“Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren’t sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.”
— John Carmack Primary source“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
— Steve Jobs Primary source“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The axiom that you learn more from your failures than your successes is trite but absolutely true.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“In life, you must devote all your efforts to doing the best you can. And since we spoke at length just now about my studies, let me tell you the secret that led me to my success: My only strength is my tenacity.”
— Louis Pasteur Primary source“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
— Henry David Thoreau Primary source“Life starts in the sea. There it attains to an extraordinary efficiency. The fishes give rise to types which are so successful (such for instance as the sharks) that they have lasted on unchanged until to-day. The path of ascending evolution did not however lie in this direction. In Evolution Dr. Inge’s aphorism is probably always right: ‘Nothing fails likes success.’ A creature which has become perfectly adapted to its environment, an animal whose whole capacity and vital force is concentrated and expended in succeeding here and now, has nothing left over with which to respond to any radical change. Age by age it becomes more perfectly economical in the way its entire resources meet exactly its current and customary opportunities. In the end it can do all that is necessary to survive without any conscious striving or unadapted movement. It can therefore beat all competitors in the special field but equally on the other hand should that field change it must become extinct. It is this success of efficiency which seems to account for the extinction of an enormous number of species. Climatic conditions altered. They had used up all their resources of vital energy in adapting to things as they were. Like unwise virgins they had no oil left over for further adaptations. They were committed, could not readjust and so they vanished.”
— Gerald Heard Primary source“On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like success.”
— William Ralph Inge Primary source“Success is the result of making many mistakes and learning from experience.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“I think track records are very important, If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you’re well on your way to success in this world.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed, and had done the very best you could.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt Primary source“All successful men have agreed in one thing—they were causationists.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every thing impossible, until we see a success.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Practice is nine tenths.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Everything tells me I shall succeed.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Primary source“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
— Steve Jobs Primary source“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people’s attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management.”
— Andrew S. Grove Primary source“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“You’re much more likely to do well if you start out to do something feasible instead of something that isn’t feasible. Isn’t that perfectly obvious?”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“Failure cuts deepter memories than success.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“The right methodology is the key to success in many areas of life. This is also true for design—within limits.”
— Dieter Rams Primary source“Success is the most convincing talker in the world.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“Men who hesitate never succeed in their undertakings.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
— Winston Churchill Disputed“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Disputed“Now it is a law which hardly admits of exceptions, that aristocracies do not maintain their numbers. The ruling race rules itself out; nothing fails like success.”
— William Ralph Inge Primary source“Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“Nothing augments a battalion like success.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill DisputedFailure Tenacity Perseverance Focus Progress