Abraham Lincoln

Failure is the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. said, "If you want to succeed, double

your failure rate."

If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great

failures. But people don't see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they

say that person got lucky: "He must have been at the right place at the right time."

Let me share someone's life history with you. This was a man who failed in business at

the age of 21 ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at

age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at

age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an

effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was

elected president of the United States at age 52.

This man was Abraham Lincoln.

Would you call him a failure? He could have quit. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and

not a dead end.