Top 50 Favorite Success Quotes

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

The character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success 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 the 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 canceled 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 way to live for can bear almost any how.

33. Benjamin Disraeli

The secret of success is the 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 to succeed.

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.