failed
while trying to develop the carbon impregnated filament which would light the first incandescent lightbulb a young journalist
came to interview him and said, "Mr. Edison, why do you persist in wasting your time in these foolish experiments? Everybody
knows that there's no future in electric light." Edison said, "Young man, you don't understand how the world works, but I
want to tell you something. I have not failed at all. I have successfully indentified 5,000 ways which will not work, which
puts me just 5,000 ways closer to the way which will work."
Thomas Edison was the greatest failure in the history
of invention. Thomas Edison failed more times and lost
more money in experiments that were unsuccessful than
any
other inventor in modern history. Thomas Edison
was also arguably the greatest inventor in modern history.
He patented
1,097 devices at the U.S. Patent Office and
made hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and
countless others.
“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each
one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”
-Nikola Tesla
Michael Jordan stated, "I've missed over nine thousand
shots in my career. I've lost over three hundred games. Twenty-six times I took the game winning shot and missed... and because
of the failures, I am a success."
Napoleon Hill, in his classic work, "The Encyclopedia of Success", for which he
interviewed 500 of the most successful men and women in America, found that almost every single one of them achieved their
greatest success just one step beyond where they had reached their greatest failure: that one of the most common causes of
failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.
When you get into a tight place and everything
goes
against you, till it seems you could not hold on a
minute longer, never give up then, for that is just
the
place and time that the tide will turn. -Harriet
Beecher Stowe
When someone asked Thomas Watson, the founder of
IBM
"What is the key to success?" his reply was, "Double
your rate of failure!" Really successful people have
literally
failed their way to the top.
It is in understanding and embracing the concept of
failure that we achieve true
greatness as human beings. -Brian Tracy
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are
doomed if you don't try.
-Beverly Sills
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