Transcript Notable Failures - GiftedEndorsementClass

Notable Failures
History is full of examples . . .

Creative and imaginative people are
often not recognized by their
contemporaries. Even more often,
their abilities are not recognized by
their teachers or employers.
Albert Einstein
Einstein’s parents thought he was
retarded. He spoke haltingly until he
was nine, and after that he answered
questions only after laboring in thought
about them. He was advised by a
teacher to drop out of high school.
“You’ll never amount to anything,
Einstein”
Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton did
poorly in grade
school and was
allowed to continue
only because he
failed at running
the family farm.
“If I have seen further, it is by
standing on the
shoulders of giants.”
-- Sir Isaac Newton
Ludwig von Beethoven

Beethoven’s music
teacher once said
of him, “As a
composer, he is
hopeless.”
Every real creation of art is
independent, more powerful than the
artist himself and returns to the
Divine through its manifestation. It is
one with man only in this, that it
bears testimony to the mediation of
the Divine in him.
- Beethoven, in a letter to Goethe
Thomas Edison

When Thomas
Edison was a boy,
his teachers told
him he was too
stupid to learn
anything.
F.W. Woolworth

F.W. Woolworth got
a job in a dry goods
store when he was
21, but his
employers would
not let him wait on
customers because
he “didn’t have
enough sense.”
Walt Disney

A newspaper editor
fired Walt Disney,
claiming he had “no
good ideas.”
“We’re not trying to entertain
the critics. I’ll take my
chances with the public.”
-- Walt Disney
Enrico Caruso

Caruso’s music
teacher told him, “You
can’t sing. You have
no voice at all.”
“I was often hungry, but never
unhappy.”
-- Enrico Caruso
Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
"I am convinced that nothing has so marked an influence on the direction
of a man's mind as his appearance, and not his appearance itself so
much as his conviction that it is attractive or unattractive."
from Boyhood
Wernher von Braun
At ten years of age, von Braun
decided his goal in life would be
to “help turn the wheel of time.”
Dr. Von Braun also worked with
Disney Studios as a technical
director for three television
films about Space Exploration.
Over the years, von Braun
continued his work with Disney,
hoping that Disney’s
involvement would bring about
greater public interest in the
future of the space program.

Von Braun flunked
ninth grade algebra.
Admiral Richard E. Byrd

Admiral Byrd had
been retired from
the navy as “unfit
for service” until he
flew over both
Poles.
When Richard E. Byrd contemplated the vast unexplored regions of
the South Pole and the Antarctic, a land thought only to be bleak,
barren, and forbidding to most, he saw a place of promise. Byrd
envisioned a spot that “God had set aside as man’s future – an
inexhaustible reservoir of natural resources.”
Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was
rated as “mediocre”
in chemistry when
he attended the
Royal College.
“There is no known circumstance in which it can be confirmed that
microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without
parents similar to themselves,” he concluded, in 1864.
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
-- Louis Pasteur
Abraham Lincoln
He failed as a business man - as a storekeeper.
He failed as a farmer - he despised this work.
He failed in his first attempt to obtain political office.
When elected to the legislature, he failed when he
sought the office of speaker.
He failed in his first attempt to go to Congress.
He failed when he sought the appointment to the
United States Land Office.
He failed when he ran for the United States Senate.
He failed when friends sought for him the nomination
for the Vice-Presidency in 1856
He was elected President.
Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott
was told by an
editor that she
could never write
anything that would
have popular
appeal.
Life is my college. May I graduate
well, and earn some honors!”
~Louisa May Alcott
Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade.
"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing
grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight
in the hills. We shall never surrender!"
Speech about Dunkirk given in House of Commons June 4, 1940.
Charles Darwin

Darwin’s father said
to his son, “You will
be a disgrace to
yourself and all
your family.”
“I have called this principle, by which each
slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the
term Natural Selection.”
-- Charles Darwin
from The Origin of Species
Henry Ford

Henry Ford barely
made it through
high school.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see
when you take your eyes off the goal.
-- Henry Ford
Pablo Picasso

Picasso was pulled
out of school at age
ten because he
was doing so
poorly. A tutor
hired by Picasso’s
father gave up on
the young artist.
Leonardo da Vinci

The machines of the
world’s greatest
inventor, Leonardo
da Vinci, were never
built, and many
would not have
worked.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not
using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
Leonardo da Vinci
Edwin Land

Land’s attempts at
instant movies
(Polarvision) failed
completely. He
described his efforts
as “trying to use an
impossible chemistry
and a nonexistent
technology to make an
unmanufacturable
product for which there
was no discernable
demand.”
Oscar Hammerstein
After the success of the show
South Pacific, composer Oscar
Hammerstein put an ad in Variety
that listed over a dozen of his
failures. At the bottom of the ad,
he repeated the credo of show
business:
“I did it before and
I can do it again.”

Joe Paterno
"Money alone will not make you
happy. Success without honor is an
unseasoned dish. It will satisfy your
hunger, but it won't taste good."

Asked once about how he felt when his
team lost a game, Joe Paterno replied that
losing was probably good for them since
that was how the players learned what
they were doing wrong.
Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear bungled
an experiment and
discovered vulcanized
rubber. In one of the most
celebrated “accidents” in
scientific history, a patch of
his sulphur and rubber gum
mixture landed on a hot
stove, and when Goodyear
scraped it off the stove, his
eyes lit up.
Robert Pirsig

Pirsig’s best-selling
book, Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, was
rejected by 121
publishers.
It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say,
"Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.
Puzzling.
Spike Lee

Spike Lee applied
for graduate study
at the top film
schools in the
country. Due to his
scores on the
Graduate Record
Exam (GRE), both
schools turned him
down.
Jaime Escalante

Escalante is a nationally
known educator and the subject of the
film Stand and Deliver. When he first
tried to get a teaching job in California,
the state refused to accept his
credentials from Bolivia.