Quotes about success
page 14

Stanley Kubrick photo

“Think [Schindler's List] was about the Holocaust?… That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. ‘'Schindler’s List’' is about 600 who don’t. Anything else?”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick (1999) by Frederic Raphael, p. 107

Tryon Edwards photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La maternité comporte une suite de poésies douces ou terribles. Pas une heure qui n’ait ses joies et ses craintes.
Part I, ch. XLV.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Robert Langlands photo
William Buckland photo
John Carpenter photo
Tomáš Baťa photo
Ruben Vergara Meersohn photo

“It's not about perfection. It's about volume. When you bring volume and consistency on the daily basis, that's where success occurs.”

Ruben Vergara Meersohn (1991) Entrepreneur

Keynote speech at the International Career Development http://www.bankar.me/2017/12/19/marleq-organizuje-petu-u-otvorenu-panel-diskusiju-razvoj-medunarodne-karijere/, 20 December 2017.

Charles Krauthammer photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“It’s easy to laugh at someone like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay who swears and shouts in his kitchen, but to ensure a successful life you must avoid making others sad, unhappy or fearful. To do this, you have to learn to keep your emotions in check.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Nonie Darwish photo
Craig Ferguson photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“A person can be highly educated, professionally successful and financially illiterate.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Henry Ward Beecher photo

“Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is last year's nest from which the bird has flown.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 567

Logan Pearsall Smith photo

“Few things are more shocking to those who practice the arts of success than the frank description of those arts.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“English Aphorists,” p. 123
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Leah Tsemel photo
Yehudi Menuhin photo
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo
Max Horkheimer photo

“I Owe My Success to My Failure.‘”

Rati Tsiteladze (1987) Georgian Filmmaker

As Quoted in Georgian Journal in 2010 http://www.georgianews.ge/sports/2534-i-owe-my-success-to-my-failure.html

Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“Success or achievement is not the final goal. It is the 'spirit' in which you act that puts the seal of beauty upon your life.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Henry David Thoreau photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about. The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“National Review Eunuchs,” http://rt.com/op-edge/paleolibertarian-column-ilana-mercer/national-review-john-derbyshire RT, April 13, 2012.
2010s, 2012

Satya Nadella photo

“When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Boy Genius Report: "When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" https://www.bgr.in/news/when-i-think-about-my-career-my-successes-are-built-on-learning-from-failures-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella/ (29 December 2015)

Benoît Mandelbrot photo
André Gide photo

“The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“Characters,” p. 306
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

George Holmes Howison photo
Warren Farrell photo
Alex Salmond photo
John Gray photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Wise command, wise obedience: the capability of these two is the net measure of culture, and human virtue, in every man; all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Paul Bernays photo
Michael E. Porter photo

“The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few – and integrating among them.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

"What is strategy?," 1996

Aron Ra photo
Ted Nelson photo

“Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model for an enterprise, than with discovering what matters to us as individuals.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson. Success Built to Last: Creating A Life That Matters, Wharton School Publishing, 2006. p. 3-4

Gary Hamel photo
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi photo
Mark Satin photo

“The First American Experiment began in the mid-1700s, and by its own criteria, at least, has been a smashing "success":”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Economic growth. We proved that an economy could grow seemingly forever;
The welfare state. We proved that a society could be held together by giving people more and more rights, more and more "entitlements";
Policing the world. We proved that a nation could become so powerful and awe-inspiring that it could successfully police the whole world.
"Preface," p. vii.
New Options for America (1991)

George Chapman photo

“Our hopes, I see, resemble much the sun,
That rising and declining cast large shadows;
But when his beams are dressed in's midday brightness,
Yields none at all: when they are farthest from
Success, their guilt reflection does display
The largest shows of events fair and prosperous.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Revenge for Honour (1654), Act II, scene i. Attributed, probably falsely, to Chapman. The play may have been written by Henry Glapthorne.
Disputed

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy photo

“Without fear or favour whatever successes I have been able to make of my life, I owe to the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi who could make man out of dust. I was greatly inspired in my youth by a remark Jawaharlal Nehru had made, ‘Success comes to those that dare and act…’ In fact this remark was my motto in life.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

in 1989 - towards the end of his Presidential term
Source: Pranab Mukherjee Press Information Bureau in: Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of the former President of India, Dr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=102099, Press Information Bureau, Government of India President's Secretariat

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Slash (musician) photo

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Shona Brown photo
John D. Carmack photo

“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 D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in "The Rise and Fall of Ion Storm" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25551&cid=2775698 Slashdot (2002-01-02)

Peter Thiel photo

“It’s good to test yourself and develop your talents and ambitions as fully as you can and achieve greater success; but I think success is the feeling you get from a job well done, and the key thing is to do the work.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

Forbes: "Peter Thiel: 'Don't Wait to Start Something New'" https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2014/09/10/peter-thiel-dont-wait-to-start-something-new/#3c8e20f71e69 (10 September 2014)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Thomas Hardy photo
Dhyan Chand photo
Max Born photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Edward Jenks photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“A nickname may be the best record of a success. That's what I call putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth.”

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 1
Often misquoted as "A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth."
Nostromo (1904)

Daniel McCallum photo
Warren Farrell photo
Erwin Schrödinger photo
C. D. Broad photo

“When a man’s success becomes commonplace to him, it is his success no longer.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 104

Hafsat Abiola photo
Gordon Brown photo

“The calendar says we are half way from 2000 to 2015. But the reality is that we are we are a million miles away from success.”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6924570.stmat the New York UN headquarters in July 2007.
Prime Minister

“We face today two practical dilemmas. The first can be succinctly described as the return of the ‘social question’. For Victorian reformers—or American activists of the pre-1914 age of reform—the challenge posed by the social question of their time was straightforward: how was a liberal society to respond to the poverty, overcrowding, dirt, malnutrition and ill health of the new industrial cities? How were the working masses to be brought into the community—as voters, as citizens, as participants—without upheaval, protest and even revolution? What should be done to alleviate the suffering and injustices to which the urban working masses were now exposed and how was the ruling elite of the day to be brought to see the need for change?
The history of the 20th century West is in large measure the history of efforts to answer these questions. The responses proved spectacularly successful: not only was revolution avoided but the industrial proletariat was integrated to a remarkable degree. Only in countries where any liberal reform was prevented by authoritarian rulers did the social question rephrase itself as a political challenge, typically ending in violent confrontation. In the middle of the 19th century, sharp-eyed observers like Karl Marx had taken it for granted that the only way the inequities of industrial capitalism could be overcome was by revolution. The idea that they could be dissolved peacefully into New Deals, Great Societies and welfare states simply never would have occurred to him.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 5 : What Is to be Done?

Lin Yutang photo
K. R. Narayanan photo
Sueton photo

“The courtiers tried every trick to lure or force him into making complaints against Tiberius; always, however, without success. He not only failed to show any interest in the murder of his relatives, but affected an amazing indifference to his own ill-treatment, behaving so obsequiously to his adoptive grandfather and to the entire household, that someone said of him, very neatly: "Never was there a better slave, or a worse master!"”
Haec omnibus insidiis temptatus elicientium cogentiumque se ad querelas nullam umquam occasionem dedit, perinde obliterato suorum casu ac si nihil cuiquam accidisset, quae vero ipse pateretur incredibili dissimulatione transmittens tantique in avum et qui iuxta erant obsequii, ut non immerito sit dictum nec servum meliorem ullum nec deteriorem dominum fuisse.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Gaius Caligula, Ch. 10

Lana Turner photo
H. G. Wells photo
Indra Nooyi photo
Baba Amte photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Chris Christie photo
George Eliot photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Alex Salmond photo

“Gaelic language and culture is inseparable from the future success of the Scottish economy.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Lecture (December 19, 2007)

Charles James Fox photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Dreams are the fuel for your success. Without them there can never be any meaningful and lasting success in your life. Like a car engine without high-quality fuel you risk living a life that never quite gets started.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Harbhajan Singh photo

“He is a very strong headed person and that shows on-screen (in matches)… He got success at an early age and still he is so grounded and humble. He loves his game. I want to learn that from him”

Harbhajan Singh (1980) Indian cricketer

Actress Geeta Basra on Singh, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Harbhajan Singh's Passion and Humility a Source of Inspiration for Girlfriend Geeta Basra" http://sports.ndtv.com/cricket/news/243922-harbhajan-singh-s-passion-and-humilty-a-source-of-inspiration-for-girlfriend-geeta-basra, June 17, 2015.
About

Norodom Ranariddh photo

“I personally am too passionate, I am too much of a politician, and too outspoken to be a reasonable and successful king…definitely, I am no candidate for the throne.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

[Claudi Arizzi, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/royal-watchers-ponder-whats-deal, Royal watchers ponder 'what's the deal?', 21 November 1997, 20 September 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

Mitt Romney photo

“So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn't get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church's pension fund to invest, but I didn't. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we'd ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
[2012-08-30, gopconvention2012, Mitt Romney: Introduction (video), YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cGyPwt5UI]
2012

Wesley Clair Mitchell photo

“I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. The similarity of the two disciplines struck me at once. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our textbooks and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my 'deductions' were futile…
Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem — how we think… And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey's notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination—they don't think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorists had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject—the orthodox types particularly — when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem…
Of course Veblen fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side… There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises…
William Hill set me a course paper on 'Wool Growing and the Tariff.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new sidelight on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data... That was my first 'investigation'.
Wesley Clair Mitchell in letter to John Maurice Clark, August 9, 1928. Originally printed in Methods in Social Science, ed. Stuart Rice; Cited in: Arthur F. Burns (1965, 65-66)

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Jimmy Hoffa photo

“But because we are financially solid, because we do have an organization that is equipped to handle any situation that comes in front of us, we are successful in getting from the employers what are members want and need without strikes.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

CBC Television Interview, Washington, 1960 Watch it Here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWitsAgxd8U

Paul Thurrott photo

“Apple is a hugely successful company and its Mac business, even though it trails the wider PC market by a wide margin, is a great business, a very, very successful and desirable business. For Apple. Why anyone would care about that, other than employees of Apple, is unclear to me.”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

Market Share Matters http://winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/commentary/market-share-matters-140372 in Paul Thurrott's Supersite For Windows (27 August 2011)

Alphonse de Lamartine photo
Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo