Success Quotes

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Want to be more successful? Check out these great success quotes and see how to get started.

Is success about having money? Is it about finding love, or having great friends and family? Is it about having fun, or finding balance and contentment?

Is it all of the above? Here are our favorite success quotes from some of the most successful people ever to help you discover what success means to you.

Top Success Quotes

Success is a journey, not a destination.

Arthur Ashe

Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.

Bobby Unser
Alexandre Dumas quote "Nothing succeeds like success"
“Nothing succeeds like success.” – Alexandre Dumas

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Gen. George Patton

Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.

Paul J. Meyer
Benjamin Disraeli quote "Success is the child of audacity"
“Success is the child of audacity.” – Benjamin Disraeli

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

When it comes to success, there are no shortcuts.

Bo Bennett
Harvey Firestone quote "Success is the sum of details"
“Success is the sum of details.” – Harvey Firestone

I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.

Estée Lauder

Quotes about Success

Success is not in what you have, but who you are.

Bo Bennett

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

Maya Angelou

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

Lucille Ball

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Albert Einstein
Jack Dorsey quote "Success is never accidental"
“Success is never accidental.” – Jack Dorsey

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Vince Lombardi

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

Bob Dylan

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Henry David Thoreau

Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember — the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.

Zig Ziglar

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit.

Conrad Hilton
Howard Schultz quote "Success is best when it's shared"
“Success is best when it’s shared.” – Howard Schultz

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it.

Oprah Winfrey

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

David Rockefeller

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Vidal Sassoon

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Alexander Graham Bell

The key to success is to develop a winning edge.

Brian Tracy

Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there’s an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen.

Dax Sheperd
Ben Franklin quote "Applause waits on success"
“Applause waits on success.” – Benjamin Franklin

You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.

Dale Carnegie

Success is a matter of sticking to a set of common sense principles anyone can master.

Earl Nightingale

Your attitude is either the lock on or key to your door of success.

Denis Waitley

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

Elie Wiesel

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Christopher Morley

If you want to be successful, find out what the price is and then pay it.

Scott Adam
Sophocles quote "Success is dependent on effort"
“Success is dependent on effort.” – Sophocles

Behind every successful man there’s a lot of unsuccessful years.

Bob Brown

Living our life deeply and with happiness, having time to care for our loved ones – this is another kind of success, another kind of power, and it is much more important.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The maximum success is reached when you are never busy.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.

Thomas Wolfe

The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows.

Aristotle Onassis

Other people’s success spurs me on to do well and gives me motivation.

Nicholas Hoult

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Oscar Wilde
"Success has always been a great liar"
“Success has always been a great liar.” -Friedrich Nietzche

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Christopher Morley

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

Jim Rohn

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

John Wooden

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.

Earl Nightingale

Success and Achievement

If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.

Malcolm X

Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.

Albert Einstein
Woody Allen quote "80% of success is showing up"
“80% of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

Mother Teresa

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

Thomas Edison

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

Abraham Lincoln

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

Mark Twain

Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.

Nelson Mandela

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

Lou Holtz

I measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her fellow human beings.

Margaret Meade
"Your success and happiness lie in you"
“Your success and happiness lie in you.” – Helen Keller

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

Margaret Thatcher

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

Ayn Rand

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.

Bill Bradley

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

Erma Bombeck

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Henry David Thoreau

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

Henry Ward Beecher

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

Elbert Hubbard

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

Tennessee Williams
"Success is a consequence and must not be a goal"
“Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.” – Gustave Flaubert

Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.

Brianna Wiest

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

Benjamin Franklin

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.

Booker T. Washington

Success isn’t measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.

Mike Ditka

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened.

Jim Lovell

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Dale Carnegie

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

Oliver Goldsmith
"Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed"
“Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.” – Emily Dickinson

Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.

Paul J. Meyer

Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.

Christopher Reeve

There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.”

Ray Goforth

Success vs. Failure

The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors.

Napoleon Hill

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

Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison quote "I failed my way to success"
“I failed my way to success.” – Thomas Edison

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Leonnardo da Vinci

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

James Cameron

It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Teddy Roosevelt

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Herman Melville

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.

Colin R. Davis

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.

Thomas J. Watson
Einstein success quote "Failure is success in progress"
“Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

James Cameron

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.

Warren Buffett

No-one knows what he can do until he tries.

Publilius Syrus

The day you procrastinate, you lose that day’s success.

Israelmore Ayivor

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Truman Capote

I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.

Herbert Bayard Swope

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

Stephen McCranie
"Failure is success if we learn from it"
“Failure is success if we learn from it.” – Malcolm Forbes

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.

Sam Walton

Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

Robert Kiosaki

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

Henry Ward Beecher

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

Bruce Feirstein

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.

Earl Wilson

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.

Michael Jordan

The success and the failure are not my concern, but His.

Joseph Barber Lightfoot
"A minute’s success pays the failure of years"
“A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” – Robert Browning

Success is not built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe.

Sumner Redstone

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Nelson Mandela

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

James Cameron

Successful People Quotes

Some of the best success quotes naturally come from highly successful people. Enjoy these words from Presidents, athletes, business leaders and more to see how they achieved their successes.

Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.

Jim Rohn

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

David Brinkley

Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

Albert Einstein

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

Abraham Lincoln
Judith Guest quote "My success is not who I am"
“My success is not who I am.” – Judith Guest

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Tony Robbins

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.

Florence Nightingale

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Bill Gates

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Dale Carnegie

The more I help others to succeed, the more I succeed.

Ray Croc

Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.

Martha Stewart

Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

Coco Chanel
Frank Sinatra quote "The best revenge is massive success"
“The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot

The true success is the person who invented himself.

Al Goldstein

I don’t dwell on success. Maybe that’s one reason I’m successful.

Calvin Klein

Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.

Wayne Huizenga

The people who succeed are irrationally passionate about something.

Naval Ravikant

My secret for success? I don’t know what the hell success means.

Al Lewis

The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.

Chris Jami
"The road to success is always under construction"
“The road to success is always under construction.” – Arnold Palmer

The path to success is to take massive, determined action.

Tony Robbins

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Alexander Graham Bell

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

Bruce Lee

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Bill Gates

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.

John D. Rockefeller

Your calendar is a better measure of success than your bank account.

James Clear
Thibaut success quote "Mediocrity always measures success by money"
“Mediocrity always measures success by money.” – Thibaut

You don’t have to show people how successful you are.

Martin Yan

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

Napoleon Hill

Be hungry for success, hungry to make your mark, hungry to be seen and to be heard and to have an effect. And as you move up and become successful, make sure also to be hungry for helping others.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.

Gary Keller

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

Audrey Hepburn

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

John C. Maxwell
"Success is the inevitable byproduct of learning"
“Success is the inevitable byproduct of learning.” – Naval Ravikant

Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.

Joyce Brothers

Success? I don’t know what that word means. I’m happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody’s eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That’s a good day for me.

Denzel Washington

Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.

Will Smith

Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.

Larry King

Secret to Success Quotes

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.

Estée Lauder

If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.

Steve Jobs
"The real secret of success is enthusiasm"
“The real secret of success is enthusiasm.” – Walter Chrysler

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.

Gen. Colin Powell

There’s no shortage of remarkable ideas, what’s missing is the will to execute them.

Seth Godin

Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.

Robert Collier

The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

William Feather

Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

Julia Child
"The secret of success is constancy of purpose"
“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.” – Benjamin Disraeli

Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success.

Ross Perot

You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.

Michael Dell

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember–the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.

Zig Ziglar

To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.

Thomas J. Watson

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.

J. Paul Getty

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

John Wooden

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

Bob Dylan
Picasso quote "Action is the foundational key to all success"
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.

W. Clement Stone

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 Lombardi

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

Abraham Lincoln

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Benjamin Disraeli

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.

Al Bernstein

They succeed, because they think they can.

Virgil
Herodotus quote "All men's gains are the fruit of venturing"
“All men’s gains are the fruit of venturing.” – Herodotus

Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.

Virat Kohil

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

Thomas J. Watson

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

G.K. Chesterton

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

Sir Walter Scott

If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.

Steve Jobs

The secret to success is to own nothing, but control everything.

Nelson Rockefeller

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

Bessie Stanley
"It takes 20 years to make an overnight success"
“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Herman Cain

Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Napoleon Hill

Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.

Jim Rohn

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

George Bernard Shaw

Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness that any other.

Brian Tracy

Four things for success: work and pray, think and believe.

Norman Vincent Peale

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.

Ray Croc
"There is little success where there is little laughter"
“There is little success where there is little laughter.” – Andrew Carnegie

We hope these success quotes and sayings from successful people have you inspired to be more successful.

Success can be whatever you want it to be so get out there and find yours. When you succeed on your terms, you’re already ahead of the game. Let us know how you define success in the comments below.

Photo of author

Quincy Seale

Quincy is KIM's editor, and has collected and shared inspiring quotes and stories since 2005. Quincy holds an MBA from the University of Dundee and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and lives in San Antonio with his wife Natalie, son Alex, and his dog Oban.

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