Fact check
Famous Failures, checked
These claims come from the motivational graphics that circulate under the heading Famous Failures. Every source cited on them is a listicle, and the listicles cite each other. Of the 26 checked below, 2 survive intact.
Of 26 claims, 2 survive intact.
Two ways these break
A real event with an invented reason bolted on
Monroe's contract really did lapse. Edison really was called addled. Elvis really did have one bad night at the Opry. In each case the event is documented and the reason given on the poster is not — and the invented reason is always crueller and more quotable than the real one.
Stories that are chronologically impossible
Ford is said to have succeeded at 53; he was 39. Colonel Sanders is said to have been rejected a thousand times before finding a franchise partner; his car-sleeping tour happened after he had already signed his first franchise deal. The sequence is reversed to make the ending feel earned.
Claim by claim
- Michael JordanFalse
“Cut from his high school basketball team for a lack of skill.”
He was placed on junior varsity as a sophomore, which is the ordinary destination for a sophomore. He was about 5 feet 10 and a taller friend was promoted because the team needed height. He was never cut from the programme.
Jordan, then a 15-year-old sophomore who was only 5 feet 10 and could not yet dunk a basketball, did not get one. His close friend, a 6 foot 7 sophomore, did. The team was in need of his length.
- Albert EinsteinUnverifiable
“Had the label “mentally slow” put on his permanent school record.”
No archive, biography or reference work records any such annotation. The record that does survive is excellent: on the six-point Swiss scale, his final school certificate shows top marks of 6 in history, algebra, geometry, descriptive geometry and physics.
His marks showed that he excelled in mathematics and physics, but he failed at French, chemistry, and biology.
- …and alsoFalse
“Was expelled from school.”
He left the Luitpold Gymnasium voluntarily at the end of 1894, using a doctor's letter, in order to rejoin his family in Italy.
Albert Einstein (Wikipedia, citing Fölsing)
At the end of December 1894, a letter from a doctor persuaded the Luitpold's authorities to release him from its care, and he joined his family in Pavia.
- Vincent van GoghFalse
“Sold only one painting in his lifetime.”
The Van Gogh Museum documents a nineteen-work commission from his uncle, a sale to the Paris dealer Julien Tanguy, a work Theo sold to a London gallery, and The Red Vineyard. A tiny market is not the same as no market.
How many paintings did Vincent sell? (Van Gogh Museum)
We don't know exactly how many paintings Van Gogh sold during this lifetime, but in any case, it was more than a couple.
- Henry FordFalse
“Failed at three businesses before finally succeeding at age 53.”
He was born in July 1863 and founded Ford Motor Company in June 1903, aged 39. And there was one clear failure, not three: the Detroit Automobile Company. He walked out of the second company, which then became Cadillac and succeeded without him.
Henry Ford biography (Ford Motor Company)
Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, was born in Springwells Township, Wayne County, Michigan, on July 30, 1863. On June 16, 1903, Henry and 12 others invested $28,000 and created Ford Motor Company.
- Colonel Harland SandersUnverifiable
“Was rejected more than 1,000 times before finding a franchise partner.”
The number appears in no biography, no corporate history and no reference work, and cannot be traced to Sanders himself. It is also backwards: he franchised his recipe for the first time in 1952, and the car-sleeping tour the story describes came afterwards.
In 1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants.
- Elvis PresleyFalse
“Was fired from the Grand Ole Opry and told to go back to driving a truck.”
He was booked as a guest for a single Saturday night in October 1954, so there was no job to be fired from. The manager's documented verdict was that he was not bad but did not suit the programme. The truck-driving line is Presley's own later retelling, disputed by the man it is attributed to.
Elvis Presley (Wikipedia, citing Guralnick)
Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was 'not bad' but did not suit the program.
- Marilyn MonroeDistorted
“Was dropped by her studio because a producer said she was not pretty or talented enough.”
The non-renewal in August 1947 is real. The reason is invented. The documented judgement came from her drama coaches and concerned shyness and insecurity, not looks or talent.
Marilyn Monroe (Wikipedia, citing Spoto)
Despite her enthusiasm, her teachers thought her too shy and insecure to have a future in acting, and Fox did not renew her contract in August 1947.
- Oprah WinfreyDistorted
“Was fired from an early television job for being unfit for television.”
She was removed from the anchor desk on 1 April 1977 and reassigned to morning cut-ins at the same station, then cycled through news writing and street reporting. A demotion inside the building, not a firing. The format was wrong, not the person.
Oprah: Built in Baltimore (The Baltimore Sun)
I was removed from the 6 pm. news exactly April 1, 1977.
- Walt DisneyUnverifiable
“Was fired from a newspaper because his editor said he lacked imagination.”
No reliable primary source supports the firing or the quotation. What is documented, and left off the posters, is that his first animation studio went bankrupt in 1923 — a real failure, discarded in favour of an invented insult.
Did Abraham Lincoln Endure Failure Before Presidency? (Snopes, on this genre of claim)
A ubiquitous piece of American historical glurge.
- Stephen KingUnverifiable
“Received at least 30 rejections for his first novel, Carrie.”
The figure appears only in listicles and cannot be traced to King, his agent or his publisher. What is primary-sourced is different and smaller: in his own memoir he describes the nail in his wall giving way under the weight of rejection slips as a teenager.
On Writing (Stephen King, quoted)
By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it.
- Jerry SeinfeldFalse
“Was booed off stage at his first stand-up appearance.”
He froze. Unable to remember his act, he announced his topics one at a time and left. Nobody booed; the emcee called him the king of segues.
Comedy at the Edge (Richard Zoglin, excerpted)
Nervous, he froze up onstage, jumping from one joke to the next by simply announcing the subject: 'The beach.' 'Driving.' 'Shopping.'
- Thomas EdisonDistorted
“His teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.”
One teacher, one word. Edison's own account is that he overheard a teacher call him addled in a remark to a school inspector, which prompted his mother to take him out and teach him at home. The version involving a letter is fabricated.
Thomas Edison's mother and the letter (Snopes)
One day I overheard the teacher tell the inspector that I was 'addled' and it would not be worthwhile keeping me in school any longer.
- Steven SpielbergDistorted
“Was rejected from film school three times.”
The rejection is real — he was turned down by USC on his grades and went to Cal State Long Beach instead. The count is not. No primary source gives a number, and the university's own folklore archive files the three-times version as a campus legend told to prospective students.
Two Directors on a Tour (USC Digital Folklore Archives)
Steven Spielberg was actually denied from USC, legend has it, not once, not twice, but three times.
- John GrishamDistorted
“His first book was rejected 28 times.”
Grisham's own account is roughly sixteen rejections from agents and about as many from editors, before a separate round of publisher rejections once he had an agent. The single tidy number merges two different counts.
John Grisham on his first book (CrimeReads)
At any one time we had ten submissions circulating around New York. I had fifteen or sixteen rejections from agents and about that many from editors.
- The BeatlesUnverifiable
“Rejected by Decca, who said guitar groups are on the way out.”
The audition on 1 January 1962 and the rejection are documented. The quotation is not: it rests entirely on Brian Epstein's ghostwritten memoir, and Dick Rowe, to whom it is attributed, denied it until his death in 1986.
Guitar groups are on the way out (Quote Investigator)
The wording rests on Epstein's recollection of a conversation two years earlier, and Rowe denied it.
- Bill GatesTrue
“His first business, Traf-O-Data, was a failure.”
It genuinely failed commercially, by his co-founder's own account, with net losses across its life. The one qualification is that it was not literally his first paid venture, and Gates himself describes it as modestly profitable in processing terms.
My Favorite Mistake (Paul Allen, Newsweek)
Traf-O-Data was a good idea with a flawed business model. Despite efforts to sell our wares as far afield as South America, we had virtually no customers.
- J.K. RowlingTrue
“Was unemployed and on benefits, and was rejected by twelve publishers.”
Both halves hold up. The one qualification on the twelve is that it is a figure reported by journalists from her agency's submissions rather than a published list, and the submissions were made by her agent.
J.K. Rowling (Wikipedia, citing Smith)
Rowling sought government assistance and got £69 per week from Social Security. Her manuscript was submitted to twelve publishers, all of which rejected it.
- Abraham LincolnFalse
“Failed in business three times and failed campaigning seven times before becoming President.”
The list is newspaper filler, wired out in 1920 and reprinted for a century. It counts non-failures as failures, misdates several, and deletes four consecutive terms in the Illinois House, a term in Congress, and a law practice of more than five thousand cases.
Abraham Lincoln Wasn't a Failure at 50 (Scott A. Sandage, Slate)
Lincoln certainly knew failure, but his life could not, by any reasonable measure, be characterized as a series of failures.
- Richard BransonUnverifiable
“Failed at 14 businesses before succeeding.”
The number traces to a 2012 magazine slideshow, and that list does not survive inspection: one entry is a lost lottery bid rather than a company, several were sold rather than closed, and of one venture the author wrote that he could not locate any record of when it launched. Virgin has never published a failure count. The figure circulates as 7, 14, 15 and 400.
Richard Branson's Fails (Business Insider, 2012, archived)
Mystery surrounds the fate of Branson's ill-fated, low profile venture into the florist trade. We could not locate any record of when Virgin Flowers was launched.
- …and alsoFalse
“Said ‘failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of it.’”
Not his. The line is Arianna Huffington's, and she attributes it to her mother. It is widely reassigned to Branson by quotation sites, which is how most of his circulating failure quotes work — several of the best known appear on aggregators and nowhere else.
Arianna Huffington, in her own words
Failure is not the opposite of success. It's a stepping stone to success. - my mother
- Fred AstaireDistorted
“A studio screen test report read: Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”
The memo has never been produced by any archive. Something dismissive was probably written — the line appears in print by 1937 — but the wording is different in every early telling, and ‘Can't sing’ does not appear at all until a quotation book in 1973. Meanwhile the one real, dated, published memo from that screen test says the opposite.
David O. Selznick, memo of 26 January 1933, in Memo from David O. Selznick
I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even in this wretched test, and I would be perfectly willing to go ahead with him for the lead in the Brock musical.
- Ludwig van BeethovenFalse
“A teacher told him he was hopeless, and too stupid to be a composer.”
There is no source for it of any kind. The standard biography records his teachers rating him highly and finding him stubborn, which is not the same thing. The one hostile remark that does exist is a second-hand recollection written down about fifty years later, and it concerns a mature quartet, not a student.
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Vol. I
I knew them all well; all three valued Beethoven highly, but were also of one mind touching his habits of study.
- Charles DarwinFalse
“His peers dismissed his work as a fool's experiment.”
Backwards. ‘Fool's experiments’ was Darwin's own affectionate name for his own speculative trials, recorded by his son, who says he enjoyed them enormously. Turning it into a jeer from his critics inverts both the speaker and the meaning.
Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I
These rather wild trials he called 'fool's experiments,' and enjoyed extremely.
- Charles M. SchulzFalse
“Walt Disney Studios rejected him.”
It appears to have happened the other way round. The only substantive account has Disney offering him a try-out while he was drawing Li'l Folks, and Schulz turning it down because he did not want to be a small part of a large studio. The claim is in none of his museum's materials, and in none of the interviews where he lists his rejections at length. The companion claim that he failed every subject in the eighth grade is equally unsourced — it traces to a motivational recording about a boy called Sparky.
Charles Schulz (Lambiek Comiclopedia)
While he was making 'Li'l Folks', the Walt Disney Studios offered Schulz a try-out. Schulz considered the offer, but didn't want to become a small part of a large Hollywood studio and turned them down.
- Robert GoddardDistorted
“The New York Times mocked him, and he was a lone underfunded genius ignored in his lifetime.”
The editorial and the 1969 retraction are both real. The rest is not. His biographer says he appeared unbothered by it, the press generally covered him warmly, and a Smithsonian curator puts him among the best-funded scientists in America in the 1930s. What is true is the part the posters leave out: every major honour he received came after his death, so there was no vindication in his lifetime at all.
Who Was the Original Rocket Man? (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)
Goddard was one of the best-funded scientists in the United States in the 1930s.