Success Quotes

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Why am I posting success quotes?

Success comes in many forms and from many directions. Often it does not come easily and all the obstacles and distractions thrown in our direction will do their best to stop us from acting on our dream and achieving the success we want.

I find it helpful, when I'm going through a difficult time and the obstacles look insurmountable, to read about how others have succeeded -- in whatever way they were pursuing their dream and working to make it real.

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

As I find them, I'll be posting success quotes here from the famous and not so famous. Perhaps you'll find one or more of them to be inspirational and maybe this will be a small help in motivating yourself to act on your dream.

Success Poem

When I started thinking about this page, I was thinking of success quotes like the ones that follow this poem. But, when I ran across this beautiful poem about success written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I knew I had to include it first. In just a few short phrases, he has illustrated a successful life that isn't defined by wealth, power, and fame. Using this as a guide, any of us can change our life and achieve the level of success we want.

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success Quotes

Here are some success quotes from people who achieved some level of success and popularity with their work and their lives.

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. -- Malcolm Forbes

Know Thyself

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. -- Leonardo da Vinci

Success Requires Passion

Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching. -- Satchel Paige

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. -- Sir Winston Churchill

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. -- Helen Keller

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. -- Richard Bach

Success Requires Perseverance -- Never Give Up

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

Victory belongs to the most persevering. -- Napoleon Bonaparte

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. --Seneca

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. --General George Patton

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits. -- Richard Nixon

Sometimes our best is simply not enough.... We have to do what is required. -- Sir Winston Churchill

Success Requires Character --
Your word is your bond

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success achieved. -- Helen Keller

What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you. -- Wayne Dyer

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self. -- Aristotle

Reputation is what people think you are. Character is who you really are. Take care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself. -- Anonymous

Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. --Charles Lindbergh

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

You must do the very thing you think you cannot do. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Success Requires Hard Work

Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. -- Henry Ford

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all. -- Sam Ewig

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

Success is your dreams with work clothes on. -- Anonymous

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. -- Tim Notke

Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top. -- J. C. Penny

To bring one's self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy. -- Thomas A. Buckner

Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work. -- Booker T. Washington

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You've got to keep working that talent. -- Irving Berlin

Success Requires Attention To Detail

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. -- Abraham Lincoln

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. -- Helen Keller

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People Are More Important Than Things

Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved. -- Barbara Johnson

Not every successful man is a good father. But every good father is a successful man. -- R. Duvall

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished? -- Lee Iacocca

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects us all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week. -- Mario Cuomo

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. --Henry Ford

The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. -- William Wordsworth

Talk does not cook rice. -- Chinese Proverb

You Must Have A Dream

The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. -- Benjamin Mays

The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer... He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen. -- Robert L. Schwartz

To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd; to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no else has seen. -- Anonymous

Success Requires Determination

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -- Nelson Mandela

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away. -- Gene Roddenberry

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. -- Vince Lambardi

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. -- Abraham Lincoln

Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential. -- John Maxwell

If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don't, you have achieved half your failure. --David Ambrose

Try. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Try better. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Try better still. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Repeat until...
Try. Succeed. -- Ken Evoy

Always Strive For Excellence In What You Do

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses. -- Napoleon Hill

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word -- excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. --Pearl S. Buck

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it. -- George Halas

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well. -- John D. Rockefeller

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. -- Helen Keller

Success Involves Helping Others Succeed

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed. -- Napoleon Hill

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. --Albert Pike

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry S Truman

Ignore Your Critics

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. -- Mark Twain

According to aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly. Its body weight is not the right proportion to its wingspan. Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway. -- M. Sainte-Lague

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him. -- Sidney Greenberg

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. -- Indira Gandhi

Success Requires Leadership

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep. -- Talleyrand

Outstanding leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers - not their minds. -- Unknown

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves -- Ray Kroc

Act On Your Dreams -- Do It Now!

Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. -- Conrad Hilton

Yesterday is a cancelled check; Tomorrow is a promissory note; Today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely. --Kim Lyons

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it. -- George Bernard Shaw

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. -- Dale Carnegie

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. -- Beverly Sills

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. -- James Russell Lowell

Success Requires Purpose

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. --Friedrich Nietzsche

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. -- Robert Byrne

The secret of success is consistency of purpose. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes. -- Kenneth Hildebrand

Success Requires Leaving Your Comfort Zone

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore. -- Dale Carnegie

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. -- Ronald E. Osborn

If you aren't making any mistakes, it's a sure sign you're playing it too safe. -- John Maxwell

A competitive world has two possibilities for you: you can lose or, if you want to win, you can change. -- Lester C. Thurow

Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? -- Frank Scully

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. -- Bertrand Russell

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. -- African Proverb

Success Requires Focus

I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: try to please everybody. --Herbert Bayard Swope

Success Requires Overcoming Obstacles

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. -- Booker T. Washington

The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster. --Rosabeth Moss Cantor

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way.... We are prophets of a future that is not our own. -- Archbishop Oscar Romero

More Success Quotes

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. -- Warren Buffett

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity. --William Menninger

As one person I cannot change the world, but I can change the world of one person. -- Paul Shane Spear

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life. -- Sandra Carey

Success is a journey, not a destination. -- Anonymous

There are three ways to get something done: Do it yourself, employ someone or forbid your children to do it. -- Monta Crane

Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. -- Chief Seattle

Success Is Not Just About Money

You don't have to have the biggest house, fanciest car, or the most money to be the richest man in town...

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