While success means something different for everyone, it usually involves accomplishing some goal that you set your mind to. We all take different paths in life, but the ones who make it to the finish line have something in common: persistence. Whatever you want in life, you have to keep picking yourself back up after you fail and mustering up the courage to try again. Any successful person will tell you that the path to success is often paved by failure.
Of course, how you react to the failures ultimately determines your destiny. The people who keep grinding despite their shortcomings and learn from their mistakes make it to the top. Nothing that is worth it in life comes easily, so if you’ve been struggling on your path to success, read the following quotes about success to regain your motivation.
100 Quotes about Success to Never Forget
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- “When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you.” – Lolly Daskal
- “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential? These are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” – Eddie Robinson
- “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”– Paulo Coelho
- “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley
- “Don’t be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone.” – Andy Biersack
- “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
- “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget
- “When the past calls, let it go to voicemail. Believe me, it has nothing new to say.” – Unknown
- “Love what you have. Need what you want. Accept what you receive. Give what you can. Always remember, what goes around, comes around.” – Unknown
- “Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.” – Malala Yousafzai
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- “All you need is the plan, the roadmap, and the courage to press on to your destination.” – Earl Nightingale
- “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – E. E. Cummings
- “A No. 2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.” – Joyce Meyer
- “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” – Jim Rohn
- “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” – Joseph Campbell
- “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” – Pele
- “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” – Colin Powell
- “Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success.” – Shiv Khera
- “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” – Vince Lombardi
- “Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.” – Chris Hadfield
- “At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren’t where you want to be, you will always be a failure.” – Erin Cummings
- “I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm, and their inspiration to work together.” – Queen Elizabeth II
Here are 25 Dale Carnegie quotes about success, since he’s pretty knowledgeable about the subject:
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- “If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically
engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.” - “Big shots are only little shots who kept on shooting.”
- “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
- “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.”
- “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
- “Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.”
- “It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.”
- “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.”
- “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
- “Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.”
- “When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”
- “Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”
- “Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
- “If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically
- “Our thoughts make us what we are.”
- “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
- “If you want to keep happiness, you have to share it.”
- “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
- “No matter what happens, always be yourself.”
- 42. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
- “One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.”
- “You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.”
- “Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.”
- “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.”
- “All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.”
- “The expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back.”
The following 19 quotes about success are from Steve Jobs, one of the most successful innovators and businessmen to date:
- “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
- “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
- “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”
- “Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday.”
- “If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?”
- “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
- “Life is about creating and living experiences that are worth sharing.”
- “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.”
- “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
- “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life and karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
- “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…. The ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules…. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things…. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.”
- “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
- “A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”
- “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.”
- “You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.”
- “My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.”
- “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it. They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”
- “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
- “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
More quotes about success to keep your fire burning:
- “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston S. Churchill
- “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
- “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser
- “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
- “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “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
- “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn
- “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
- “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.” – Thomas Edison
- “Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.” – Tony Hsieh
- “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
- “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
- “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
- “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
- “Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.” – Charles F. Kettering
- “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Anonymous
- “All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” – Michael John Bobak
- “People 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
- “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
- “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
- “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” – Barack Obama
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
- “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee
- “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and 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
- “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jim Rohn
- “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure—It is: Try to please everybody.” – Herbert Bayard Swope
- “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
- “Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.” – Unknown
Final thoughts
We hope these quotes about success will help you stay on the path to achieving your dreams and keep you motivated when you feel like giving up. Just remember that no one who ever reached their goals had an easy journey. They all had to make huge sacrifices in regard to time, money, and energy in order to make their dreams a reality.
Obviously the road to success might take a while to navigate, but think about how good it will feel to look back on your journey from the finish line. Think about how you’ll feel years from now when you can say that you made it and didn’t give up despite all the obstacles you faced. You can make the choice today to start living your dreams; once you have the momentum, you won’t want to stop until you’ve shown the world (and yourself) what you’re capable of!
We leave you with a few more quotes about success from Oprah:
“Everybody has a calling. And your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you were meant to be, and to begin to honor that in the best way possible for yourself.”
“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”
“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.”
“You have to know what sparks the light in you so that you, in your own way, can illuminate the world.”
“My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”
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