quotations about success
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
BILL GATES
The Road Ahead
Remember, success is buried on the other side of rejection. There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success -- is our national disease.
WILLIAM JAMES
letter to H. G. Wells, September 11, 1906
Success and failure are not dealt out like prizes and blanks in a lottery, by chance and indiscriminately; but there is a reason for every success and failure. Indolence, chicanery, waste will cause the one; while industry, honesty, and thrift will insure the other.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Success never needs an excuse.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
speech, May 15, 1854
Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.
DONALD BARTHELME
"The Crisis"
Every person falls down at some point. Successful people choose to get back up.
DAVE RAMSEY
daily tip, official Dave Ramsey website
There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Human success is a quotation from overhead.
CHARLES H. PARKHURST
"The Patern in the Mount"
About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.
TOMMY LASORDA
The Artful Dodger
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Success too often sanctions the worst and the wildest schemes of human ambition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Trees are bowed down with weight of fruit,
Clouds big with rain hang low,
So good men humbly bear success,
Nor overweening grow.
BHARTRHARI
"The Path of Altruism"
Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
IRVING BERLIN
Theatre Arts, February 1958
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
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
The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.
SAM SHEPARD
The Observer, March 20, 2010
If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.
PABLO PICASSO
attributed, Picasso