Success Quotes

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.

I know of only one bird - the parrot - that talks; and it can't fly very high.

Having been here before and lost, to be here and win, I've got to tell you, winning is really a lot better than losing. Really a lot better.

Sometimes in life you don't always feel like a winner, but that doesn't mean you're not a winner.

Envy was just the tax you paid on success.

Forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart, and success will come to you.

How do I define success? Let me tell you, money's pretty nice. But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life.

I've come to embrace the notion that I haven't done enough in my life. I've come to confirm that one's title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one's life has been led. No matter how much you've done or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.

The leaders we revere and the businesses that last are generally not the result of a narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose. That's the hallmark of real success. The other trapping of success might be the by product of this larger mission, but it can't be the central thing.

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Think of their needs.

That's what building a body of work is all about. It's about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy. It's about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star, because the one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative. It deepens and expands with each day you give your best. You may have setbacks and you may have failures, but you're not done. You haven't even started.

If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty-bound to spread around like manure. Fertilize those young minds!

My success has depended wholly on putting things over on people, so I'm not sure that I'm that great a role model. I am, however, an expert on pretending to be an expert on pretending to be an expert.

You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.

When I was younger I thought success was something different. I thought, " When I grow up, I want to be famous. I want to be a star. I want to be in movies. When I grow up I want to see the world, drive nice cars. I want to have groupies." But my idea of success is different today. For me, the most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and not to give into peer pressure, to try to be something that you're not. To live your life as an honest and compassionate person. To contribute in some way.

You're probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm.

Success is really about being ready for the good opportunities that come before you. It's not to have a detailed plan of everything that you're going to do. You can't plan innovation or inspiration, but you can be ready for it, and when you see it, you can jump on it.

There is only one success... to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

We made a solemn vow not to take any job outside of show business. We borrowed money from parents and friends, rather than take that lethal job waiting tables. This forced us to take any job offered to us. Anything. We once did a show in the middle of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia as part of a fashion show on a hot July night while all around our stage, a race-riot was fully underway. That's how serious we were about our vow.

Get on stage. A lot. Try stuff. Make your best stab and keep stabbing. If it's there in your heart, it will eventually find its way out. Or you will give up and have a prudent, contented life doing something else.

I really feel as if the things we create together are not things we devised, but things we discovered, as if, in some sense, they were always there in us, waiting to be revealed, like the figure of Mercury waiting in a rough lump of marble.

We always felt as if every show was the most important thing in the world, but knew if we bombed, we'd live.

Now I understand what exhaustion is. It’s not just a code word for heroin addiction. People don’t teach you how to handle the workload that comes from a little bit of success, and it’s something I’d never had to handle, because I’d been rejected for so long.

The secret to success in life is known only to those who have not succeeded.

What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?

We can’t let our insecurities own or destroy us. We have to face them head-on. That was part of the challenge that motivated me to take this journey. I wanted to see what I could do and, more important, I wanted to understand everything that was holding me back.

If you’re... asking yourself why I have this success and you don’t, don’t be angry with me—stop and ask yourself what your issues are that are holding you back.

If you can break down those walls you’ve spent so many years building to protect yourself, you can achieve anything.

Stop seeing the obstacles you face as reasons why you can't do something. See them as a reason why you can. And celebrate your accomplishments on a daily basis.

To think about your life is to create it. You have to take ownership of where you are right now and know where you want to go before you can get there. Keep collecting evidence for your success. You can believe it, and you can be it.

I learned early that sometimes you have to dig through garbage to get anywhere.

We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.

If you enjoyed making a thing, and you’re proud of the thing you made, that’s enough. Not everyone is going to like it, and that’s okay.

Sometimes, a person who likes your work and a person who don’t will show up within milliseconds of each other to let you know how they feel. One does not need to cancel out the other, positively or negatively; if you’re proud of the work, and you enjoyed the work, that is what’s important.

I don’t know what the future of my career holds, but I know that whatever is over the horizon, the road I’ve traveled to get here is like those Interstates in Texas: everything can look the same, and it can feel like you’re not going anywhere, until you suddenly get where you’re going and realize that you’ve been traveling for a long time.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Why be a man when you can be a success?

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

Nothing fails like success.

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.

You always pass failure on the way to success.

A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration.

To follow, without halt, one aim: There's the secret of success.

People fail forward to success.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that 'achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success.'

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture...Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.

I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.

Whenever I hear, 'It can't be done,' I know I'm close to success.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.

If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.

Underpromise; overdeliver.

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.

There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn't tell you about it?

You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can crash, drip, flow...be water my friend.

Willing is not enough; we must do. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

When you are in any contest you should work as if there were, to the very last minute, a chance to lose it.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Never confuse motion with action.

To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.

Someone doing it often interrupts the person saying it cannot be done.

Act like you expect to get into the end zone.

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it.

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half of the world.

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

Have you ever heard people say 'don't sweat the details'? Well, they're wrong: sweat the details. They have a name for people who sweat the details: millionaires.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility.

Have a vision. Be demanding.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing.

Success didn't spoil me, I've always been insufferable.

You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

The path to greatness is along with others.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

I have learnt that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

The definition of success--To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived--this is to have succeeded.

God gave us two ends. One to sit on and one to think with. Success depends on which one you use; head you win, tail, you lose.

The heights by great men reached and kept, were not obtained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Success is dependent upon the glands; sweat glands.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

You don't have to stay up nights to succeed; you have to stay awake days.

Experience has taught me that there is one chief reason why some people succeed and others fail. The difference is not one of knowing, but of doing. The successful man is not so superior in ability as in action. So far as success can be reduced to a formula, it consists of this: doing what you know you should do.

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

Those who believe they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

If A is a success in life, than A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

To succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.

You won't get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it.

For me, survival is the ability to cope with difficulties, with circumstances, and to overcome them.

By the time we've made it, we've had it.

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done.

No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Don't confuse having a career with having a life.

Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed.

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are you ready?'

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.

We must never be afraid to go too far, for success lies just beyond.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.

It is only by doing things others have not that one can advance.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

Some succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.