“The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore … Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible … It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors … to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.”
Ferdinand Magellan
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
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.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), Observer, Jan. 15, 1950
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.
Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi (1893 - 1986)
To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.
Anna Pavlova (1885 - 1931)
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.
Anna Quindlen
It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Nichomachean Ethics
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
Arthur Rubinstein (1886 - 1982)
Why be a man when you can be a success?
Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956)
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby (1937 - )
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.
Bob Dylan (1941 - )
The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
Cecil B. DeMille (1881 - 1959)
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Christopher Lasch
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)
The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
David McCullough (1933 - )
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.
David Rockefeller (1915 - )
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.
Dr. David M. Burns
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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969), speech, April 2, 1957
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Success didn’t spoil me, I’ve always been insufferable.
Fran Lebowitz (1950 - )
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Franklin P. Jones, Saturday Evening Post, November 29, 1953
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Nothing fails like success.
Gerald Nachman
To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.
Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time
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.’
Helen Hayes (1900 - 1993)
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry Kissinger (1923 - ), Wilson Library Bulletin, March 1979
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.
Herbert Bayard Swope (1882 - 1958)
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.
Irving Berlin (1888 - 1989), 1958
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
Jean Giraudoux (1882 - 1944)
If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.
Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719)
There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?
Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930)
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.
Kurt Lewin (1890 - 1947)
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Letter to Mrs Foote, Dec. 2, 1887
People fail forward to success.
Mary Kay Ash
Whenever I hear, ‘It can’t be done,’ I know I’m close to success.
Michael Flatley, (Lord of the Dance) quoted by Eric Celeste
You always pass failure on the way to success.
Mickey Rooney (1920 - )
Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.
Mike Ditka (1939 - )
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.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993)
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Reggie Leach
A minute’s success pays the failure of years.
Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)
Underpromise; overdeliver.
Tom Peters, in The Chicago Tribune
I know of only one bird - the parrot - that talks; and it can’t fly very high.
Wilbur Wright (1867 - 1912), declining to make a speech in 1908
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen (1935 - )
Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
The Family Reunion (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3
T S Eliot
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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.
Summing Up (1938) p. 187
Somerset Maugham
People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.
Education (1861) ch. 2
Herbert Spencer
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
Virginibus Puerisque (1881) ‘El Dorado’
Robert Louis Stevenson
No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.
Letter to Lord Wavell, 26 November 1940, in The Second World War vol. 2 (1949) ch. 27. Cf. Addison 5
Winston Churchill
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
In Observer 15 January 1950
Albert Einstein
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
Dale Carnegie
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
Warren Buffett
A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
Actually, I’m an overnight success. But it took twenty years.
Monty Hall
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Sir Winston Churchill
I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
General George S. Patton
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.
Benjamin Franklin
It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.
Roger Babson