Success Quotes, Sayings
These famous success quotes will inspire, motivate, and help you become a better you. From leaders like Vince Lombardi, Oprah Winfrey, and Winston Churchill, these success quotes are sure to inspire you to succeed.
Top 10 best success quotes
Let’s begin with ten of our editor’s picks for the best success sayings. Be sure to scroll down for sayings related to sports, education, business, and personal success.
1.) Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Robert F. Kennedy
2.) I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.
Abraham Lincoln
3.) If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
Martin Luther King Jr.
4.) The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
Vince Lombardi
5.) The best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
Oprah Winfrey
6.) Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.
Bob Dylan
7.) Keep your face always toward the sunshine—and shadows will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman
8.) The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
Thomas A. Edison
9.) The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.
George S. Patton Jr.
10.) When times get tough, we don’t give up. We get up.
Barack Obama
“Success is” quotes
1.) Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
Maya Angelou
2.) Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
Dale Carnegie
3.) Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.
Roy T. Bennett
4.) Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston S. Churchill
What is success?
5.) Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.
Coco Chanel
6.) True success is reaching our potential without compromising our values.
Muhammad Ali
7.) 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
8.) Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
Joyce Brothers
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How do you define success?
9.) Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
Bill Gates
10.) Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston S. Churchill
11.) Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.
W. P. Kinsella
12.) Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.
Unknown
Success in life quotes
1.) To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.
Reba McEntire
2.) All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain
3.) The big lesson in life is never be scared of anyone or anything.
Frank Sinatra
4.) I choose to make the rest of my life, the best of my life.
Louise Hay
5.) A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between, he does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
6.) What is life without a little risk?
J.K. Rowling
7.) A walk to a nearby park may give you more energy and inspiration in life than spending two hours in front of a screen.
Tsang Lindsay
8.) 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 overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
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Failure quotes
9.) It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt
10.) Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
Truman Capote
11.) The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.
Colin R. Davis
12.) Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston S. Churchill
13.) The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it, whether you choose to persevere.
Barack Obama
14.) A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions—as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
15.) Its failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.
Ellen DeGeneres
16.) We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes—understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.
Arianna Huffington
17.) I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
Herbert Bayard Swope
18.) Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can’t exist without one.
Junot Díaz
19.) Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.
Thomas J. Watson
More failure quotes and sayings.
Secrets to success quotes
1.) The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
2.) The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
3.) There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
4.) The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.
Bob Ross
5.) The big secret in life is that there is no secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.
Oprah Winfrey
6.) The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis
7.) A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that other throw at him.
David Brinkley
Originality
8.) It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
9.) This is a reminder to you to create your own rule book, and live your life the way you want it.
Reese Evans
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Risk-taking
10.) Fortune sides with him who dares.
Virgil
11.) A ship in the harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for.
Proverb
12.) If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.
Jim Rohn
13.) Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
14.) All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.
Michael John Bobak
15.) You don’t need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Persistence – never give up quotes
16.) Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Winston Churchill
17.) Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
18.) The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.
Stephen Richards
19.) Success is not achieved by winning all the time. Real success comes when we rise after we fall.
Muhammad Ali
20.) A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.
Richard Nixon
21.) Fall seven times, stand up eight.
Japanese proverb
22.) Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Oliver Goldsmith
23.) Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
George Bernard Shaw
Vision
24.) Hold the vision, trust the process.
Unknown
25.) There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.
Anthony Robbins
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Inspirational success quotes
1.) If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney
2.) Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.
Maya Angelou
3.) Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.
Winston Churchill
4.) Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Napoleon Hill
5.) Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Oprah Winfrey
6.) Success does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi
7.) Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
Suzy Kassem
8.) Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.
Marianne Williamson
Motivational quotes
9.) You must do the kind of things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
10.) It’s not what you do once in a while it’s what you do day in and day out that makes the difference.
Jenny Craig
11.) You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
George Lorimer
12.) Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Abraham Lincoln
13.) I now tried a new hypothesis: It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be.
Michelle Obama
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Zen sayings
14.) What hurts you blesses you.
Rumi
15.) Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
Confucius
16.) When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu
17.) Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi
18.) If you want to fly give up everything that weighs you down.
Buddha
Funny success quotes
1.) If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields
2.) The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.
Bette Midler
3.) If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Steven Wright
4.) I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G.K. Chesterton
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Clever sayings
5.) What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.
Robin Williams
6.) The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.
Salvador Dali
7.) If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
8.) The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.
Will Rogers
9.) To be successful you need friends and to be very successful you need enemies.
Sidney Sheldon
10.) If people are doubting how far you can go, go so far that you can’t hear them anymore.
Michele Ruiz
Short success sayings
1.) Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
2.) Your success and happiness lie in you.
Helen Keller
3.) Impossible is just an opinion.
Paulo Coelho
4.) I failed my way to success.
Thomas Edison
5.) One day or day one. You decide.
Unknown
6.) The best revenge is massive success.
Frank Sinatra
7.) Success comes from within, not from without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
8.) Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
Henry David Thoreau
9.) The roughest roads often lead to the top.
Christina Aguilera
10.) Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Steve Martin
11.) I can and I will. Watch me.
Carrie Green
Success quotes for myself
1.) Magic is believing in yourself. If you can make that happen, you can make anything happen.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
2.) When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
3.) Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway.
Eleanor Roosevelt
4.) How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
5.) It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Lewis Carroll
6.) Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.
Dalai Lama
For women
7.) I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.
Amelia Earhart
8.) I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.
Joan Rivers
9.) The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.
Ayn Rand
10.) Don’t compromise yourself. You’re all you’ve got.
Janis Joplin
11.) If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.
Angelina Jolie
12.) Be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of someone else.
Judy Garland
13.) Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for.
Jennifer Lopez
For men
14.) Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
15.) Work until your rivals become idols.
Drake
16.) If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
Kurt Cobain
17.) Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded there.
Dr. Wayne Dyer
18.) Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh
19.) If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
Napoleon Hill
20.) If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.
Dr. Wayne Dyer
21.) You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
C.S. Lewis
For students
22.) And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!
Dr. Suess
23.) Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt
24.) Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
Dr. Seuss, from “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
25.) Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.
Hillary Clinton
26.) I never lose. Either I win or learn.
Nelson Mandela
For kids
27.) Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, Star Wars
28.) Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
Neil Gaiman
29.) You can do anything you set your mind to.
Benjamin Franklin
30.) Only do what your heart tells you.
Princess Diana
31.) Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso
32.) A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.
Nelson Mandela
33.) Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
Theodore Roosevelt
34.) Remember you’re the one who can fill the world with sunshine.
Snow White
35.) Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do.
Unknown
Success quotes for work and business
1.) Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
Conrad Hilton
2.) Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya Angelou
3.) If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.
Steve Jobs
4.) If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.
Sheryl Sandberg
5.) It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
Warren Buffett
6.) If something is important enough, even if the odds are stacked against you, you should still do it.
Elon Musk
7.) Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
John D. Rockefeller
8.) Done is better than perfect.
Sheryl Sandberg
9.) The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
Walt Disney
Hard work sayings
10.) Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Tim Notke
11.) Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.
G.K. Nielson
12.) The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
Vidal Sassoon
13.) Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Edison
14.) Work like there is someone working twenty-four hours a day to take it away from you.
Mark Cuban
15.) Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
16.) If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.
Jim Henson
17.) I didn’t get there by wishing for it, but by working for it.
Estée Lauder
18.) Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.
Sam Levenson
19.) Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
Thomas Edison
20.) A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.
Sonia Sotomayer
Leadership quotes
21.) Keep exploring, keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, and your hard work to change the world.
Barack Obama
22.) I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
Elon Musk
23.) If your dreams don’t scare you, they are too small.
Richard Branson
24.) Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember—the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.
Zig Ziglar
25.) Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure.
Stanley McChrystal
26.) All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
27.) If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
Jack Welch
28.) Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Money can’t buy success quotes
29.) You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
Oprah Winfrey
30.) Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.
Michelle Obama
31.) Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.
Tony Hsieh
Success quotes for sports
1.) Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
Michael Jordan
2.) Do the best you can. No one can do more than that.
John Wooden
3.) There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you.
Derek Jeter
4.) You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.
Herb Brooks
5.) The hard days are what make you stronger.
Aly Raisman
6.) I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
7.) If you’re not gonna go all the way, why go at all?
Joe Namath
8.) The only difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
Jimmy Johnson
9.) Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden
10.) Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
Babe Ruth
For victory
11.) If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.
Muhammad Ali
12.) As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.
Winston S. Churchill
13.) It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
14.) Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.
Robert Kiyosaki
15.) You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
Michael Jordan
16.) Make each day your masterpiece.
John Wooden
17.) You’re not going to enjoy every minute of the journey, but the success you’ll find at the end will make it all worth it.
Muhammad Ali
Famous success quotes
1.) Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen
2.) A quitter never wins-and-a winner never quits.
Napoleon Hill
3.) I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson
4.) The best way to predict your future is to create it.
Abraham Lincoln
5.) We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
6.) Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
William Shakespeare
7.) Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
Albert Einstein
8.) I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.
Estée Lauder
9.) Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
Theodore Roosevelt
10.) Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso
11.) The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Success proverbs
12.) The temptation to quit will be the greatest just before you are about to succeed.
Chinese proverb
13.) There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.
Russian proverb
14.) It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Chinese proverb
15.) From success to failure is one step; from failure to success is a long road.
Yiddish proverb
16.) Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan.
American proverb
17.) Pearls don’t lie on the seashore. If you want one, you must dive for it.
Chinese proverb
18.) If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb
19.) He who always thinks it is too soon is sure to come too late.
German proverb
20.) The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Chinese Proverb
21.) If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
English proverb
22.) The door of success is marked “push” and “pull.”
Yiddish proverb
Success captions for Instagram
Add a fun success caption to your social media posts!
- Be a voice, not an echo.
- Earned, not given.
- Do what is good for your soul.
- See what happens if you don’t give up.
- Your only limit is your mind.
- Don’t wish for it—work for it.
- Get lost in what you love.
- Dream big. Work hard.
- Manifest success!
- Success is my obligation.
- Focus. Work. Win!
- Old ways won’t open new doors.
- Working like a boss.
- Sweat + Sacrifice = Success.
- We rise by lifting others.
- Success is my duty.
- I’m alive, motivated and ready to slay the day.
- Aspire to inspire.
- Success: The best revenge!
- Follow your own footsteps.
- Why accept failure when success is free?
- You will never be ready, just start.
- Success is my religion.
- Work harder, then work harder.
- Perseverance pays.
- Success starts here.
- If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down.
- The best investment? Yourself.
- Say yes, take risks, and live life on your own terms.
- I never give up.
- Failure is success in progress.
- I don’t just survive, I thrive.
- Success is not easy.
- Dreams + Work = Success.
- Success loves discipline.
- Do what makes you happy.
- Success doesn’t come with excuses.
- Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle.
- Success is spelled “d-o”.
- Attitude of a champion. Hustle like an underdog.
How to use these success quotes
Here is a list of some ways you can use these success quotes to inspire yourself and others to greater achievements.
- Make someone’s day – Send a success quote to someone you care about who may need a boost of inspiration.
- Greeting card wishes – Include a success quote with your personalized note in graduation, birthday, and wedding cards.
- Congratulations – Say “way to go!” on the new job with selected words of inspiration from this list.
- Emotional support – Provide words of encouragement to a friend after a breakup in their relationship.
- Yearbook quotes – Leave your classmates and friends a lasting memory with a quote that captures your vision for the future.
- Toast the new year – Use a saying from this list as a toast to success in the new year.
Thanks for reading these famous success quotes, sayings, and captions. Here are more quote lists you might like:
By Greg Johnson | Published 9/30/2021
