This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character - that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded." - Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
"Experience has taught me that financial success, job success and happiness in human relations are, in the main, the result of (a) physical well-being; (b) constant effort to develop one's personal assets; (c) setting up and working toward a series of life goals; (d) allowing time for meditation and spiritual regeneration." - Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
"Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final." - Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
"No matter what you do, do it to your utmost. I always attribute my success to always requiring myself to do my level best, if only in driving a tack in straight." - Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell
"When a man has done all he can do, still there is a might, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The only way he can reach it is by prayer." - Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell
"Whatever you do in life, do with love! We have no alternative save to act from motives of hate - yet how doleful to make this our choice! For hate is the destroyer of life, where love is its guardian. Hate blinds our vision and warps our talents; but love releases our energies for the creative action that sustains mankind. while all human behavior springs from a mixture of both these great forces of nature, it is within our power to determine which shall prevail as we journey through life... We must tip the balance ever in favor of love if we wish to hurdle the obstacles before us on the road to normal happiness and success." - Smiley Blanton
"Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men." - Socrates NULL
"Success, remember, is the reward of toil." - Sophocles NULL
"An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success." - Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey
"Put your heart, mind and intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." - Sivananda, formally Swami Sivananda Saraswati, born Kuppuswami NULL
"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Of all paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path for every man, a thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do; which, he could he but be led or driven to do, he were then doing like a man, as we phrase it. His success, in such a case, were complete, his felicity a maximum." - Thomas Carlyle
"Success is never blamed." - Thomas Fuller
"The devil never tempts us with more success than when he tempts us with a sight of our own good actions." - Thomas Wilson
"There are no secrets of success. Success is doing the things you know you should do. Success is not doing the things you know you should not do." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"Recipe for success: Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward
"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go." - William Feather, fully William A. Feather
"Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds,. Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others who feel that the world has done them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it is a sign that it has been ill deserved." - William Hazlitt
"A strong passion for any object will ensure success, and it is the desire of the end that will point out the means." - William Hazlitt
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby, fully William Henry "Bill" Cosby Jr.
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. . . One who doesn't try cannot fail and become wise." - William Saroyan
"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. Failure makes people cruel and bitter." - W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
"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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel." - W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." - Woody Allen, formally Heywood "Woody" Allen, born Allan Stewart Konigsberg
"Demanding security and certainty prevents peace of mind. No human has the omniscience to foresee everything. Always realize the unexpected can occur. Plan as much as is appropriate, but realize that regardless of how much you plan there will always be difficulties that you had previously not imagined. By expecting there will always be unexpected occurrences and accepting them, you will have much greater peace of mind than if you have unrealistic expectations of complete control. A person would be making a big mistake if he felt that the way to peace of mind is to obtain complete security from all risks... Uncertainty is inevitable... The demand for success is detrimental to peace of mind... Keep your focus on trying to accomplish with the best of your ability." - Zelig Pliskin
"If man can, with almost complete assurance, predict phenomena when he knows their laws, and if, even when he does not, he can still, with great expectation of success, forecast the future on the basis of his experience of the past, why, then, should it be regarded as a fantastic undertaking to sketch, with some pretense to truth, the future destiny of man on the basis of his history?" - Marquis de Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat
"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, born Robert Allen Zimmerman
"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, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
"I am more fond of achieving than striving. My theories must prove to be facts or be discarded as worthless. My efforts must soon be crowned with success, or discontinued. " - Carolyn Wells
"In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world. " - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. " - Denis E. Waitley
"Success leads to insolence. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
"In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come." - E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
"A young man, to achieve, must first get out of his head any notion either of the ease or rapidity of success. Nothing just happens in this world; everything is brought about. Success never comes to a man of its own volition; it will meet a man halfway, but it will never come to him all the way." - Edward William Bok
"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America? " - Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
"No man is a success in business unless he loves his work. " - Florence Scovel Shinn
"The success of Apollo was mainly due to the fact that the project was conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science. The order of priorities in Apollo was accurately reflected by the first item to be unloaded after each landing on the Moon's surface, the television camera. The landing, the coming and going of the astronauts, the exploring of the moon's surface, the gathering of Moon rocks and the earthward departure, all were expertly choreographed with the cameras placed in the right positions to make a dramatic show on television. This was to me the great surprise of the Apollo missions. There was nothing surprising in the fact that astronauts could walk on the Moon and bring home Moon rocks. There were no big scientific surprises in the chemistry of the Moon rocks or in the results of magnetic and seismic observations that the astronauts carried out. The big surprise was the quality of the public entertainment that the missions provided. I had never expected that we would see in real time astronauts hopping around in lunar gravity and driving their Rover down the Lincoln- Lee scarp to claim a lunar speed record of eleven miles per hour. Intensive television coverage was the driving force of Apollo. Von Braun had not imagined the possibilities of television when he decided that one kilohertz would be an adequate communication bandwidth for his Mars Project. " - Freeman John Dyson
"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, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts." - Gary Player
"The first spiritual law of success is the law of pure potentiality. This law is based on the act that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence. Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy. Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss. This is our essential nature. Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality." - Deepak Chopra
"Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfill your desires with effortless ease. And yet success, including the creation of wealth, has always been considered to be a process that requires hard work and it is often considered to be at the expense of others. We need a more spiritual approach to success and to affluence which is the abundant flow of all good things to you." - Deepak Chopra
"Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity. " - Gary Ryan Blair
"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." - George S. Patton, fully George Smith Patton, Jr.
"Men who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered when others gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success so often erroneously attributed to good luck." - Grenville Kleiser
"A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves." - Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland