“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius
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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
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About this quote
Meaning
This quote challenges two of the most common emotional responses to achievement and setback. It argues that neither success nor failure is a permanent state. Victory does not guarantee anything about what comes next, and defeat does not mean that everything is over. What actually determines a person's path is whether they have the resolve to keep going regardless of what the scoreboard currently reads. Courage, in this sense, is not about feeling confident but about continuing anyway.
Context
This line is frequently attributed to Winston Churchill and reflects the kind of defiant, steadying tone associated with his public speeches and writings. Churchill led Britain through one of the most dangerous periods in modern history, and his words were often aimed at sustaining morale in the face of enormous uncertainty. Whether this particular line came from a formal speech or a piece of writing, it carries the unmistakable quality of his broader message: that resilience and determination are more decisive than any single outcome.
About the author
Winston Churchill served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and again in the early 1950s. He was also a prolific writer and historian, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his body of written work. Churchill's career spanned decades of British political life and included significant setbacks long before his most celebrated achievements. That personal experience with failure and recovery likely shaped the conviction with which he spoke about persistence and the refusal to treat any single moment as the final word.
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Share this quote
“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only at Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head?”
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