Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.
—J. Paul Getty
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
It’s a proprietary strategy. I can’t go into it in great detail.
—Bernard Madoff
Success is not about doing things well or even very well, or being acknowledged by others. It is not an external opinion, but rather an internal status. It is the harmony between the soul and your emotions, which requires love, family, friendship, authenticity and integrity.
—Carlos Slim Helú
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved preeminence in money making—certainly never one in manufacturing—who was interested in many concerns.
—Andrew Carnegie
I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.
—Larry Ellison
Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.
—Coco Chanel
Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical, and ultimately making a big difference in the world.
—Sergey Brin
No man can climb the ladder of success without first placing his foot on the bottom rung.
—James Cash Penny
There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.
—Philip Knight
There is no scientific answer for success. You can’t define it. You’ve simply got to live it and do it.
—Anita Roddick
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
To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.
—Henry J. Heinz
The successful team is the one that makes 1 plus 1 equal 11.
—Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Reputation is the key to success. You have to be loyal to your customers.
—Li Ka-shing
What’s the secret to success? It’s no secret. You need a winning attitude, honesty and integrity, and a burning desire to succeed.
—Dave Thomas
The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down as a failure.
—Bertie Charles Forbes
There is no substitute for knowledge. To this day, I read three newspapers a day. It is impossible to read a paper without being exposed to ideas. And ideas ... more than money . . . are the real currency for success.
—Eli Broad
There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.
—Madam C. J. Walker
There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.
—Michael Dell
Overcoming hardships and working around and through their obstacles to achieve an education is what I call a true success.
—Wayne Huizeaga
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt, or fear.
—Dan Millman
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.
—Sam Walton
The most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.
—Lee Iococca
My success wasn’t based on how I could push down everyone around me. My success was based on how much I could push everybody up ... And in the process they pushed me up, and I pushed them up, and we kept doing that, and we still do that.
—George Lucas
No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or get rich in business by being a conformist.
—J. Paul Getty
Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.
—David Rockefeller
The secret of my success is a two-word answer: Know people.
—Harvey S. Firestone
If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.
—Louis V. Gerstner
The turning point, I think, was when I really realized that you can do it yourself. That you have to believe in you because sometimes that’s the only person that does believe in your success but you.
—Tim Blixseth
Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.
—Michael Dell
The jests of the rich are ever successful.
—Oliver Goldsmith
And make sure that capital structure we have in place is the right capital structure. I think that’s the reason that we’ve been successful.
—Henry Kravis
The secret of success is to do common things uncommonly well.
—John D. Rockefeller
The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.
—Thomas Edison
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
I can’t give you any secret recipe for success, any foolproof plan for making it in the world of business. But my own experience suggests that it is possible to start from nothing and achieve even beyond your dreams.
—Howard Schultz
I never thought I’d be successful. It seems in my own mind that in everything I’ve undertaken I’ve never quite made the mark. But I’ve always been able to put disappointments aside. Success isn’t about the end result; it’s about what you learn along the way.
—Vera Wang
I didn’t become a successful businessman because I wanted to be rich and famous. I wanted to become successful enough to deliver the art to the consumer.
—Todd McFarlane
A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
People are what determine your success in the future. Surround yourself with good people and you won’t fail.
—Wayne Huizenga
You can’t have a clean floor with a dirty mop bucket. To be successful, you need to take care of the basics of your business—and that means making sure you don’t overlook the little details.
—Dave Thomas
I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.
—Alan Greenspan
My life experience tells me that success is never final, but the decisions we make along the way determine the end and final outcome.
—J. Willard Marriott
The core of our success, that’s the most difficult thing for a competitor to imitate. They can buy all the physical things. The things you can’t buy are dedication, devotion, loyalty—the feeling that you are participating in a crusade.
—Herb Kelleher
We’re never arrogant, we’re always looking at the competition. But they have not been successful for a couple of reasons. The intent to socialize on a site like Yahoo! isn’t really there because the brand doesn’t necessarily stand for anything and there’s no real voice to it.
—Tom Anderson and Chris De Wolfe
If you’re successful in business it’s because you’ve served other people; you’ve served your employees; you’ve served your customers. You’re creating jobs.
—Tom Monaghan
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
—John D. Rockefeller
Whatever it is that you’re successful at, that has to be the number one goal. In my case, it’s accessibility. So all of my products have to be usable, accessible, affordable.
—Rachel Ray
We measured our success not just by how much money we made, but by how much we contributed to the community. It was a two-part bottom line.
—Ben Cohen
If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence ... The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, “Here comes number seventy-one!”
—Richard M. DeVos
If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
—John D. Rockefeller
We accept criticism because it leads us to the right path. All humans err. A successful man, in my opinion, may err twice, but he will succeed eight times.
—Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Failure is success if we learn from it.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.
—Sir James Dyson
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
—Peter Drucker
Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
—Conrad Hilton