I think failure is necessary for success. It's an opportunity to see what we did wrong and realize how we can do it better next time. Without failing, you can't really value success either.

And, to quote Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

"Failure is the mother of success" is not all that right unless people can learn and revise their bahaviour from trial and error.

Henry Ford's story is inspirational. He was seen as a failure by many in the automobile business but he didn't care. Instead, he kept learning from his mistaks and focusing on his dreams, and look what happened: http://www.fastcompany.com/3002809/be-henry-ford-apprentice-yourself-failure .

I think the origin of this statement was accidentally confirmed, here.

Being as that may, so many others makes up a philosophical statement that in reality suggests the idea, ideas needs some embodiment to handle upon. So when philosophers are incredibly lazy, they therefor are dead wrong. Why? Because you will need some experience and thereafter evaluate whatever is accomplished.

Now on the statement 'failure often leads to success'. What does someone regard as failure and success? I can derive some knowledge out of failures, that would suffice when that kind of knowledge is rightfully related to that futuristic achievement, but the keyword here is rightfully relating, (otherwise mentioned as precisely associated) and such assertions thereof are best exerted in an evaluating state with the experience of failure(s) and thereafter having succeeded. For what we might be unaware of, we can speculate some successes were ensued out of 'dumb luck' or it's referred to as 'just coincidence'. I would designate this statement 'contingent' in philosophical terms, for that matter.

What makes this statement exceeding in difficulty is that it's conjugating the word 'often', and on top of that this must be 'sometimes' true or not, the why's and why wouldn't it be-s. Well, plainly and truthfully after success comes the evaluation and you need more than one experience to actually know if this is true or not.

Generally speaking, failure is often an essential process of leading to success rather than a must, however, that does not indicate failure has to success unless you may learn and reflect on the mistake, fault you have made. A disciple of confucius was highly praised by confucius because he never made second mistake for his life time. (颜回不二过) That appears to imply it is quite hard for a regular person not to make the same mistake more than twice.