The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal. If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a "quitter." A quitter never wins—and a winner never quits. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you go to work.

I'm going to mess up. But I'm going to get back, you know, and get after it and try to do better the next day.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Failure is never fatal. But failure to change can and might be.

I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance — that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are.

Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good. To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

Education will not (take the place of persistence); the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done.

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

I think you'll see that my life story is worthy of a novel, because of my sins more than my virtues.