Success Quotes

There are not many famous names on this page. Shakespeare leads, then Steve Maraboli and Emerson, and most of the authors appear only once. The quotes with real citations are more interesting than the motivational ones: James Richardson’s “Success is whatever humiliation everyone has agreed to compete for” (Vectors, 2001), or Jean Ingelow in 1886 observing that if one cannot have success, the next most agreeable thing is failure.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” is credited to Churchill almost everywhere it appears. No source has been found. One of the places it shows up is a 2003 book, with none given. It is on the Courage page too, with the same flag.

Random quote on Success

Most quoted on success:

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heavest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.

Seneca the Younger

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. If we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.

Ben Carson

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

Jonathan Swift

There will people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame, but if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you're going you'll look around and you'll know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there, and that will be the greatest feeling in the world.

Taylor Swift

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.