Success Quotes | Tips & Examples
Quotes about success inspire people to persevere and achieve goals. They can be especially effective in business presentations, email signatures, and team memos. Success quotes can even work well in some types of essays.
Reading success quotes from time to time can boost productivity and reignite motivation.
Whether you’re seeking quotes for work, school, or your own personal development, these 20 examples provide helpful insights about how to succeed.
20 motivational quotes for success
- “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” —Robert Collier, self-help author
- “It’s when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist and motivation expert
- “There are three ways to ultimate success. The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” —Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and children’s advocate
- “The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing, and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.” —Fred Rogers
- “Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Revenge of the Tipping Point
- “Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” —Malcolm Gladwell
- “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” —Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker
For example, you can copy/paste the quote in your favorite search engine. Use quotation marks around the quote to improve your search results. If you see mixed results about who is the author, consider using a different quote about success.
- “The Comfort Zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.” —Phil Stutz, psychiatrist and co-author of The Tools
- “The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize that in life, they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson, US astrophysicist and writer
- “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” —Stephen King, best-selling author of horror and suspense novels
- “There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.” —Mel Robbins, podcast host, writer, and motivational speaker
- “Everything of any significance that you will do in your life will be done by your un-instagramable self.” —Tara Westover, author of the memoir Educated
- “Everything good that’s ever happened to me came out of helping others.” —Danny Trejo, film and television actor
- “…in every position that I’ve been in, there have been naysayers who don’t believe I’m qualified or who don’t believe I can do the work. And I feel a special responsibility to prove them wrong.” —Sonia Sotomayer, associate justice of the US Supreme Court
- “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” —Dolly Parton, singer, songwriter, and philanthropist
- “Start doing something? You’ll continue. Why? Because motivation doesn’t cause action. Action causes motivation.” —Neil Pasricha, author of The Happiness Equation
- “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.” —Vince Lombardi, former head coach of the Wisconsin Green Bay packers
- “I do not think there is any quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance.” —John D. Rockefeller, first billionaire in the US
- “You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.” —Les Brown motivational speaker and author of Live Your Dreams
- “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” —Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple
Tips for writing with success quotes
Success quotes are sometimes useful in business reports or essays for Business, Psychology, or Education courses. The following strategies will improve the impact of any success quotes you’re using in formal writing:
- Introduce the success quote with a signal phrase that includes the speaker’s name (e.g., “According to Neil Pasricha” or “Steve Jobs explained”). If the signal phrase ends with a verb, place a comma between the verb and the quote.
- Use quotation marks to show where the quote begins and ends.
- Place the quote’s end punctuation (e.g., a period) before the final quotation marks unless you’re using parenthetical citations. In that case, place the parentheses between the quote and the sentence’s end punctuation.
- For school assignments, always follow your instructor’s citation requirements by consulting an APA citation guide, MLA citation guide, or similar.
QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker and Citation Generator are also here to help you format success quotes correctly.
Motivational speaker Mel Robbins (2011) described the need for exploration and growth in a TEDx talk:
Block quotes like this example are the only time when a parenthetical citation should go after the quote’s final period. The quote is also indented but not in quotation marks.
Frequently asked questions about success quotes
- What are some famous quotes about success?
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Some famous quotes about success include the following:
“Don’t count the days. Make the days count.” —Muhammad Ali, professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist
“There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” —Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker
“The road to success is always under construction.” —Lily Tomlin, winner of seven Emmy Awards and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
“Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Revenge of the Tipping Point
When you’re using success quotes in workplace or school writing, QuillBot’s free Grammar Checker and Citation Generator can help you avoid errors.
- Are quotes appropriate in academic writing?
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Quotes are a valuable tool for enhancing your argument and adding additional support for your claims. However, it is important to avoid overusing quotes, as this can cause your own voice to be lost.
When you use quotes in academic writing, accompany them with analysis and explanation, and do not include quotes for information that you can present in your own words.
Our Word Counter, Paraphraser, and article summarizer tools can help improve your academic writing and avoid errors.
- What is a synonym for achieve success?
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Another way to say “achieve success” is “reach success” (e.g., “I hope to reach success in this company”).
“Accomplish,” “attain,” and “fulfill” are other achieve synonyms that can be used, depending on the context of the sentence.
Try QuillBot’s sentence rewriter to find the right tone and vocabulary that’ll best suit your audience.
- What is the difference between quoting and paraphrasing?
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A quote is a direct copy of another person’s words and must be enclosed in quotation marks.
Paraphrasing is a summary or rephrasing of another person’s words without using the exact language.
Both quoted and paraphrased material must be accompanied by a citation to avoid plagiarism.
