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Quotes about success

561 quotes from 329 people

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Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), Ch. 1
The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Victory: An Island Tale (1915), part I, Ch. 1
- Business
- Money
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXI: On the supreme good, Line 2
- Motivation & Goals
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
Steve Jobs1955–2011Interview with Inc. Magazine for its “The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award” (1 April 1989)
- Business
Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.
CCCharles Caleb Colton1777–1832Lacon (1820), Volume 1, Vol. I; VIII
Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Ayn Rand Letter (1971–1976)
- Motivation & Goals
- Work
I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
George Eliot1819–1880Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
- Failure
All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.
Arthur C. Clarke1917–2008The City and the Stars (1956), Ch. 23, p. 174
- Happiness
- Motivation & Goals
In archery we have something like the way of the superior man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns round and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.
Confucius551–479 BCThe Doctrine of the Mean
- Failure
- Responsibility
The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
William S. Burroughs1914–1997“Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs”, written in 1956, first published in The British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 52, No. 2 (January 1957), p. 1 and later used as footnotes in Naked Lunch
- Business
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader’s eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Tatler, No. 224 (14 September 1710)
- Business
- Writing
I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met.
Anne Frank1929–1945The Diary of a Young Girl (1942—1944), 5 April 1944
- Motivation & Goals
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Speech in the House of Representatives (20 June 1848)
- Motivation & Goals
Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Complete Works, vol. 26, Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, section 4.
- Failure
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bachborn 1936Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
- Life & Death
- Motivation & Goals