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Quotes about success

561 quotes from 329 people

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Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you’re trying to say on stage… Success makes life easier. It doesn’t make living easier.
Bruce Springsteenborn 1949Q magazine (August 1992)
If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough — you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be pragmatic.
Richard Stallmanborn 1953Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism (1998)
- Motivation & Goals
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children.
BSBessie Anderson Stanley1879–1952Often credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated…it is finished when it surrenders.
Ben Steinborn 1944
- Failure
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881), El Dorado.
- 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
We learn from failure, not from success!
Bram Stoker1847–1912Dracula (1897), Chapter XIn context
- Failure
When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you could n’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that ‘s just the place and time that the tide ‘ll turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe1811–1896Oldtown Folks (1869), Ch. 39
- Hope
- Motivation & Goals
Errors are inevitable. The mark of character is not refusing to recognize them, but acknowledging them and taking responsibility.
Andrew Sullivanborn 1963
- Failure
- Responsibility
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
- Motivation & Goals
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope1882–1958Often credited to Bill Cosby
For the robust, an error is information.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 72
- Failure
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960Fooled by Randomness (2001)
- Failure
- Risk
I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards⁠—in the life of an artist.
Quentin Tarantinoborn 1963
- Art
- Failure
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892Ulysses (1842)In context