175 Inspiring Quotes From Leaders To Help You Achieve Your Dreams

"Success" can mean different things to different people. However, what is common to all accomplishments is the need to take action and even some risks.

The dreams in our heads will just stay there unless we are willing to step out and work toward achievement. To give ourselves a little push, it may take some wise words from successful leaders. There are so many quotes about successthat are both inspiring and motivating.

If you find yourself lacking the initiative or have a fear of failure , it would be good to read through some quotes from successful people—like Dale Carnegie, Bill Gates , Winston Churchill , Abraham Lincoln and more—and gain confidence . When someone has already achieved significant goals, their words and experiences can be encouraging to others.

Below, we've picked out our favorite 175 quotes about prospering that offer plenty of inspiration. We hope you enjoy!

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Best Success Quotes

1. "Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts." — Winston Churchill

2. "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." — Dale Carnegie

3. "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." — Mister Rogers

4. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." — Herman Melville

5. "Every accomplishment starts with a decision to try." — John F. Kennedy

6. "The only thing standing between you and outrageous success is continuous progress." — Dan Waldschmidt

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. "Action is the foundational key to all success." — Pablo Picasso

9. "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." — Abraham Lincoln

10. "Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure." — Confucius

11. "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." — Edward Everett Hale

12. "If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself." — Henry Ford

13. "Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit." — Conrad Hilton

14. "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

15. "The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself." — Mark Caine

16. "Success breeds success." — Mia Hamm

17. "The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore." — Cyril Connolly

18. "All men's gains are the fruit of venturing." — Herodotus

19. "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." — Johann Sebastian Bach

20. "The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." — Vince Lombardi

Quotes About Success and Achievement

21. "I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder

22. "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable." — John Wooden

23. "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty." — Winston Churchill

24. "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." — Vernon Sanders Law

25. "When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too." — Paulo Coelho

26. "Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were." — David Rockefeller

27. "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." — Dale Carnegie

28. "Success is dependent on effort." — Sophocles

29. "Success is falling nine times and getting up ten." — Jon Bon Jovi

30. "A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." — David Brinkley

31. "Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you." — Marilyn Monroe

32. "However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at." — Stephen Hawking

33. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." — Winston Churchill

34. "Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough." — Og Mandino

35. "It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get back up." — Vince Lombardi

36. "True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful." — Paul Sweeney

37. "The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda." — John C. Maxwell

38. "Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready." — Johnny Carson

39. "Failure is success in progress." — Albert Einstein

40. "If you have no critics, you'll likely have no success." — Malcolm X

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Quotes About Success and Happiness

41. "The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs, one step at a time." — Joe Girard

42. "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing–that's why we recommend it daily." — Zig Ziglar

43. "It is never too late to be what you might have been." — George Eliot

44. "I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions." — Stephen R. Covey

45. "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes." — William James

46. "The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way." — Robert Kiyosaki

47. "There is little success where there is little laughter." — Andrew Carnegie

48. "To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart." — Thomas J. Watson

49. "What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose." — Margaret Thatcher

50. "The real secret of success is enthusiasm." — Walter Chrysler

51. "Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day." — Jim Rohn

52. "Failure is success if we learn from it." — Malcolm Forbes

53. "Eighty percent of success is showing up." — Woody Allen

54. "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." — Henry David Thoreau

55. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." — Ayn Rand

56. "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." — Steve Jobs

57. "The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration, then more practice and more concentration." — Babe Didrikson Zaharias

58. "Success doesn't come from what you do occasionally; it comes from what you do consistently." — Marie Forleo

59. "The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity." — Ayn Rand

60. "Nothing succeeds like success." — Alexandre Dumas

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Motivational Quotes About Success

61. "You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind. To begin, begin." — Gordon B. Hinckley

62. "One of the differences between some successful and unsuccessful people is that one group is full of doers, while the other is full of wishers." — Edmond Mbiaka

63. "When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…" — Marcus Aurelius

64. "Don't settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had." — Angela Bassett

65. "If you believe something needs to exist, if it's something you want to use yourself, don't let anyone ever stop you from doing it." — Tobias Lütke

66. "Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture." — Lydia M. Child

67. "Frustration, although quite painful at times, is a very positive and essential part of success." — Bo Bennett

68. "The secret to success is sincerity." — Jean Giradoux

69. "They succeed because they think they can." — Virgil

70. "You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream." — Michael Dell

71. "It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win the lifelong race." — Robert W. Service

72. "In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd." — Miguel de Cervantes

73. "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will." — Vince Lombardi Jr.

74. "The secret to success is to do the common thing uncommonly well." — John D. Rockefeller Jr.

75. "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out." — Robert Collier

76. "Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success." — Scott Adams

77. "Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own." — Michelle Obama

78. "When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor." — Elon Musk

79. "Success is that old ABC : ability, breaks and courage." — Charles Luckman

80. "One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." — Benjamin Disraeli

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Short Success Quotes

81. "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." — Warren Buffet

82. "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." — Albert Einstein

83. "If you can't yet do great things, do small things in a great way." — Napoleon Hill

84. "If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse." — Jim Rohn

85. "Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm." — Abraham Lincoln

86. "If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you'll never become that person." — Clayton M. Christensen

87. "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse." — Florence Nightingale

88. "Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown." — Ross Perot

89. "Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." — George Edward Woodberry

90. "Much effort, much prosperity." — Euripides

91. "Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go." — William Feather

92. "Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: My strength lies solely in my tenacity." — Louis Pasteur

93. "Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result." — Oscar Wilde

94. "People fall forward to success." — Mary Kay Ash

95. "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." — John D. Rockefeller

96. "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." — James Cameron

97. "To be successful, you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can't just accept the ones you like." — Mike Gafka

98. "There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen." — Jim Lovell

99. "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor." — Truman Capote

100. "People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be." — Harvey MacKay

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Inspirational Quotes About Success

101. "Live out of your imagination, not your history." — Stephen Covey

102. "The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it." — Epicurus

103. "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." — Arthur C. Clarke

104. "A year from now, you will wish you had started today." — Unknown

105. "When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece." — John Ruskin

106. "Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds." — Orison Swett Marden

107. "Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally." — David Frost

108. "In order to succeed, you must fail so that you know what not to do the next time." — Anthony J. D'Angelo

109. "Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace." — Mike Ditka

110. "Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek." — Mario Andretti

111. "I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." — Michael Jordan

112. "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." — Booker T. Washington

113. "If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen." — Conan O'Brien

114. "Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better." — Jim Rohn

115. "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." — Thomas Jefferson

116. "Success isn't overnight. It's when every day you get a little better than the day before. It all adds up." — Dwayne Johnson

117. "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." — Alexander Graham Bell

118. "A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success." — Joyce Brothers

119. "My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success." — Isaac Newton

120. "The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." — Theodore Roosevelt

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Famous Quotes About Success

121. "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." — Erica Jong

122. "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." —  Henry Ford

123. "It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." — Bill Gates

124. "I can't tell you how many times I've been given a 'no.' Only to find that a better, brighter, bigger yes was right around the corner." — Arlan Hamilton

125. "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." — Abraham Lincoln

126. "Success is where preparation and opportunity meet." — Bobby Unser

127. "Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and, most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do." — Pele

128. "A little more persistence, a little more effort and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success." — Elbert Hubbard

129. "The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." — Thomas Edison

130. "Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come." — Dwayne Johnson

131. "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence ." — Mark Twain

132. "You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it." — Oprah Winfrey

133. "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." — Zig Ziglar

134. "The road to success is always under construction." — Lily Tomlin

135. "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right." — Henry Ford

136. "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." — Thomas Edison

137. "Work hard in silence; let your success be your noise." — Frank Ocean

138. "To follow, without halt, one aim: That's the secret of success." — Anna Pavlova

139. "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure." — Colin Powell

140. "Success isn't about the end result. It's about what you learn along the way." — Vera Wang

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Powerful Success Quotes

141. "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." — Arthur Ashe

142. "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." — Ariana Huffington

143. "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." — Babe Ruth

144. "Never let success get to your head and never let failure get to your heart." — Drake

145. "It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

146. "Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration." — Evan Esar

147. "Success is not the absence of failure; it's persistence through failure." — Aisha Tyler

148. "The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." — Bruce Feirstein

149. "Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time." — George Bernard Shaw

150. "There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: Those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed." — Ray Goforth

151. "Success is the child of audacity." — Benjamin Disraeli

152. "There is no success without hardship." — Sophocles

153. "Impatience never commanded success." — Edwin H. Chapin

154. "The best revenge is massive success." — Frank Sinatra

155. "Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying." — W. Clement Stone

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Quotes About Success and Hard Work

156. "Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." — Earl Nightingale

157. "Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know." — Pema Chodron

158. "Try not to become a person of success, but rather, try to become a person of value." — Albert Einstein

159. "Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success." — Napoleon Hill

160. "Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." — George S. Patton

161. "The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus." — Bruce Lee

162. "There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs." — Zig Ziglar

163. "Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness." — Napoleon Hill

164. "Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose." — G.K. Nielson

165. "Positive action combined with positive thinking results in success." — Shiv Khera

166. "For success, attitude is equally as important as ability." — Harry F. Banks

167. "There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream or desire a reality." — Anthony Robbins

168. "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." — Vidal Sassoon

169. "Success is focusing the full power of all you are on what you have a burning desire to achieve." — Wilfred Peterson

170. "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." — C.S. Lewis

171. "Energy and persistence conquer all things." — Benjamin Franklin

172. "In most things, success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed." — Montesquieu

173. "Success is never accidental." — Jack Dorsey

174. "Fortune befriends the bold." — Emily Dickinson

175. "All of our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." — Walt Disney

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This story was originally published by Parade on Feb 1, 2024, where it first appeared in the Life section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.