How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Recorded Paula Scher said elsewhere, not written here
When you’re working and you make mistakes, particularly when you’re young, you make discoveries because you do things that are inappropriate and wrongheaded, but within the wrongheadedness you find an unexpected way to go. These things are truly the breakthroughs.

Debbie Millman, Psychology Today, 'Brainstorm' column, 1 May 2009 source ↗

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Joan Didion American writer
Yeah. It’s a grandiose reaction. You are claiming you could really control this, but you failed.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, New York, New York, 1 April 2005 source ↗
Cal Ripken Jr. Baseball player; holder of the record for consecutive games played
No. I mean if you fail 70 percent of the time, you had a great year. You're dealing with failure seven out of ten times as a hitter.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interviewer, Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 18 August 2020 source ↗
Robert S. Langer Biomedical engineer; Institute Professor at MIT
In fact, what I usually say to people, “Probably some of the most successful scientists are the ones that know how to deal with failure well.” Because it’s easy to feel good when you succeed. That’s an easy thing. But you’re probably going to fail in science a lot more than you succeed, so you really have to learn how to deal with it and not let it beat you.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 25 October 2012 source ↗
Michael Rosbash American geneticist and chronobiologist
Right, it’s true, it’s true. We didn’t think of ourselves as that, you know everybody … There’s an element of craft in the work, you know, we’re putting one foot in front of the other. Trying to get more experiments to work than fail but in hindsight, yes, there’s some truth in that.
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded shortly after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 October 2017 source ↗

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