“My life is as confusing as the mountains.
You can’t get to the top of a mountain by walking straight. You walk through and around the fields, up and down, narrow passages, paths - the road that is ten times longer than the actual straight distance... And it always looks as if that peak, that summit is so near, maybe just minutes away - but you walk for three more hours, and you look up and the distance is still the same. The mountains upset the logic of lines, perspectives, time, space, distance. Everything’s so different, in the mountains. So then, what about life?”

— Jonas Mekas (I Had Nowhere to Go)

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.”

— Søren Kierkegaard “Fear and Trembling”

Failure does not exist.

It only exists to those who are more concerned with appearing successful.

In order to continue growing as a person with your respective craft, you have to set unreasonable goals. That's the point. You have to aim outside of your comfort zone and push yourself to stretch for things that you cannot yet do. As we like to say around the office, "If you know what you're doing, you aren't trying hard enough."

However, in order to actually set goals far outside your comfort zone, you have to understand and be ok with the fact that you will "fail." You won't get there the first, or second, or third time. You will fall short. You will make mistakes and it won't be a straight shot to the end.

However, "failing" to meet the expectations you set for yourself when aiming outside your comfort zone actually moves you much closer towards your goals than if you were to "achieve" something easily within reach.

Thus: Achievement, in this sense, is actually detrimental. "Failure" is the real win.

The truly successful, the innovators, the creative geniuses, the legends all share this in common. They do not care about appearing successful or as having failed. They only care about knowledge of their craft, and they are willing to go to whatever length to get it. You can't discover anything new without "failing." You can't explore different ways of doing things without "failing." You can't forge a name of your own without going off the beaten path, getting lost, and then coming back and sharing what you've found.

Nicolas Cole

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

Thomas Edison

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston S. Churchill 

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

Benjamin Franklin

We are all failures- at least the best of us are.

J.M. Barrie

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Henry David Thoreau

Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

Robert T. Kiyosaki

The phoenix must burn to emerge.

Janet Fitch

How much you can learn when you fail determines how far you will go into achieving your goals.

Roy T. Bennett

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Elbert Hubbard

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

Henry Ford

I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

John Keats

If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want

Richard Yates