quotations about success
No amount of reading or memorizing will make you successful in life. It is the understanding and application of wise thought which counts.
BOB PROCTOR
You Were Born Rich
Success is a personal standard -- reaching for the highest that is in us -- becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
ZIG ZIGLAR
attributed, The Subconscious Diet
Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.
DAVID MAMET
The Secret Knowledge
The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.
SAM SHEPARD
The Observer, March 20, 2010
Success is a magnet that draws many followers.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
attributed, 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead
Success had ruined many a man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.
TOMMY LASORDA
The Artful Dodger
Success and failure are not dealt out like prizes and blanks in a lottery, by chance and indiscriminately; but there is a reason for every success and failure. Indolence, chicanery, waste will cause the one; while industry, honesty, and thrift will insure the other.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
You might discover greater success is just a matter of better channeling and projecting positivity about work.
CHRISTY RAKOCZY
"5 smart brain hacks to help you feel -- and project -- more positivity at work", Mic, July 10, 2017
There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest romances of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious tract. Moreover, the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry; the religious tracts are about religion. But these things are about nothing; they are about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade or speculation--how, if he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder; how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer; and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal, and I really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish a book about electricity which literally told one nothing about electricity; no one would dare to publish an article on botany which showed that the writer did not know which end of a plant grew in the earth. Yet our modern world is full of books about Success and successful people which literally contain no kind of idea, and scarcely any kind of verbal sense.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Fallacy of Success", All Things Considered
Trees are bowed down with weight of fruit,
Clouds big with rain hang low,
So good men humbly bear success,
Nor overweening grow.
BHARTRHARI
"The Path of Altruism"
Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Crisis"
Every person falls down at some point. Successful people choose to get back up.
DAVE RAMSEY
daily tip, official Dave Ramsey website
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
PABLO PICASSO
Vogue, November 1, 1956
JACK CANFIELD
The Success Principles
Success is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each one.
BARBRA STREISAND
attributed, Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes
Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces? I suppose it is, but I think it would entail doing the same things over and over again without taking chances, without taking risks or exploring our limits, without finding out what we can and can't do.
ALAN ARKIN
An Improvised Life
Remember, success is buried on the other side of rejection. There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement
The successful man is the one whose images correspond most closely to reality, because then his actions will lead to the results which he imagines. A man's failures depend upon the fact that his images do not correspond to reality, whether he is dealing with marriage, politics, business, or the horse races.
ERIC BERNE
The Mind in Action