Quotes on Success
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

Anthony Robbins

Visualization plus determination plus surrender equals complete joy.

Maryrose Occhino from Beyond These Four Walls: Diary of a Psychic Medium

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

John D. Rockefeller

When one opportunity door closes and all other opportunity doors appear to be sealed up tight, it's time to break an opportunity window and jump through. Winners find opportunities where others only see obstacles. Ineffectual weaklings sit around waiting for magical opportunity doors to open for them. Winners work for what they want and make it happen. Weaklings wait for what they want and hope it happens.

Duane Alan Hahn

The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do.

Leontyne Price

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

Jim Rohn

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 law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too.

Mark Twain (Full quote at Bartleby.com)

Adapted version:

The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.

Mark Twain (adapted)

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

Jim Rohn

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

Colin Powell

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

Conrad Hilton

What is the recipe for successful achievement? To my mind there are just four essential ingredients: Choose a career you love, give it the best there is in you, seize your opportunities, and be a member of the team.

Benjamin F. Fairless

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure—which is: Try to please everybody.

Herbert Bayard Swope

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Grace Hopper

When you have a good idea and you've tried it and know it's going to work, go ahead and do it—because it is much easier to apologize later than to get permission.

Grace Hopper

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

Anthony Robbins

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

Napoleon Hill

Whatever you choose for yourself, give to another. If you choose to be happy, cause another to be happy. If you choose to be prosperous, cause another to prosper. If you choose more love in your life, cause another to have more love in theirs.

God from Conversations with God (Book 3) through Neale Donald Walsch

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

An Wang

To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.

Bunker Hunt

It's simply a matter of doing what you do best and not worrying about what the other fellow is going to do.

John R. Amos

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.

Anthony Robbins

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

Brian Tracy

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.

Sydney Smith

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

James K. Van Fleet

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

William Feather

Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.

Edward Eggleston

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.

George E. Allen

With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

All great achievements require time.

David J. Schwartz

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Swift

Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own.

Unknown

Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean.

Percy Ross

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

Samuel Smiles

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

Winston Churchill

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

Albert Einstein

Good things don't come to those who wait, they come to those who want something so bad, they can't wait for it.

Ashton Kutcher

Director's/Actor's commentary from the Just Married DVD (2003)

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.

John D. Rockefeller

The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.

Napoleon Hill

If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.

Unknown

Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.

Smiley Blanton

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: ''There is life, but it's not for you.''

John Mortimer

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Walter Bagehot

Thought, word, and deed are the three levels of creation.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder.

Unknown

A Really Long CWG Success Quote

You cannot have what you want, but you may experience whatever you have. The very act of wanting something pushes it away from you.

The universe has no choice but to bring you the direct manifestation of your thoughts. The creative power is like a genie in a bottle. Your words are its command. The word "I" is the key that starts the engine of creation. The words "I am" are extremely powerful. They are commands to the universe.

Now, whatever follows the word "I" tends to manifest in physical reality. If you say, "I want success," the universe says, "OK, you do." Therefore "I" + "want success" produces you wanting success. "I" + "want money" must produce you wanting money.

If you repeat a thought or say a word, not once, not twice, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, do you have any idea of the creative power of that? A thought or word repeatedly expressed becomes just that, expressed. It becomes outwardly realized. It becomes your physical reality.

You produce most events in your life either willfully or you draw them to you, more or less, subconsciously. Some events, as in major natural disasters, are written off to "fate." Yet even "fate" can be an acronym for "from all thoughts everywhere." The combined thoughts of everyone.

You love the grief, you love the drama. That is, until you don't anymore. There comes a certain point in your evolution when you cease to love the drama, cease to love the "story" as you've been living it. That's when you decide, actively choose, to change it. Only most don't know how. You now do. To change your reality, simply stop thinking like that.

In this case, instead of thinking "I want success," think "I have success," or "my success is coming to me now," or "all things lead to my success."

Affirmations do not work if they are merely statements of what you want to be true. Affirmations work only when they are statements of something you already know to be true.

The best so-called affirmation is a statement of gratitude and appreciation. "Thank you, God, for bringing me success in my life." Now that idea, thought, spoken and acted upon, produces wonderful results, when it comes from true knowing not from an attempt to produce results, but from an awareness that results have already been produced.

If, now, there is something you choose to experience in your life, do not "want" it, choose it. Do you choose success in worldly terms? Do you choose more money? Good. Then choose it. Really. Fully. Not half-heartedly.

God from Conversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

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