Also, the idea that you need to expect years of constant failure before success ignores all the people who work hard for many years and never do “succeed,” either because they’ve chosen an unrealistic goal that doesn’t match their talents, or because their circumstances are such that it takes all the hard work they can muster just to survive.

So, it’s great that you’re inspired by quotes about the merits of hard work, but the quotes aren’t proof that the world actually works that way.

Future success builds upon previous success; Henry Ford engineered, built and sold most of the alphabet before the Model T became a runaway hit. He would have never made it to T if models A through S were all failures.

Few things come easily but many years of constant failure is a horrible expectation. Experimenting, tweeking and improving does not honestly catagorize any and all previous attempts as failures. Edison’s 10,000 “failed” lightbulbs were not as dismal as one would casually assume, it’s the research and development process required to go from good idea to marketable product to revolutionizing the world.