I believe everyone wants to be successful in some aspect of their life. Whether it’s having financial success or being a success parent, everyone has some area of their life where they want to succeed.
Success can come in many different forms, but no matter what form it takes one thing remains the same, success takes discipline, hard work, sacrifice, and passion.
I have studied many successful people throughout history in order to uncover some of their sage wisdom and advice. One of the best ways to get advice from successful people is to read their quotes.
Quotes give you bite sized nuggets of wisdom from some of the most successful people in history that you can take and apply to your life and business.
This information is waiting to be discovered and we all have access to this information in the palm of our hands.
To save you some time I went ahead and compiled a list of the 101 most motivating quotes on success. Enjoy!
1. “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” -Stephen Hawking
2. “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.” – Confucius
3. “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
4. “The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” – Vince Lombardi
5. “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
6. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
7. “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” – Mark Twain
8. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
9. “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.” – Vince Lombardi
10. “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” – Bob Dylan
11. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
12. “In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.” – Anthony J. D’Angelo
13. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” – Abraham Lincoln
14. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” – Swami Vivekananda
15. “Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.” – Ross Perot
16. “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.” – Zig Ziglar
17. “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” – Theodore Roosevelt
18.“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
19. “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” – George S. Patton
20. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn
21. “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
22. “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” – Ayn Rand
23. “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
24. “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” – Jim Rohn
25. “Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
26. “I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.” – Benjamin Disraeli
27. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer
28. “People think that at the top there isn’t much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.” – Margaret Thatcher
29. “One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” – Benjamin Disraeli
30. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie
31. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen
32. “The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.” – Salvador Dali
33. “The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.” – W. Somerset Maugham
34. “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.” – Booker T. Washington
35. “He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.” – Elbert Hubbard
36. “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” – Louis Pasteur
37. “One fails forward toward success.” – Charles Kettering
38. “Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.” – W. Clement Stone
39. “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” – Robert Kiyosaki
40. “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.” – Jon Bon Jovi
41. “Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
42. “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”- Thomas J. Watson
43. “Success isn’t measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.” -Mike Ditka
44. “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather
45. “There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.” – Jim Lovell
46. “Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” – Joyce Brothers
47. “Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.” – Paul J. Meyer
48. “The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.” – Cyril Connolly
49. “Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.” – Christopher Reeve
50. “Failure is success if we learn from it.” – Malcolm Forbes
51. “The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.” – Harold S. Geneen
52. “The secret of my success is a two-word answer: Know people.” – Harvey S. Firestone
53. “It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.” – Robert W. Service
54. “If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.” – Sydney Madwed
55. “You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.” -Michael Dell
56. “Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.” – Amos Bronson Alcott
57. “Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.” – Sam Ewing
58. “Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.” -Larry King
59. “The real secret of success is enthusiasm.” – Walter Chrysler
60. “The one phrase you can use is that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan.” – Alan Price
61. “Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.” – Al Bernstein
62. “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” – C. S. Lewis
63. “My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.” – Isaac Newton
64. “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
65. “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin
66. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
67. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
68. “The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later.” – Confucius
69. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” -Pele
70. “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
71. “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” – Henry Ford
72. “You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.” Zig Ziglar
73. “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” – John C. Maxwell
74. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” -Pablo Picasso
75. “The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
76. “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D. Rockefeller
77. The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.” – Alexander Graham Bell
78. “The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.” -Brian Tracy
79. “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” – Arthur Ashe
80. “Success is the only motivational factor that a boy with character needs.” – Woody Hayes
81. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” – Truman Capote
82. “There’s a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success.” – Bear Bryant
83. “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley
84. “We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.” – Henry David Thoreau
85. “That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” – Abraham Lincoln
86. “Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life – all areas of life. The really good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity.” – Zig Ziglar
87. “Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.” – Eckhart Tolle
88. “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi
89. “Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.” – John C. Maxwell
90. “Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.” – Epictetus
91. “Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.” – John C. Maxwell
92. “Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” – Jim Rohn
93. “Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.” – Napoleon Hill
94. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison
95. “Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
96. “I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
97. “Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.” – Samuel Johnson
98. “For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” – Walter Scott
99. “Success comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?” -Tony Robbins
100. “I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” – John D. Rockefeller
101. “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” -Scott Adams
My favorite quote from this list:
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
What was your favorite quote?
