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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
PinSuccess 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
PinSuccess is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
When it comes to success, there are no shortcuts.
Bo Bennett
PinI 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
PinThe 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
PinYou 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
PinYou’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
PinBehind 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
PinThere 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
PinI 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
PinWhat 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
PinAccomplishing 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
PinSuccess 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
PinIt 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
PinIf 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
PinCelebrate 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
PinSuccess 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
PinPeople 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
PinOnly 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
PinThe 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
PinYou 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
PinSuccess 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
PinThere 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
PinMost 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
PinSuccess 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
PinSelf-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
PinSuccess 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
PinWe 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.