quotations about success
Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.
VANESSA REDGRAVE
attributed, Good-bye Baby and Amen
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
IRVING BERLIN
Theatre Arts, February 1958
Yeah man
Before success can manifest
You got to go through the learning process
SCOOTER
"The Learning Process"
Consider what God can do, and you will never despair of success.
THOMAS WILSON
Maxims of Piety and of Christianity
No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.
LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest romances of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious tract. Moreover, the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry; the religious tracts are about religion. But these things are about nothing; they are about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade or speculation--how, if he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder; how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer; and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal, and I really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish a book about electricity which literally told one nothing about electricity; no one would dare to publish an article on botany which showed that the writer did not know which end of a plant grew in the earth. Yet our modern world is full of books about Success and successful people which literally contain no kind of idea, and scarcely any kind of verbal sense.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Fallacy of Success", All Things Considered
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Shakespeare the Man: An Essay
When your ship comes in, if you are like most people, instead of being thankful, you will find fault with the captain for the delay.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.
DAVID MAMET
The Secret Knowledge
Success is ever a bad tree when evil is the root.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Success too often sanctions the worst and the wildest schemes of human ambition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Success soon palls. The joyous time is, when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.
CHARLES BUXTON
Notes of Thought
Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
attributed, 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead
As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done to them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Success in business, as in life, is often largely just a matter of luck.
FELIX G. ROHATYN
Dealings: A Political and Financial Life
To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation
Success is a magnet that draws many followers.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Human success is a quotation from overhead.
CHARLES H. PARKHURST
"The Patern in the Mount"
We all love looking down
All we want is some success
But the chance is never around
It's all part of the process
MORCHEEBA
"Part of the Process"
You're bound to succeed if you have ignorance and confidence.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's