The 40 Best Quotes About What It Takes to Succeed in Life

One of the things I've always believed is that whatever "success" in life entails for you, someone else has already done it, and it makes sense to learn from them. Something else we can say about success with certainty is that most people in life are not successful. That's not by my standards; it's by their own. One last thing we can say about success is that if there are successful people, but most people aren't successful, then successful people must be doing things differently from the masses.

So, how are they doing it? What are they doing? Why are they getting what they want out of life while so many of the rest of us aren't? Well, I think looking at quotes from extraordinary people is a great place to start. Good luck, may you get everything you want out of life, and enjoy the quotes!

1) “People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.” -- George Allen

2) “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself – and be lenient to everybody else.” -- Henry Ward Beecher

3) “Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.” -- Roy T. Bennett

4) “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” -- Robert Browning

5) “It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” -- Eddie Cantor

6) “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” -- Dale Carnegie

7) “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” -- Winston Churchill

8) “Nobody’s a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It’s hard to stay on top.” -- Paul Coffey

9) “The person who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” -- Confucius

10) “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” -- Calvin Coolidge

11) “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” -- Albert Einstein

12) “Failure is success if we learn from it.” -- Malcolm Forbes

13) “The will to win is meaningless without the will to prepare!” -- Joe Gibbs

14) “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.” -- Albert E.N. Gray

15) “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” -- Farrah Gray

16) “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” -- Wayne Gretzky

17) “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” -- Thomas Jefferson

18) “Pressure is what you feel when you don’t know what’s going on.” -- Chuck Knoll

19) “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” -- Bruce Lee

20) “Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.” -- Robert C. Hall

21) “There is one thing that 99 percent of 'failures' and 'successful' folks have in common — they all hate doing the same things. The difference is successful people do them anyway. Change is hard. That’s why people don’t transform their bad habits, and why so many end up unhappy and unhealthy.” -- Darren Hardy

22) “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” -- Steve Jobs

23) “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” -- Michael Jordan

24) “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” -- Tom Landry

25) “Winning is not a sometime thing: it’s an all-the-time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do the right thing once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” -- Vince Lombardi

26) “What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.” -- Ralph Marston

27) “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” -- John Maxwell

28) “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” -- Elon Musk

29) “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” -- Plato

30) “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” -- Florence Nightingale

31) “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” -- George Patton

32) “When you’re playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. Show the world how much you’ll fight for the winner’s circle. If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack, one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.” -- Pat Riley

33) “In life, never spend more than 10% of your time on the problem and spend at least 90% of your time on the solution.” -- Tony Robbins

34) “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.” -- John D. Rockefeller Jr.

35) “If you want to have more, you have to become more. Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.” -- Jim Rohn

36) “It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or the doer of deeds could have them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.” -- Teddy Roosevelt

37) “A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.” -- Charles Schwab

38) “Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it.” -- Margaret Thatcher

39) “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” -- Bobby Unser

40) “The real risk is doing nothing.” -- Denis Waitley

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