quotations about success
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 is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Success had ruined many a man.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
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
All successful men have agreed in one thing--they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things. A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing--characterizes all valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an industrious one. The most valiant men are the best believers in the tension of the laws.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
The secret of success is this: There is no secret of success.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
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
JACK CANFIELD
The Success Principles
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
Success in business, as in life, is often largely just a matter of luck.
FELIX G. ROHATYN
Dealings: A Political and Financial Life
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
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
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
Confident expectation of success makes us a receiving instrument for all the success thoughts that are vibrating through the ether of the atmosphere, and our mind becomes a powerful magnet to draw success thought.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Success", Human Life from Many Angles
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement.... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys.... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
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
There was nothing worse ... than a loser who'd made it. It was just part of the way things worked--part of the complexity of life ... that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration. At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who'd made it always let the side down.... Their only use ... was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder.
IAIN M. BANKS
Surface Detail
According to the most common idea among men, he that makes the most money is the most successful. The standard so often adopted to measure or weigh everything by a money value is a false one. Money has its uses. The lack of it is hard to bear. But they are not the highest and best powers that are called forth in the acquisition of money. To amass a fortune is not necessarily the highest success. To miss a fortune is not of necessity a dismal failure. Poverty and scanty means are in no way or sense desirable, but we would make very emphatic and press upon the attention of youth everywhere that man's success or happiness is not measured by his bank account.
HENRY F. KLETZING & ELMER L. KLETZING
Traits of Character Illustrated in Bible Light