quotations about success
People who think achieving success is a linear A-to-Z process, a straight shot to the top, simply aren't in touch with reality. There are very few bona fide overnight success stories. It just doesn't work that way. Success appears to happen overnight because we all see stories in newspapers and on TV about previously unknown people who have suddenly become famous. But consider a sequoia tree that has been growing for several hundred years. Just because a television crew one day decides to do a story about that tree doesn't mean it didn't exist before.
DONALD TRUMP
How to Get Rich
I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.
ALEX GARLAND
The Coma
Even success needs its consolations.
GEORGE ELIOT
letter to J. W. Cross, June 3, 1876
The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what willpower and fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will alone.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
American Cavalcade, October 1937
Many a man can make a success of everything but himself.
EDGAR GUEST
Home Rhymes
Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
The lucky or successful person has learned a simple secret. Call up, capture, evoke the feeling of success. When you feel successful and self-confident, you will act successful. Define your goal or end result. Picture it to yourself clearly and vividly. Then simply capture the feeling you would experience if the desirable goal were already an established fact. Then your internal machinery is geared for success: to guide you in making the correct muscular motions and adjustments; to supply you with creative ideas, and to do whatever else is necessary in order to make the goal an accomplished fact.
MAXWELL MALTZ
Psychocybernetics
Your intention sets the universe in motion. The universe flows in the direction of your intention, and so it is important to be clear on your exact intention in any situation. If you are absolutely clear as to your intent, your subconscious success mechanism will support you in getting there. Most people encounter problems in creating the kind of life they want because they have not clearly determined where they want to go, or visualized what it is going to look like when they get there. Those who lead purposeful, successful lives do so because they have set up in their mind a clear picture of what they want to create in their lives.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Beyond Positive Thinking
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success -- yours or his.
FRANKLIN P. JONES
Saturday Evening Post, November 29, 1953
Success isn't outscoring someone, it's the peace of mind that comes from self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best. Success is a journey, not a destination--half the fun is getting there.
GITA BELLIN
A Sharing of Completion and Celebration
Ireland has a very different attitude to success than a lot of places, certainly than over here in the United States. In the United States, you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I'm going to get that bastard. It's a different mind-set.
BONO
interview, Larry King Weekend, December 1, 2002
The secret to success, whether it's women or money, is knowing when to quit. I oughta know: I'm divorced and broke.
SONNY CROCKETT
Miami Vice
To succeed in life one needs two things -- influence and a lucky star.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.
HORACE
Epistles
Great success is a great temptation.
THEODORE PARKER
"A Sermon of the Moral Dangers incident to Prosperity"
As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
A man may be a merchant prince and in commercial prosperity a grand success, but if lust of accumulation has eaten out all the finer qualities of the soul, the sympathy and affection for others, the desire to make others happy, the determination to live for God and the welfare of humanity, he is a lamentable failure.
HENRY F. KLETZING & ELMER L. KLETZING
Traits of Character Illustrated in Bible Light
How few successful men are interesting! Hannibal, Alcibiades, with Raleigh, Mithridates, and Napoleon, who would compare them for a moment with their mere conquerors?
ROBERT BONTINE CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
Success and Other Sketches
What is success?
Is it do your own thing?
Or to join the rest
And if you truly believe it,
And try over and over again
Living in hopes
That someday you'll be in with the winners
BONNIE RAIT
"What Is Success?"
I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, Unleash the Billionaire Within