Success | Maxires Training & Consulting

1. I’ve had enough success for two lifetimes. My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (b.1947) U.S. basketball player. Star (1986)

2. Tis not in mortals to command success But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English statesman and author. Cato (1713)

3. Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen (b.1935) U.S. actor, humorist, producer and director. Quoted in In Search of Excellence (Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman; 1982)

4. Making a success of the job at hand is the best step toward the kind you want.

Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) U.S. financier and economist. Arizona Republic (2000)

5. There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what happens in between.

Thomas Beecham (1879-1961) British conductor. Quoted in Beecham Stories (H. J. Atkins and A. Newman; 1978)

6. The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) British novelist, playwright and essayist. Things That Have Interested Me (1921-25)

7. The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) U.S. composer and songwriter. Quoted in Theater Arts (1958)

8. Only positive consequences encourage good future performance.

Kenneth Blanchard (b.1939) U.S. management theorist and author. Putting the One Minute Manager to Work (1992)

9. There aren’t a lot of us, so there are no cubby holes.

Bruce R. Bond (b.1946) U.S. C.E.O. of ANS Communications. Referring to achievements of African Americans in business. “The Players,” Fortune (Eileen Gunn; April 1997)

10. The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.

Edmund Burke (1729-97) British philosopher and politician. Letter to a member of the National Assembly (1791)

11. The certainty of success in many destroys, in all weakness its charm: the bashful excepted, to whom it gives courage; and the indolent, to whom it saves trouble.

Fanny Burney (1752-1840) British writer. Cecilia (1782)

12. If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) British writer. Men-Minutes-Money (1934)

13. The process of succeeding can be seen as a series of trials in which your vision constantly guides you toward your target while in your actual performance you are regularly slightly off target. Success in any are requires constantly readjusting.

Tony Buzan (b.1942) U.S. author. Lessons from the Art of Juggling. How to Achieve Your Fall Potential in Business, Learning and Life (co-written with Michael J. Gelb; 1997)

14. It takes years to make an overnight success.

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) U.S. entertainer. Quoted in Treasury of Investment Wisdom (Bernice Cohen; 1999)

15. A man may be concerned in the management of more than one business enterprise, but they should all be of the one kind, which he understands. The great successes of life are made by concentration.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) U.S. industrialist and philanthropist. “From Oakland: How to Succeed in Life,” The Pittsburgh Bulletin (December 19, 1903)

16. What is the philosophical foundation of the enterprise? That the most competent , the most able, the most audacious will triumph.

Fidel Castro (b.1927) Cuban president. Interview. Playboy (Lee Lockwood; January 1967)

17. Good business practices can ultimately weaken a great firm.

Clayton M. Christensen (b.1952) U.S. writer. Referring to over-dependence on established products at the expense of innovation. The Innovator’s Dilemna (1997)

18. The great north-east migration.

Clayton M. Christensen (b.1952) U.S. writer. Referring to the shape of a graph line for an innovative company. The Innovator’s Dilemna (1997)

19. The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business and success only a subsequent consideration.

Confucius (551-479 B.C.) Chinese philosopher, administrator and writer. Analects (500? B.C.)

20. The more volatile the market, the quicker an organization’s success formula becomes obsolete.

Daryl R. Conner (b.1946) U.S. management author. Leading at the Edge of Chaos (1998)

21. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Cyril Connolly (1903-74) British critic, essayist, and novelist. Enemies of Promise (1938)

22. When you struggle hard and lose money, you’re a hero. When you start making money you become a capitalist swine.

Terence Conran (b.1931) British business executive, retailer and founder of Habitat. Quoted in The Risk Takers (Jeffrey Robinson; 1985)

23. No one has all the answers to success.

Jack Daniels (b.1933) U.S. track coach. Daniel’s Running Formula (1998)

24. I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.

Bette Davis (1908-89) U.S. actor. The Lonely Life (1962)

25. To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or to find yourself in a rapid-growth field.

Edward De Bono (b.1933) British creative-thinking theorist, educator and writer. Tactics: The Art and Science of Success (1984)

26. You can only raise individual performance by elevating that of the entire system.

Edwards Deming (1900-93) U.S. consultant and author. Quoted in In Search of European Excellence (Robert Heller; 1997)

27. The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) British prime minister and novelist. Speech, House of Commons (June 24, 1870)

28. No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than he unexpected success.

Peter F. Drucker (b.1909) U.S. management consultant and academic. Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1993)

29. If you look after the customers and look after the people who look after the customers, you should be successful.

Charles Dunstone (b.1964) British business executive and founder of Carphone Warehouse. Sunday Times (London) (June 2000)

30. She knows there’s no success like failure and that failure’s no success at all.

Bob Dylan (b.1941) U.S. singer. Song lyric. “Love Minus Zero, No Limits” (1965)

31. Success is made of 99 percent failure.

James Dyson (b.1947) British entrepreneur. Management Today (July 1999)

32. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

Umberto Eco (b.1932) Italian novelist and semiotician. International Herald Tribune (December 14, 1988)

33. The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.

Thomas Edison (1847-1931) U.S. inventor. Quoted in :Building an Innovation Factory,” Harvard Business Review (Andrew Hargadon and Robert I. Sutton; 2000)

34. The sums are so large I can’t regard them with any more seriousness than the person who fills in the pools coupon and sticks it in the post.

Noel Edmonds (b.1948) British broadcaster and media executive. May 1986. Referring to the possibility of a lucrative U.S. TV contract. Quoted in Noel Emonds (Alison Bowyer; 1999)

35.. The secret of the truly successful…is that they learned early in life how not to be busy.

Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) U.S. writer, sociologist and feminist. 1985. “The Cult of Busyness,” The Worst Years of Our Lives (1991)

36 .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 mouths shut.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) U.S. physicist. Quoted in Observer (London) (January 15, 1950)

37. Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

S. Eliot (1888-1965) British poet, dramatist and critic. The Family Reunion (1939)

38 .The most important attribute of successful people is not that they always succeed, but that they respond to failure by coming back and redoubling their efforts.

Mary Farrell (b.1956) U.S. managing director of Paine Webber. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)

39. In order to win at some of the big ones, you will always lose at others along the way.

Ranulph Fiennes (b.1944) British explorer. Observer (London) (October 2000)

40. There is no glass ceiling. My gender is interesting, but it is not the story here.

Carly Fiorina (b.1954) U.S. president and C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard. “The Century’s Business, Career and Money Sheroes,” Society and Politics (2000)

41. A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) U.S. writer. This Side of Paradise (1920)

42. Our outlook is narrowed, our activity is restricted, our chances of business success largely diminished when our thinking is constrained within the limits of what has been called an either-or situation.

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) U.S. management thinker and author. Dynamic Administration (1941)

43. Those who invest only to get rich will fail. Those who invest to help others will probably succeed.

Art Fry, U.S. entrepreneur and inventor of Post-it notes, Interview, The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future (Charles Handy; 1994)

44. Without vassal loyalty, or object vassal fear, the monopolist’s sleep can never be secure.

Joseph Furphy (1843-1912) Australian journalist, novelist and poet. Such is Life (1903)

45. Just fragmenting an organization does not create conditions sufficient for success.

Lou Gerstner (b.1942) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of IBM. Fortune (May 1993)

46. the truly successful businessman is essentially a dissenter, a rebel who is seldom if ever satisfied with the status quo.

Paul Getty (1892-1976) U.S. entrepreneur, oil industry executive and financier. How to Be Rich (1965)

47. If you can actually count your money then you are not a really rich man.

Paul Getty (1892-1976) U.S. entrepreneur, oil industry executive and financier. Quoted in The Pendulum Years (Bernard Levin; 1970)

48. I have worked without thinking of myself. This is the largest factor in whatever success I have attained.

Amadeo Giannini (1870-1949) U.S. banker and founder of Bank of America. Quoted in “America’s Banker,” Time 100: Heroes and Inspirations (December 1999)

49. For a writer, success is always temporary, success is only a delayed failure. And it is incomplete.

Graham Greene (1904-91) British novelist. A Sort of Life (1971)

50. I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company and Career (1996), Preface

51. I think making a name for yourself is a wrong objective…I would prefer to look for ways where you can make maximum contribution, and that depends on two things: clearly what your skills are and less clearly, what the activities that you truly enjoy are. By choosing occupations that you can get excited about you are likely to do your best work.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Interview, WebChat Broadcasting System (October 7, 1996)

52. No one is ever in doubt when a business is in overdrive…the whole business begins to hum. Problems cease to be problems and are viewed as opportunities.

John Harvey-Jones (b.1924) British management adviser, author and former chairman of ICI. All Together Now (1994), ch. 2

53. If you do anything, just for the money you don’t succeed.

Barry Hearn (b.1948) British sports promoter. Sunday Telegraph (London) (April 10, 1988)

54. Success is power; because it maketh reputation of wisdom, or good fortune; which makes men either fear him or rely on him.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher and political theorist. Leviathan: or, The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651)

55. Never fear the wants of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) U.S. president. Letter to Peter Carr (June 22, 1792)

56. My luxury is to work, not spend money.

Mehmet Kanbur (b.1948) Turkish entrepreneur. Forbes (October 1999)

57. Paul Keating: “This is the great coming of age of Australia. This is the golden age of economic change.” Interviewer: “How much credit do you take?” Paul Keating: “Oh, a very large part.”

Paul Kaeting (b.1944) Australian former prime minister. Interview on Channel 9, Australian TV (September 18, 1987)

58. To succeed, you have to have confidence in yourself and your product. You have to love what you’re doing and you have to care about your customers.

Mary Kelekis (b.1925) Canadian restaurant owner. Quoted in Relishing Taste and Tradition (Helen Stein; 1997)

59. You gotta think; you gotta work; you gotta know what’s going on. You have to go forward.

Mary Kelekis (b.1925) Canadian restaurant owner. Quoted in Relishing Taste and Tradition (Helen Stein; 1997)

60. The shortest and the best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.

Jean De La Bruyere (1645-96) French essayist and moralist. “Of the Gifts of Fortune,” Characters or Manners of the Age (1688)

61. I think we’ve blown up everything we can blow up.

Sherry Lansing (b.1944) U.S. chairman of Paramount Motion Picture Group. Referring to the failure of high-budget action movies. New York Times (1997)

62. Observing your own and your competitor’s successes and failures makes your inner business voice more sure and vivid.

Estee Lauder (b.1908) U.S. entrepreneur and cosmetics executive. Estee: A Success Story (1985)

63. The conduct of successful business merely consists in doings things in a very simple way, doing them regularly, and never neglecting to do them. Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925) British entrepreneur, philanthropist and cofounder of Unilever. Speech, Liverpool University (1922)

64. It’s a little bit like the landed gentry-you may be sitting on a couple of hundred extremely valuable acres and on paper, you are worth x amount of money, but you can’t spend it.

Wayne Lockner (b.1958) British Internet entrepreneur. Sunday Times (London) (May 2000)

65. To me it is just a relative statement of where I am compared to my peers in business.

Wayne Lockner (b.1958) British Internet entrepreneur. Referring to the paper value of Internet millionaires. Sunday Times (London) (May 2000)

66. By always being optimistic, by having self-confidence…you will succeed.

Orison Swett Marden (1848-1924) U.S. author. The Young Man Entering Business (1903)

67. Brits seem to envy people who are successful, somehow they feel that they did it underhandedly, that it’s not quite right or that they must have got a pot of money from somewhere. Instead of envying they should be saying well done.

Isabel Maxwell (b.1950) British president of CommTouch. Guardian (London) (July 22, 2000)

68. I suffer no slings and arrows. I just sail on. That’s the secret of success in life.

Robert Maxwell (1923-91) British publisher, business executive and politician. Observer (London) (June 24, 1990)

69. When you own one million shares of stock, you don’t have to picket. Carl McCall (b.1935) U.S. former Comptroller of New York State. Referring to the achievements of African Americans in business. “The Players,” Fortune (Eileen Gunn; April 1997)

70.. Perhaps the fundamental principle for success in the digital age is to think network.

Gerry McGovern (b.1962) Irish consultant and author. The Caring Economy (1999)

71. For a long time, people kept saying MTV wouldn’t last, but it has and it is always changing.

Judy McGrath (b.1952) U.S. president of MTV. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)

72. How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.

Shepherd Mead (b.1914) U.S. advertising executive and writer. Book title. How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1952)

73. A restaurant is great if there are people queuing to get into it. It doesn’t matter what the critics say.

David Michels (b.1946) British C.E.O. of Hilton Hotels. Sunday Times (London) (September 2000)

74. My dad…always encouraged me to develop my mind. “With a trained mind you can do anything”…He told me to challenge the world and take advantage of it.

Bernadette Murphy (b.1934) U.S. chief technical analyst of Kimelman & Baird LLC. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)

75. The bottom line that determines success for either a man or a woman is: “Can you make money?” That, in essence makes gender less relevant.

Bernadette Murphy (b.1934) U.S. chief technical analyst of Kimelman & Baird LLC. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)

76. To be successful you definitely have to stand out, no matter who you are. You have to make a noticeable difference.

Bernadette Murphy (b.1934) U.S. chief technical analyst of Kimelman & Baird LLC. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)

77. I’ve always realized that if I’m doing well at business I’m cutting some other bastard’s throat.

Kerry Packer (b.1937) Australian entrepreneur and chairman of Consolidated Press Holdings. Daily Mail (London) (November 1, 1988)

78. A major reason for the superiority of the Japanese is their managerial skill.

Richard Pascale (b.1938) U.S. academic and author. The Art of Japanese Management (co-written with Anthony Athos; 1981)

79. To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Walter Pater (1839-94) British author and critic. Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)

80. Fortune knocks once, but misfortune has much more patience.

Laurence J. Peter (1919-90) Canadian academic and writer. The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (co-written with Raymond Hull; 1969)

81. If at first you don’t succeed, you may be at your level of incompetence.

Laurence J. Peter (1919-90) Canadian academic and writer. The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (co-written with Raymond Hull; 1969)

82. Success is the final place at the level of incompetence.

Laurence J. Peter (1919-90) Canadian academic and writer. The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (co-written with Raymond Hull; 1969)

83. If I’d gotten this much success in Hollywood, I never would have left.

Ronald Reagan (b.1911) U.S. former president and actor. Speech (January 1981)

84.To succeed you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.

Anita Roddick (b.1942) British entrepreneur and founder of The Body Shop. Body and Soul (co-written with Russell Miller; 1991)

85. If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Anita Roddick (b.1942) British entrepreneur and founder of The Body Shop. Body and Soul (co-written with Russell Miller; 1991)

86. The acquisition of wealth is not in the least the only test of success. After a certain amount of wealth has been accumulated, the accumulation of more is of very little consequence from the standpoint of success.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) U.S. president. “Character and Success,” Outlook (March 31, 1900)

87. People who are successful simply want it more than people who are not.

Ian Schrager (b.1948) U.S. entrepreneur. Sunday Times (London) (May 2000)

88. The secret of success is concentration…Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing.

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) South African novelist and social critic. The Story of an African Farm (1883)

89. The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels.

Peter Senge (b.1947) U.S. academic and author. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990)

90. Positive feedback makes the strong grow stronger and the weak grow weaker.

Carl Shapiro (b.1955) U.S. academic and author. Information Rules (co-written with Hal L. Varian; 1999)

91. You only succeed when you are in survival mode.

Reuben Singh (b.1947) British entrepreneur and author. Management Today (September 1999)

92. Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.

John Lancaster Spalding (1840-1916) U.S. writer and clergyman. Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion (1901)

93. If we want to be part of the financial mainstream, more of us have to go out and build these institutions.

Marianne Camille Spraggins (b.1946) U.S. president and C.E.O. of ALICIA, former C.E.O. of WR Lazard. Referring to achievements of African Americans in business. “The Players,” Fortune (Eileen Gunn; April 1997)

94. Only through growth do we become part of the real economic deal.

95. There’s nothing wrong with people trying, but no one has a right to succeed because they think they are clever.

Alan Sugar (b.1947) British entrepreneur, founder and chairman of Amstrad electronics company. Marketing (May 2000)

96. I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Irish writer and satirist. Quoted in Works of Swift (Sir Walter Scott, ed.; 1814)

97. Success, in my view, is the willingness to strive for something you really want.

Fran Tarkenton (b.1940) U.S. football player and management consultant. Quoted in Like Klockwork: The Whimsy, Wit and (sometime) Wisdom of a Key Largo Curmudgeon (Joe Klock; 1995)

98. God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you tr.

Mother Teresa (1910-97) Albanian missionary. Quoted in rolling Stone (December 1992)

99. We believe that a sustainable and successful company can only be built on the solid foundations of economic success. But in the long-term, that economic success depends on improvements in our financial, environmental and social performance.

Jeroen Van Der Veer (b.1947) Dutch Advisory Director of Unilever, vice chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and president of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. Speech, “Earning the License to Grow” (November 26, 1999)

100. It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Gore Vidal (b.1925) U.S. novelist and critic. December 1976. Attrib.

101. You cannot be a success in any business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world…You have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

Thomas J. Watson, SR. (1874-1956) U.S. founder and president of IBM: Colossus in Transition (Robert Sobel; 1981)

102. Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish writer and wit. Letter (1883)

103. A living is made, Mr. Kemper, by selling something that everybody needs at least once a year…And a million is made producing something that everybody needs every day.

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) U.S. playwright and novelist. Spoken by Horace Vandergelder. The Matchmaker (1954), Act 1

104. A good completion takes a long time; a bad completion cannot be changed.

Zhuangzi (369?-286? B.C.) Chinese philosopher. 4^th century B.C. Basic Writings (But=rton Watson, tr.; 1964)