Success comes in many forms and from many directions. Often it does not come easily and all the obstacles and distractions thrown in our direction will do their best to stop us from acting on our dream and achieving the success we want.
I find it helpful, when I’m going through a difficult time and the obstacles look insurmountable, to read about how others have succeeded — in whatever way they were pursuing their dream and working to make it real.
Everyone who has striven to succeed knows at least one motivational quotation about success. Here’s your opportunity to vote for your favorites.
If you don’t see your favorites, please add them to the comment.
1. Thomas Edison
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
2. Sir Winston Churchill
– Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
– Sometimes our best is simply not enough…. We have to do what is required.
3. Helen Keller
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, andsuccess achieved.
4. Henry Ford
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
5. Tim Notke
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
6. John Dilbeck
Act on your dream!
7. Mark Twain
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
8. Richard Bach
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
9. Aristotle
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self.
10. Malcolm Forbes
Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
11. Charles Lindbergh
Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
12. Eleanor Roosevelt
You must do the very thing you think you cannot do.
13. Thomas A. Buckner
To bring one’s self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.
14. Booker T. Washington
Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work.
15. J.C. Penny
Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.
16. Abraham Lincoln
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
17. Benjamin Mays
The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
18. Gene Roddenberry
A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
19. Nelson Mandela
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
20. Vince Lambardi
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
21. John Maxwell
Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.
22. Ken Evoy
Try. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Try better. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Try better still. Make mistake. Fail. Learn.
Repeat until…
Try. Succeed.
23. David Ambrose
If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.
24. Napoleon Hill
The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.
25. John D. Rockefeller
The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.
26. Harry S Truman
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
27. Conrad Hilton
Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
28. Sidney Greenberg
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
29. Kim Lyons
Yesterday is a cancelled check; Tomorrow is a promissory note; Today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely.
30. George B. Shaw
If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.
31. Dale Carnegie
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
32. Friedrich Nietzsche
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
33. Benjamin Disraeli
The secret of success is consistency of purpose.
34. Dale Carnegie
The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
35. Ronald E. Osborn
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
36. John Maxwell
If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.
37. Herbert Bayard Swope
I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: try to please everybody.
38. Booker T. Washington
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying tosucceed.
39. Warren Buffett
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
40. Napoleon Hill
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
41. Leonardo da Vinci
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
42. Satchel Paige
Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.
43. Seneca
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
44. General George Patton
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
45. Wayne Dyer
What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you.
46. John Wooden
Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
47. Sam Ewig
Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.
48. Anonymous
Success is your dreams with work clothes on.
49. Irving Berlin
The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You’ve got to keep working that talent.
50. Robert L. Schwartz
The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.
Good list. I’m trying to figure out if that GB Shaw one is by him or by Pam Shaw. I’ve seen it attributed both ways. Any ideas? Thanks!
Success is also when you have ventured beyond the circle of people who have held you down.
Tralian
If people don’t know who you are
You’re not working hard enoughG9
I had reached a bit of a stumbling block, and this list was just the reminder to continue to work hard and everything will fall into place! Thank you for sharing this great list! Midula