Quote - Perseverance

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

~ Albert Einstein

OK, Einstein was extremely smart and apparently humble too.  This is a great quote for perseverance.  He was thought to be strange because he didn't speak until he was 4 and his teachers didn't think he would amount to much.

Imagine all the things that might have never happened or been delayed for decades except someone tried one more time.

Thomas Edison's teacher said he was too stupid to learn anything, he failed 1,000 times trying to invent the light bulb.

One of my favorite actors, Sidney Poitier was told he was wasting his time at auditions.

Lucille Ball was told that she should choose another profession.

Louis Pasteur's teacher said his theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.

Henry Ford went broke five times before he succeeded.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for lack of imagination.

Robin Williams, another of my favorite actors, was voted "least likely to succeed" in high school.

Decca Records turned down the Beatles because they didn't like their sound.

Elvis Presley was fired after a show and told he should be driving a truck instead.

Beethoven was told he would be hopeless as a composer.

Leo Tolstoy was told that he was unable to learn.

J.K. Rowling was rejected twelve times for the first Harry Potter book.

Dr. Seuss was rejected be twenty seven publishers for his first book.

Each of these people decided to not let the world pen their story, they did not accept defeat.

Even if everything around them pointed otherwise.

If they had we would never know their names.

We may never be on this list, but that does not mean that we should give up when faced with failure.  Who knows what each one of us could do if we did not let our failures define us and instead we let them show us the way to where we were meant to be after all.

Each failure is a stepping stone to our future, it's just that through the fog we can not see the place the stones are leading us to.  The other side of the river is there whether or not we decide to step out in faith.  

To read about these and more amazing people check out this list from the University of Kentucky, click Here.