Stories to transform how you see failure
Every name here faced a devastating setback, betrayal, rejection, public failure, before the achievement they're remembered for. Real history, not motivational myth: Act I is the vision, Act II is the failure, Act III is the rise, Act IV is what it means for you.
6 min read
Bhagat Singh
1907 – 1931
“Inquilab Zindabad: Long Live the Revolution.”
7 min read
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
1897 – 1945
“Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!”
6 min read
Rani Lakshmibai
1828 – 1858
“Main apni Jhansi nahi doongi: I will not surrender my Jhansi.”
7 min read
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 - 1948
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
7 min read
Nelson Mandela
1918 - 2013
“It always seems impossible until it is done.”
6 min read
Joan of Arc
1412 - 1431
“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
6 min read
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
1875 – 1950
“The Iron Man who united five hundred princely states into one India.”
6 min read
Ashoka the Great
c. 304 - 232 BCE
“All men are my children.”
6 min read
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj
1630 - 1680
“Swarajya is my birthright, and I shall have it.”
6 min read
Abraham Lincoln
1809 - 1865
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
6 min read
Winston Churchill
1874 - 1965
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
6 min read
Sun Yat-sen
1866 - 1925
“The revolution has not yet succeeded. Comrades, we must struggle on.”
6 min read
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
1881 - 1938
“Peace at home, peace in the world.”
6 min read
Chanakya
c. 375 - 283 BCE
“Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere.”
6 min read
Steve Jobs
1955 – 2011
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
6 min read
The Wright Brothers
1871 - 1948 (Orville); 1867 - 1912 (Wilbur)
“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”
6 min read
Thomas Edison
1847 - 1931
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
5 min read
Henry Ford
1863 - 1947
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.”
6 min read
Walt Disney
1901 - 1966
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
6 min read
Oprah Winfrey
b. 1954
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
6 min read
Jamsetji Tata
1839 - 1904
“In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.”
6 min read
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
1931 – 2015
“Dream is not that which you see while sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep.”
6 min read
Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
6 min read
Nikola Tesla
1856 – 1943
“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
6 min read
Marie Curie
1867 – 1934
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
5 min read
Kalpana Chawla
1962 – 2003
“The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it.”
6 min read
C.V. Raman
1888 - 1970
“Ask the right questions, and nature will open the doors to her secrets.”
6 min read
Homi J. Bhabha
1909 - 1966
“No power is as great as the power of an idea whose time has come.”
6 min read
Vikram Sarabhai
1919 - 1971
“We must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.”
6 min read
Srinivasa Ramanujan
1887 - 1920
“An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.”
6 min read
Isaac Newton
1643 - 1727
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
6 min read
Galileo Galilei
1564 - 1642
“And yet it moves.”
5 min read
Aristotle
384 - 322 BCE
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
5 min read
Alexander Fleming
1881 - 1955
“One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.”
6 min read
Louis Pasteur
1822 - 1895
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
6 min read
Alan Turing
1912 - 1954
“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”
6 min read
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 - 1519
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
6 min read
Michael Faraday
1791 - 1867
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true.”
6 min read
Stephen Hawking
1942 - 2018
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”
6 min read
Charles Darwin
1809 - 1882
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most responsive to change.”
7 min read
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
1891 – 1956
“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
5 min read
Mother Teresa
1910 – 1997
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
6 min read
Swami Vivekananda
1863 - 1902
“Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.”
6 min read
Rabindranath Tagore
1861 - 1941
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.”
6 min read
Martin Luther King Jr.
1929 - 1968
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”
5 min read
Socrates
c. 470 - 399 BCE
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
5 min read
Rosa Parks
1913 - 2005
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”
6 min read
Helen Keller
1880 - 1968
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
6 min read
Wangari Maathai
1940 - 2011
“It is the little things citizens do. That is what will make the difference.”
5 min read
Malala Yousafzai
b. 1997
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”