Success Proverbs

Bill Gates:

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose, [Microsoft founder and CEO]


George Ross:

To be successful, you have to be able to relate to people; they have to be satisfied with your personality to be able to do business with you and to build a relationship with mutual trust, [Successful Billionaire Investor]

Peter F. Drucker:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Abraham Lincoln:

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

Albert Einstein:

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.


Albert Schweitzer:

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Anna Pavlova:

To follow without halt, one aim; there is the secret of success. And success? What is it? I do not find it in the applause of the theater; it lies rather in the satisfaction of accomplishment.


Bernadette Devlin:

Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.

Bessie Stanley:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction. - published 11/30/1905 in the Lincoln (Kansas) Sentinel - an adaptation of this is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, though nothing like it has been found in his writings.

Coco Chanel:

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

Corita Kent:

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

David Brinkley:

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.

Elaine Maxwell:

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.


Elbert Hubbard:

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is part of the penalty for greatness, and evey man understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness.


Frank Lloyd Wright:

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

G. K. Chesterton:

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

George Washington Carver:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

Havelock Ellis:

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

Helen Keller:

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Henry David Thoreau:

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Henry Ford:

If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right. also attributed to Mary Kay Ash.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.


Herbert B. Swope:

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

J.C. Penney:

Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk.


Lily Tomlin:

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Lloyd Jones:

Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. (adapted)

Louis L'Amour:

Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.

Margaret Mead:

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.


Marie Ebner von Eschenbach:

Conquer, but don't triumph.


Maxine Hong Kingston:

To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world -- that I am able to change it in positive ways.


Maya Lin:

To fly, we have to have resistance.

Med Yones:

The 4 key to success are: Motivation, Education, Actions and Relations - [President of International Institute of Management]


Michael Korda:

To succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Pablo Picasso:

My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. Famous Painter

Pearl S. Buck:

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Richard Bach:

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.


Robert F. Kennedy:

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Samuel Smiles:

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. - From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

Thomas Alva Edison:

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Wolfe:

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.

Ursula K. Le Guin:

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty

Vaclav Havel:

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Vanessa Redgrave:

Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.

Vince Lombardi:

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

William Lyon Phelps:

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.


William M. Winans:

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.


William Menninger:

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.


William Saroyan:

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.


Winston Churchill:

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.