FAILURES BUILD A MAN

If someone was to answer "who has been man's greatest undesired companion

in his expedition through time?" The answer can be no other than FAILURE.

Yes, success has come and gone but what has remained as the major part of

man's evolution's history is failure. It may sound preposterous and may

question that if the failure is the truth of human life, how actually then are we

are so advanced than our forefathers?

The answer is simple. Failure is not only

man's greatest companion but also his biggest teacher and motivator, whose

offspring are courage and experience. Combined all this and one can easily

believe that what we see today isn't MATRIX.

PEOPLE WHO NEVER SAID "I QUIT"

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall."

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison

(February 11, 1847 – October

18, 1931) was an American

inventor, scientist and

businessman who developed

many devices that greatly

influenced life around the

world, including the

phonograph, the motion

picture camera, and a longlasting,

practical electric light

bulb. He was one of the first

inventors to apply the

principles of m ass production

and large teamwork to the

process of invention, and

therefore is often credited

with the creation of the first

industrial research laboratory.

 

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Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093

U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom,

France and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed

to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. His advanced

work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator.

Edison originated the concept and implementation of electricpower

generation

and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in

the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan

Island, New York.

But life wasn't a bed of roses for this gentleman as well. When he was a boy his

teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. When Thomas Edison was

seeking to invent the electric light bulb, he didn't get it right the first time. When

it didn't work the first time, Edison made a note of exactly what he'd done and

what components he had used. Then he made an adjustment to the experiment

and tried again. And when that failed he made a note of that, readjusted and

tried again. He kept learning from every experiment. He learned all the ways

that it wouldn't work. He discovered all the chemicals and elements that

wouldn't work. And each time he found a way that wouldn't work, he knew he

was closer to finding a way that would work. It took him approximately 10,000

experiments to invent the perfect setup

for the electric light bulb.

In 1914 Thomas Edison's factory in West Orange, New Jersey, was virtually

destroyed by fire. Although the damage exceeded $2 million, the buildings were

insured for only $238,000 because they were made of concrete and were

thought to be fireproof. Much of Edison's life work went up in smoke and

flames that December night. At the height of the fire, Edison's 24yearold

son,

Charles, searched frantically for his father. He finally found him, calmly

watching the fire, his face glowing in the reflection, his white hair blowing in

the wind. The next morning, Edison looked at the ruins and said, "There is great

value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start

anew."

Three weeks after the fire, Edison managed to deliver the first phonograph.

Thomas Edison understood the profound secret that to succeed you have to be

willing to fail and fail fast. To Edison all failure provided valuable information

that he could use to correct his course, and lead him to eventual success.

 

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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February

12, 1809 – April 15, 1865)

was the 16th President of the

United States, serving from

March 1861 until his

assassination in April 1865.

He successfully led his

country through its greatest

internal crisis, the American

Civil War, preserving the

Union and ending slavery.

Before his election in 1860 as

the first Republican president,

Lincoln had been a country

lawyer, an Illinois state

legislator, a member of the

United States House of

Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S.

Senate. Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected

president later that year.

Lincoln's life is characterized by numerous failures. But he was one of those

who did not believe in quitting. In 1831, at the age of 22, he lost his job because

his father wanted to move the family. At age 23, he was elected company

captain of Illinois militia in the Black Hawk War. Because of his Black Hawk

War involvement, he did not spend sufficient time campaigning and was

defeated in running for the Illinois State Legislature. At age 25, he started a

store in New Salem, Illinois with a partner. He was appointed postmaster of

New Salem and deputy surveyor of Sangamon County. Unfortunately, his

partner died causing the business to fail. Lincoln later paid off the whole debt

for the failed business. Then he was elected to the Illinois State House of

Representatives. At age 27, Lincoln reportedly had a nervous breakdown.

Lincoln was reelected

to Illinois State Legislature and led the Whig political

party delegation in moving Illinois state capital from Vandalia to Springfield.

He also received a license to practice law in Illinois state courts and became law

partner of John T. Stuart. At age 29, he was nominated for Illinois House

 

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Speaker by Whig caucus but did not win the election, because the Whigs could

not garner enough votes. He then served as the Whig Floor Leader. Lincoln was

chosen presidential elector for the first Whig convention. He also was admitted

to practice law in U.S. Circuit Court. At age 31, he was reelected

to Illinois

State Legislature. He also argued his first case before Illinois Supreme Court.

At age 39, Lincoln's term in office was up and was not a candidate for

Congress, per an agreedupon

arrangement among the Whigs. He did however

try to get an appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office at

Washington D.C. but didn't get appointed. At age 47, Lincoln received votes in

the Philadelphia Republican convention for the vice presidency. He did not

campaign and was not running for the office at that time, so he did not gain the

nomination. At age 49, he ran for the U.S. Senate and won the popular vote. But

the Illinois State Legislature overthrew the popular vote, as was legal in those

days. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson eliminated that practice with the 17th

amendment to the constitution. Thus, Lincoln ran for the Senate and was

defeated. Thus before Lincoln became the 16 th president of United States, he

had 12 major failures. The only thing that time could not fail in him was his

tenacity.

Steven Allan Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg (born December

18, 1946) is an American film director,

screenwriter, and film producer. In 2006,

the magazine Premiere listed him as the

most powerful and influential figure in

the motion picture industry. Time listed

him as one of the 100 Most Important t

People of the Century. At the end of the

twentieth century, Life named him the

most influential person of his generation.

In a career of over four decades,

Spielberg's films have touched on many

themes and genres. Spielberg's early scifi

and adventure films, sometimes centering

on children, were seen as an archetype of

modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years his films began

addressing such issues as The Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism.

 

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Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for 1993's Schindler's List

and 1998's Saving Private Ryan. Three of Spielberg's films, Jaws (1975), E.T.

the ExtraTerrestrial

(1982), and Jurassic Park (1993), broke box office records,

each becoming the highestgrossing

film made at the time. To date, the

unadjusted gross of all Spielbergdirected

films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide.

Forbes magazine places Spielberg's personal net worth at $3.1 billion.

Spielberg, today, may be regarded as a genius but his childhood story doesn't

depict the same. During his childhood, Spielberg dropped out of junior high

school. He was persuaded to come back and was placed in a learningdisabled

class. He only lasted a month and then dropped out of school forever.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18

April 1955) was a theoretical physicist.

His many contributions to physics

include the special and general theories

of relativity, the founding of relativistic

cosmology, the first postNewtonian

expansion, explaining the perihelion

advance of Mercury, prediction of the

deflection of light by gravity and

gravitational lensing, the first fluctuation

dissipation theorem which explained the

Brownian movement of molecules, the

photon theory and waveparticle

duality,

the quantum theory of atomic motion in

solids, the zeropoint

energy concept, the

semi classical version of the Schrödinger

equation, and the quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted BoseEinstein

condensation.

He was widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century. He

was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the

photoelectric effect in 1905 and "for his services to Theoretical Physics".

 

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However, when Einstein was young, his parents thought he was mentally

retarded. His grades in school were so poor that a teacher asked him to quit,

saying, "Einstein, you will never amount to anything!"

Henry Ford

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7,

1947) was the founder of the Ford

Motor Company and father of modern

assembly lines used in mass production.

His introduction of the Model T

automobile revolutionized

transportation and American industry.

He was a prolific inventor and was

awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of

the Ford Motor Company he became

one of the richest and bestknown

people in the world. He is credited with

"Fordism", that is, the mass production

of large numbers of inexpensive

automobiles using the assembly line,

coupled with high wages for his

workers. Ford had a global vision, with

consumerism as the key to peace. Ford did not believe in accountants; he

amassed one of the world's largest fortunes without ever having his company

audited under his administration. Henry Ford's intense commitment to lowering

costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise

system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities

on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation but

arranged for his family to control the company permanently. But he too had his

share of failures. His first two automobile companies failed. Yet he did not give

up and rest is history.