There is no failure except in no longer trying.

(Chinese fortune cookie, author unknown)

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb,

- he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work.

A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times.

He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb.

It just happened to be a 2000-step process."

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Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children.

- She was born prematurely and

- her survival was doubtful.

- When she was 4 years old,

- she contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever,

which left her with a paralysed left leg.

- At age 9,

- she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began

to walk without it.

- By 13 she had developed a rhythmicwalk,

- which doctors said was a miracle.

- That same year she decided to become a runner.

- She entered a race and came in last.

For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last.

Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running.

One day she actually won a race. And then another.

- From then on she won every race she entered.

- Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again,

went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

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In 1962, four nervous young musicians

- played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca

recording Company.

- The executives were not impressed.

- While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said,

"We don't like their sound.

- Groups of guitars are on the way out."

The group was called "The Beatles".

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In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modelling Agency,

told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker,

- "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married."

She went on and became Marilyn Monroe.

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In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, Fired a singer after

one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere....son.

You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."

He went on to become the most popular singer in America named Elvis Presley.

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Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876,

After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said,

"That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"

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In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in America.

They all turned him down.

In 1947 - after seven long years of rejections! He finally got a tiny company

in Rochester, New York, the Haloid company, to purchase the rights to his

invention an electrostatic paper-copying process.

Haloid became Xerox Corporation we know today.

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The Moral of the above Stories

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.

Only through experiences of trial and suffering

- can the soul be strengthened,

- vision cleared,

- ambition inspired and

- success achieved.

You gain strength, experience and confidence by every single experience where you really stop to look fear in the face.

You must do the thing you cannot do.

And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace.

A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS!