FAILURE OR SUCCESS?

In 1913, Lee De Forest, inventor of the triode tube, was charged by the district attorney for using fraudulent means to mislead the public into buying stocks in his company by claiming that he could transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. He was publicly humiliated. Can you imagine where we would be today without this invention?

A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903 questioned the wisdom of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.

Colonel Sanders, at age 65, had assets of a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security. He realized he had to do something to improve his situation. He remembered his mother's fried chicken recipe and went out selling.

 How many doors

did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order.

 How many of us quit after three tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could?

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors who said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small rodent-infested shed near the church. Seeing a small mouse inspired him to draw a new cartoon. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.

All success stories are stories of great failures. The only difference is that every time they failed, they bounced back.