quotations about success
The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success -- is our national disease.
WILLIAM JAMES
letter to H. G. Wells, September 11, 1906
The thing I remember best about "successful people" I've met is their obvious delight in what they do. And their delight seems to have very little to do with the trappings of worldly success.
FRED ROGERS
You Are Special: Neighborly Wit and Wisdom from Mister Rogers
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
BILL GATES
The Road Ahead
Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Success demands paranoia.
JOSEPH FINDER
Paranoia
Success is a magnet that draws many followers.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The certainty of succeeding makes the road easy.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Success is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each one.
BARBRA STREISAND
attributed, Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation
You create everything that happens to you.... If you want to be really successful, and I know you do, then you will have to give up blaming and complaining and take total responsibility for your life--that means all your results, both your successes and your failures. That is the prerequisite for creating a life of success. It is only by acknowledging that you have created everything up until now that you can take charge of creating the future you want.
JACK CANFIELD
The Success Principles
The secret of success is this: There is no secret of success.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
There's no point in success if you don't let it go to your head. That's what it's for.
JOHN OTWAY
attributed, London Sunday Correspondent, May 6, 1990
It must be admitted that the pleasure of a long-sought, ardently desired success, dreamed of by night and toiled for by day, is, probably, as complete as anything this side of heaven.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
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
Human success is a quotation from overhead.
CHARLES H. PARKHURST
"The Patern in the Mount"
Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
"A Chapter of Erie", North American Review, July 1869
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
INFECTED MUSHROOM
"The Missed Symphony"
Success too often sanctions the worst and the wildest schemes of human ambition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed in the achievement of success. There is, first, the success either in big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to do. This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats. Of course the proper performance of each implies much previous study or training, but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the ordinary man does not have. This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner type of success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has given that quality. This kind of success is open to a large number of persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the kind of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does possess. It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us. Yet some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first class. To the average man it is probably more useful to study this second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm. From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
The man who succeeds must always in mind or imagination live, move, think, and act as if he had gained that success, or he never will gain it.
PRENTICE MULFORD
attributed, Success: A Book of Ideals, Helps, and Examples