Michael Korda Quotes

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Defeat has its lessons as well as victory.

We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

Try not to say, 'I'm a failure.' Instead, ask, 'What can I do better? What did I do wrong?' Then re-approach.

We don't learn much when everything goes right. We learn the most when things go wrong.

I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.

Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.

Learn from the negative as well as the positive, from the failures as well as the successes.

Failures are easier to repeat than successes.

The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

A good balance of winning and losing is important. If you just win all the time, you won't get anything out of it; having some tough losses can be really important.

What helped me most were my failures and slumps - when I couldn't get work, people weren't interested in me or had written me off.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.

Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.

When you experience a failure as a leader, don't hide it - talk about it. Your missed opportunity will encourage others to take risks.

One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non-sales selling isn't natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.

It's important to celebrate your failures as much as your successes. If you celebrate your failures really well, and if you get to the motto and say, 'Wow, I failed, I tried, I was wrong, I learned something,' then you realize you have no fear, and when your fear goes away, you can move the world.

I disagree with people who think you learn more from getting beat up than you do from winning.

You shouldn't be afraid of failure - when something fails, you think, 'What did I learn from that experience? I can do better next time.' Then kill that project and move on to the next. Don't get disappointed.

You will learn more from your failures than your successes - so embrace those mistakes, as difficult as that sounds, and grow from them. When a project is successful, you're never really sure why, because so many elements come into play. However, when you fail, you always know why. That is how you learn and grow.

If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.

You learn more when things go wrong.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.