Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." Disney went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim, CA on the grounds that it would only attract "riffraff."
Thomas Edison's teacher said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first 2 jobs for being "nonproductive." As an inventor, Edison made more than 1,000 unsuccessful attempts to invent the light bulb When a reporter asked him how it felt to fail 1,000 times, Edison said that he didn't fail all those times, but that the light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 years old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was "subnormal," and one of his teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in foolish dreams." He was expelled from school.
Every cartoon Charles Schultz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, submitted to the yearbook staff at his high school was rejected.
After Fred Astaire's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.
Decca Records turned down a recording contract with The Beatles with this fascinating evaluation: "We don't like their sound. Guitar groups are on their way out."
Auditioning a singer named Reg Dwight in the 1960's, shoved him out of the office saying "you're wasting my time!" That singer is now better known as Elton John.
What if none of these people failed? What then?
