The following are historic quotes on failure from the Epik Fails of History podcast!
Quotes from the show’s intro:
- “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
- “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself…” – FDR
- “Oh the humanity!” – Herbert Morrison reporting on the Hindenburg Disaster
- “Hey Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” – Apollo 13 astronaut, James Lovell
- “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” – Richard Nixon
Season 1:
- “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” – Abraham Lincoln (Episode Zero)
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison (Episode Zero)
- “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” – Robert A. Heinlein (E1 – The Dumbest Moments in History?)
- “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” – Orlando Aloysius Battista (E2 – History’s Most Avoidable Catastrophes)
- “Success is going from failure to failure, without the loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill (E3 – WWI)
- “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho (E7 – President’s Day Special)
- “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” – Karl Marx (E8 – The Civil War: Part 1)
- “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius (E9 – The Civil War: Part 2)
Season 2:
- “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” – JFK (E12 – Epic Fails in Space)
- “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” – Gena Showalter (E13 – The Luckiest Unlucky Man)
- “Failure is bad. But failure while you’re trying and you’re testing is not terrible. You’re learning from it.” – Gwynne Shotwell (E14 – Random Tales of Fail)
- “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.” – Louis Pasteur (E16 – Medical Fails)
- “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.” – Socrates (E17 – Untitled Time Travel Episode)
- “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breath, only then will you discover that you cannot eat money.” – Cree Native American Prophecy (E18 – Earth Week Special)
- “I’m not going to live another 60 years. You always told me it takes time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’ and my sisters’ time, my nieces’ and nephews’ time. How much time do you want for your progress?” – James Baldwin (E19 – The Tulsa Massacre)
- “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy (E20 – The Cuban Missile Crisis: Part 1)
- “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard (E21 – The Cuban Missile Crisis: Part 2)
- “Don’t wallow in failure, instead learn from it.” – Bill Gates (E22 – A History of Hackers and Digital Heists)
Season 3:
- “Just because you fail once, doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.” – Marilyn Monroe (E23 – The French Revolution)
- “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” – Ariel Durant (E24 – The Rise and Fail of Rome)
- “Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (E25 – Worst. Pirates. Ever)
- “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall.” – Marcus Aurelius (E26.75 – #WeStandWithUkraine)
- “Nana korobi, ya oki – Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb (E27 – The Mongol Invasions of Japan)
- “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” – Florence Nightingale (E28 – The Salem Witch Trials)
- “Treat the Earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.” – Crazy Horse, Lakota War Leader (E29 – The First Thanksgiving?)
- “Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” – Arianna Huffington (E29.5 – Epik Wins of History – 2022 Edition)
- “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything.” – Albert Einstein (E30 – Nuclear Fails)
- “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.” — Noam Chomsky (E30 – Nuclear Fails)
- “Reality is frequently inaccurate.” ― Douglas Adams (E32 – The War for… Jenkins’ Ear?!)
- “Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make…” – Nick Bostrom (E33 – The History and Future of A.I.?)
- “Ridicule is not a part of the scientific method and the public should not be taught that it is.” – Professor J. Allen Hynek (E34 – D.B. Cooper, MK-Ultra, and the Roswell Incident of 1947)
- “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte (E34.5 – Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” Movie Review)
- “Much of the evil in the world is due to the fact that man, in general, is hopelessly unconscious…” – Carl Jung (E35 – STALIN vs PIZARRO: The Bracket of Fails – Final Match!)
- “Fear not death for the hour of your doom is set and none may escape it.” – Old Norse Proverb, “The Hávamál” from the Saga of the Volsung (E36 – VIKINGS 101 w/ Ben Thompson – Badass of the Week!)
