success
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘success’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.” -Henry Louis Gates
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“I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn’t repeat a success. Very often you’re going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you’re trapped.” -Jack Nicholson
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“The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.” -William Osler
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“About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.” -Tommy Lasorda
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“Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I’m going to complete every pass.” -Ron Jaworski
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“You really have to work hard and apply yourself and by applying yourself and working hard and being diligent, you can achieve success.” -Julie Benz
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“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” -Andy Grove
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“So many stars lose their way, and with success become more neurotic, not less so.” -Francesca Annis
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“Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.” -Thomas Hardy
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“Remember, I come from such an excessively overdone, red-carpet place called Hollywood. So I’m used to people blowing up their success in ways that are far above and beyond the truth.” -Shirley MacLaine
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“Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my…
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“I believe there are three keys to success. For me it is keeping my priorities in order: It’s my faith and my family, and then the business.” -Kathy Ireland
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“You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.” -Jack Welch
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“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
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“Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.” -Walter Lippmann
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“America’s wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success. Take away their incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take care of the needy.” -Thomas Peterffy
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“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.” -Thomas Wolfe
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“It’s ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn’t even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.” -Francis Ford Coppola
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“Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.” -Sylvester Stallone
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“Success is just being happy. And I try so many different things. I do a lot of different things. Because I think God has helped me to love myself. I know who God is, and I love God.” -Herschel Walker
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“The road to success is always under construction.” -Arnold Palmer
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“Success for me its to raise happy, healthy human beings.” -Kelly LeBrock
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“My success was due to good luck, hard work, and support and advice from friends and mentors. But most importantly, it depended on me to keep trying after I had failed.” -Mark Warner
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“A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” -Robert Browning
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“Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.” -Martha Stewart
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“The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication.” -Michael Faraday
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“The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world’s dreadful injustice.” -Jules Renard
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“The worst part of success is to try finding someone who is happy for you.” -Bette Midler
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“The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man’s success in life.” -Edward Everett Hale
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“Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” -Dale Turner
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“Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.” -Sarah Bernhardt
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“I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.” -Jessica Savitch
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“For a good 10 to 12 years, I was working non-stop and I wasn’t really enjoying my success.” -Shania Twain
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“I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.” -Charles Kuralt
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“The media says that equality for women has arrived, but if you look around, you still don’t see girls playing guitars and having success with it.” -Joan Jett
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“Refuse to accept the belief that your professional relevance, career success or financial security turns on the next update on the latest technology. Sometimes it’s good to put the paddle down and just let the canoe glide.” -Simon Mainwaring
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“The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.” -Cyril Connolly
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“Indeed I regard the enduring support which I have received over the years from all sections of the community in Ballymena as being more than sufficient recognition for any success which I may have achieved as an actor.” -Liam Neeson
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“Success is never final, but failure can be.” -Bill Parcells
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“Democrats believe in reigniting the American dream by removing barriers to success and building ladders of opportunity for all, so everyone can succeed.” -Nancy Pelosi
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“People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.” -Herbert Spencer
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“Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.” -Marilyn vos Savant
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“I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.” -J. Paul Getty
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“There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.” -Ann Landers
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“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.” -Jean Cocteau
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“I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain’s success – so for me there’s no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation.” -David Cameron
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“The thing you don’t dream about as a kid is all the peripheral stuff that comes with success.” -Tiger Woods
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“Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success.” -Thornton Wilder
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“We are a people that have always celebrated other people’s success so long as we always had the opportunity to meet that success ourselves. That is the American nature. That is the American character. That is one of the things that makes us different from the rest of the world. And I’m afraid we could…
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“If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.” -Sydney Madwed
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“The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?” -Brendan Francis
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“If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.” -Max Born
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“I’m an eternal realist and the success rate for being an actor is pretty low.” -Tom Hiddleston
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“Rock and Roll is still asking people like me to live up to the old guard’s concept of what success is but it doesn’t mean anything.” -Billy Corgan
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“I’m either going to go completely mental, completely bankrupt, or have the best success of my life.” -Katy Perry
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“One fails forward toward success.” -Charles Kettering
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“We’re not uncomfortable with it, and we’ve already been through enough of the music business where I’m not really worried that commercial success is going to in some way – we’re already past saving, you know what I mean? It’s too late for us.” -Jerry Garcia
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“The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.” -Alexander Graham Bell
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“The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.” -Joyce Brothers
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“Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.” -William J. H. Boetcker
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“The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.” -James Thurber
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“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” -Bruce Feirstein
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“After a lifetime of working, raising families, and contributing to the success of this nation in countless other ways, senior citizens deserve to retire with dignity.” -Charlie Gonzalez
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“There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.” -Max Beerbohm
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“To get down to the quick of it, respect motivates me – not success.” -Hugh Jackman
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“Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.” -Amos Bronson Alcott
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“The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.” -David Sarnoff
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“Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.” -Orlando Bloom
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“Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success!” -David O. McKay
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“I’ve stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and financial acceptance.” -Robert Plant
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“Within the U.S., the Obama presidency will be mainly measured by the success or failure of his economic policies. And here, I fear, the monstrous stimulus package with which this administration stumbled out of the gate will prove to be Obama’s Waterloo.” -Camille Paglia
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“I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.” -Treat Williams
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“Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.” -David Joseph Schwartz
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“Why be a man when you can be a success?” -Bertolt Brecht
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“Temporary success can be achieved in spite of lack of other fundamental qualities, but no advancements can be maintained without hard work.” -William Feather
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“Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.” -Gustave Flaubert
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“No man is a success in business unless he loves his work.” -Florence Scovel Shinn
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“Give me a couple of years, and I’ll make that actress an overnight success.” -Samuel Goldwyn
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“On receiving from the people the sacred trust twice confided on my illustrious predecessor, and which he has discharged so faithfully and so well, I know that I can not expect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and success.” -Martin Van Buren
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“For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.” -Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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“The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” -Aesop
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“I don’t know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder… I think it’s just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.” -Tanya Tucker
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“Success should always be just beyond your grasp.” -William Shatner
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“In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.” -Umberto Eco
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“Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.” -Noel Coward
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“Honesty is the most single most important factor having a direct bearing on the final success of an individual, corporation, or product.” -Ed McMahon
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“When success comes, people can try to trick you or take advantage of you.” -Christina Aguilera
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“It’s not just the ‘Grammys’ that I’ve pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.” -Alanis Morissette
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“It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.” -Havelock Ellis
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“Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.” -Ben Stein
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“An actor’s popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.” -Fred Allen
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“I’ll tell you, there is nothing better in life than being a late bloomer. I believe that success can happen at any time and at any age.” -Salma Hayek
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“You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.” -Warren Beatty
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“Anyone who wants to sell you overnight success or wealth is not interested in your success they are interested in your money.” -Bo Bennett
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“Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.” -Tennessee Williams
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“Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.” -John D. Rockefeller
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“Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.” -Michelle Obama
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“Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!” -Andrew Carnegie
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“The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it.” -Ray Kroc
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“Success – keeping your mind awake and your desire asleep.” -Walter Scott
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“Nobody travels on the road to success without a puncture or two.” -Navjot Singh Sidhu
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“Constant success shows us but one side of the world adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.” -Charles Caleb Colton
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“Whether in success or in failure, I’m proud of every single movie I’ve ever directed.” -Steven Spielberg
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“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” -Bill Bradley
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“Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.” -Henri Frederic Amiel
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“Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam.” -Lyndon B. Johnson
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“Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.” -Scott Adams
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“Success is getting and achieving what you want. Happiness is wanting and being content with what you get.” -Bernard Meltzer
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“Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success.” -Robert Orben
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“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” -Arthur Ashe
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“The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.” -Hedy Lamarr
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“Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster’s own personal example.” -Robert Baden-Powell
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“I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed.” -Rush Limbaugh
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“Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow – after you have done your best to achieve success today.” -Maxwell Maltz
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“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” -Truman Capote
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“Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.” -Charlotte Bronte
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“The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.” -Jonathan Swift
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“We are taught to consume. And that’s what we do. But if we realized that there really is no reason to consume, that it’s just a mind set, that it’s just an addiction, then we wouldn’t be out there stepping on people’s hands climbing the corporate ladder of success.” -River Phoenix
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“But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes.” -Bodhidharma
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“I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.” -Paul McCartney
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“I don’t think about my previous success. I’m happy that the work I’ve done has been very successful.” -Aaliyah
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“Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.” -Roger Babson
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“If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.” -Mason Cooley
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“Success is a beast. And it actually puts the emphasis on the wrong thing. You get away with more instead of looking within.” -Brad Pitt
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“While I was doing stand-up, I thought I knew for sure that success meant getting everyone to like me. So I became whoever I thought people wanted me to be. I’d say yes when I wanted to say no, and I even wore a few dresses.” -Ellen DeGeneres
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“Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.” -Desiderius Erasmus
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“When I finish a picture I don’t show it to anyone if I feel it’s not good enough yet. I’ve learnt to listen to my partners and my friends. For me it’s the biggest success if they like it.” -Marilyn Manson
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“The secret of my success is a two word answer: Know people.” -Harvey S. Firestone
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“I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.” -George W. Bush
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“A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.” -Grover Cleveland
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“Enjoy your sweat because hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but without it you don’t have a chance.” -Alex Rodriguez
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“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” -Bobby Unser
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“Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent.” -Nolan Ryan
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“The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success.” -Marquis de Sade
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“The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.” -H. G. Wells
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“An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.” -Henri Matisse
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“My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good.” -Giacomo Casanova
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“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s the determination and commitment to unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.” -Mario Andretti
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“However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?” -James Allen
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“Success in any endeavor depends on the degree to which it is an expression of your true self.” -Ralph Marston
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“Be yourself. Follow your instincts. Success depends, at least in part, on the ability to ‘carry it off.’” -Donald Rumsfeld
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“Failure is only postponed success as long as courage ‘coaches’ ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.” -Herbert Kaufman
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“Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.” -Solomon Ortiz
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“I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.” -Steve Martin
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“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn’t deliver the goods.” -John Maynard Keynes
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“The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.” -William Hazlitt
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“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” -Conrad Hilton
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“Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.” -Malcolm Forbes
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“I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.” -Golda Meir
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“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” -J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” -Vaclav Havel
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“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” -Earl Nightingale
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“Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.” -Dan Millman
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“A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control.” -Robert Foster Bennett
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“I’ve been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.” -Mike Krzyzewski
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“In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.” -Rita Rudner
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“Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” -Thomas J. Watson
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“I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.” -Bette Davis
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“No experience is a cause of success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences, so-called trauma – but we make out of them just what suits our purposes.” -Alfred Adler
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“The road to success is always under construction.” -Lily Tomlin
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“No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.” -Henry A. Kissinger
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“The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.” -Horace
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“No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.” -Alfred North Whitehead
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“Within the hearts men, loyalty and consideration are esteemed greater than success.” -Bryant H. McGill
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“What I have in common with the character in ‘Truman’ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.” -Jim Carrey
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“We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
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“The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.” -Tony Dungy
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“The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.” -Paramahansa Yogananda
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“It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.” -George Jean Nathan
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“Always remember that striving and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary.” -Sarah Ban Breathnach
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