Early Success Quotes & Sayings

How do entrepreneurs survive their early failures? They don't view their failures as failures - they view these experiences as feedback, and a prelude to future success. — Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution

For me, success is, during this early pilgrimage, to leave the woodpile a little higher than I found it. — Paul Harvey

Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how. — Chris Hadfield

For a guy who used to steal watches on the streets of Chandni Chowk for kicks, I surely think my success at the age of 22 was pretty early! — Akshay Kumar

The last use of the F-word is my favorite because it's positive and constructive. It sets the stage for honest and empathetic negotiation. Here's how I use it: Early on in a negotiation, I say, "I want you to feel like you are being treated fairly at all times. So please stop me at any time if you feel I'm being unfair, and we'll address it." It's simple and clear and sets me up as an honest dealer. With that statement, I let people know it is okay to use that word with me if they use it honestly. As a negotiator, you should strive for a reputation of being fair. Your reputation precedes you. Let it precede you in a way that paves success. — Chris Voss

Am I coasting on some early success? Yeah. It was a good lucky break for me. But I would rather earn my way back again than simply conform to what people are expecting. — Liz Phair

I think it's a great handicap to be discovered at an early age. I didn't have that burden of early success. I had the much more livable and durable career where success comes late, and comes slowly, and you ease into it. So by the time it comes, you're ready to deal with it. — Philip Glass

Wherever you are - it's too early to draw a conclusion. You may be down, but you're not done. Today's defeat could be tomorrow's gold. — Joe Jordan

You can clear the land, plow the field, spread the fertilizer, and plant the corn. But you cannot make it rain. You cannot prevent an early frost. You cannot determine exactly what will happen in your life. The rain may or may not fall, but one thing is certain: you will get a harvest only if you planted something in the field. It's important to do everything in our power to ensure our success, but we also need to let the universe take its course. — Melody Beattie

A big success can be very confusing if it comes too early in your life. When you are young, you are more vulnerable to vanity. I was 36 when I wrote The Shadow of the Wind and the success of it was very gradual. If you have this kind of success straight off, I think there is a danger you can become an idiot, because you don't have a perspective. It hasn't changed me a lot. I fly first class now. But those things don't change you. If I am pretentious, I was before, I haven't changed. The only thing is, I am less anxious now. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think the other thing that shaped me a little bit is that I really didn't have any success in music until my early to mid-30s. — Craig Finn

I have always believed in the power of collaboration. Early on in my professional career, I realized that you can't develop all the competencies you need fast enough on your own. Furthermore, if you don't collaborate, your ideas will be limited to your own abilities. As a result, you will not be able to serve your clientele and thus can't achieve the anticipated impact. — Vishwas Chavan

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The living are always trying to find the shortcuts to happiness in life. But look what happens when someone achieves premature success: they bloom too early and spend the rest of their lives dying....Success without struggle warps a person. — Susan Wells Bennett

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong. — Carl Sagan

Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success. — Leigh Mitchell Hodges

All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war. — Kenneth Clark

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc. — Charlie Munger

Early is a priceless timepiece owned by the successful. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

The learning person looks forward to failure or mistakes. The worst problem in leadership is basically early success. — Warren G. Bennis

Rise early. Write. Disappoint your sons. Read the newspaper. Go to bed early. Success. — Arthur Miller

If you can't fail then how can you possible develop as a communicator or as a creator of anything? We are locked into a deeply unhealthy notion that somehow you've got to succeed all the time. An appalling notion. Any painter or writer will tell you that that is no way to proceed. One of the things that will kill off a decent actor, especially a young actor early on and they will never recover from it, is too much success. It's disastrous. You stop being criticized, therefore you stop challenging yourself. You then can't afford to fail because there's too far to fall. — Emma Thompson

Developing a prototype early is the number one goal for our designers, or anyone else who has an idea, for that matter. We don't trust it until we can see it and feel it. — Win Ng

Everybody achieves success in life - a blessed few early in their careers, the rest of us when we lower our standards — Dag Ekeberg

In the third section, A Discussion, people discuss what The Story meant to them and how they are going to use it in their work and in their lives. Some readers of this book's early manuscript preferred to stop at the end of The Story, without reading further, and interpret its meaning for themselves. Others enjoyed reading A Discussion that follows because it stimulated their thinking about how they might apply what they'd learned to their own situation. Everyone knows that not all change is good or even necessary. But in a world that is constantly changing, it is to our advantage to learn how to adapt and enjoy something better. In any case, I hope each time you re-read Who Moved My Cheese? you will find something new and useful in the brief story, as I do, and that it will help you deal with change and bring you success, whatever you decide success is for you. I hope you enjoy what you discover, and I wish you well. — Spencer Johnson

I have always understood the unbelieving look in the eyes of those whom success touches early - it is a look half fearful, as though the dream were still in the process of being dreamed and to move or to speak would shatter it. — Moss Hart

The fittest, not the richest, make the most enviable mark. Pampered sons of plutocrats may shine for a time in society, but not in the world of affairs and of service unless they rip off their coats and get to work early and stay late. To be born with a golden spoon in the mouth is more of a handicap than a help in attaining worthwhile success in this age. — B.C. Forbes

Our early success, blessing that it was, made us complacent and we weren't sufficiently afraid of what came next. Sometimes having a little fear early saves one from experiencing a big fear later on. [Al Gleeson in THE HALCYON DISLOCATION] — Peter Kazmaier

I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you. — Harrison Ford

Find your way early, on the road of life. For the way is too long to be struggling, and far too short to be waiting. — Anthony Liccione

To me, the capacity to earn money has never been a measurement of success. It is my belief that people must develop a philosophy early in life which permits them to have as much pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction now as is possible without injuring themselves or others. Money can help to do this, but it is not and must not become the sole aim of a person's existence. We all know what happened to King Midas. — Rudy Vallee

Goods and possessions are no gain in his eyes. He stays far from wealth and honor. Long life is no ground for joy, nor early death for sorrow. Success is not for him to be pround of, failure is no shame. Had he all the world's power he would not hold it as his own. If he conquered everything he would not take it to himself. His glory is in knowing that all things come together in One and life and death are equal. — Zhuangzi

She ought to have recognized love's scarcity early on. If success were gold, lying in rivers, love was a diamond, buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth and unrecognizable in its natural form. — Kristin Hannah

It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying. — Benedict Cumberbatch

It is worthy to note, that the early popularity of Washington was not the result of brilliant achievement nor signal success; on the contrary, it rose among trials and reverses, and may almost be said to have been the fruit of defeat. — Washington Irving

You keep your followers confused when you begin very well and give up too early ... Suspense is useful in movies, but useless when writing your success stories! — Israelmore Ayivor

People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude that ability, although hereditary, is improved by an early measure of adversity and improved again by a later measure of success. — C. Northcote Parkinson

There is asymmetry. Those who die do so very early in the game, while those who live go on living very long. Whenever there is asymmetry in outcomes, the average survival has nothing to do with the median survival. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a greater moral hazard than an early failure. — Bill Vaughan

If I'd had a great level of success early on, who knows how I would have responded. I might have been a complete jerk. — Steve Carell

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success. — William Tecumseh Sherman

We learn early on that, in order to be a winner, you have to believe in yourself. You have to have the confidence to make things happen. And you have to have personal pride. — Alan Cohen

Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time. — Ronald Reagan

October 1976 was the penultimate performance of Bench's Hall of Fame career. All the early success and awards and accolades thrown in his direction had prepared him for this moment - when the Big Red Machine became a dynasty by defending it's World Championship from the season before. — Tucker Elliot

We focus a lot on culture specifically at Twitter because of this spotlight, and of the fact that we don't want to end up like the child actor who found success early and grew up all weird and freaky. — Biz Stone

Rockefeller once explained the secret of success. 'Get up early, work late - and strike oil.' — Joey Adams

Breast cancer deaths in America have been declining for more than a decade. Much of that success is due to early detection and better treatments for women. I strongly encourage women to get a mammogram. — Larry Craig

I sang in the coffee houses of the country in the early '60s with no idea of success in terms of records or television. I just thought I was a storyteller. I didn't even think of myself as a singer. — Judy Collins

And I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn't mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something
David Foster Wallace — David Lipsky

Let's recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower but also of chance and early upbringing, and that compassion isn't a sign of weakness but a mark of civilization. — Nicholas D. Kristof

We have made some great strides in terms of treating various types of cancer with early detection. The success rate of recovery for many people today is better than it was a decade or two ago so we can't give up. Yes, we would all love a quick "cure all" but that is not reality. Until then, we all are in this together and we have to keep working towards more progress! — Eva LaRue

My father had to flee from what is today Pakistan when he was a child, and he became a manager at IBM, and any item of consumption he would acquire was a direct measurement of his success in life. But that same equation wasn't going to work for me - I was quite clear about that in my early teens. — Tino Sehgal

He sees our lineal success as a fortunate fluke: "Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay." Gould — Bill Bryson

Unless you're in an early seventies-era Eagles cover band, a founding member of a religious cult, or sleeping under a bridge in Seattle, lose the beard and get a haircut. Power doesn't have time for any form of hirsute hipster self expression. — Ari Gold

I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian - or just being in show business, is really more accurate. — Steve Martin

Failure promotes success only if you actually take the time to analyze your mistakes.." "Failure has to be separated from fault, and for many people that requires a bit of deprogramming, as we learn early on that they are one and the same." "In this framework, intention is extremely important. — Amanda Lang

If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while ... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

I've always had money because of my early success with Cream, so I tell young musicians to aim to write their own material, because owning the composition rights makes a very big difference. — Jack Bruce

As Capp would remember, his paternal grandfather's early years in the store were characterized by success and expansion - until, that is, he discovered the works of Alexandre Dumas. To that point, he'd read virtually nothing but the Talmud, but he quickly determined that the swashbuckling adventures described in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and other Dumas novels were much more exciting. He was hooked. Capp recalled seeing a photograph of his grandfather, cutting quite the figure with his long, Russian-style hair and beard, seated outside his store, reading Dumas rather than waiting on customers. He went out of business, his store purchased by creditors. — Denis Kitchen

I suppose partially because of the success of the early movies and things like that, I began to realize, that children do look up to you in some way, and there is a responsibility for how you behave with them. I know that it's important to make them feel very valuable, not to talk down to them. — Julie Andrews

We all thrive to achieve something. Few fails early; many wins late. Why is struggle compared when success is overrated? — Bhavik Sarkhedi

Farewell to Kentucky and our agreeable vices. We go to bed early, but because of whiskey seldom with a clear head. We are fond of string beans and thin slices of salty ham. When I left home my brother said: It will be wonderful if you make a success of life, then you can follow the races. Farewell — Elizabeth Hardwick

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Who wants to read about success? It is the early struggle which makes a good story. — Katherine Anne Porter

Do not fall into this trap of early success. Regardless of your current skill level, it is crucial that you continue to work hard so that you will continue to improve. Only by continuing to improve will you give yourself the opportunity to reach your potential in your sport. — Jennifer L. Etnier

If you destroy the foundations of anything, the structure will collapse. If you want to destroy any building, you are guaranteed early success if you destroy the foundations. — Ken Ham

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him
his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition
no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him
neither name nor money to bequeath
a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I look around at people who had success so early and then didn't know what to do with themselves. — Casey Nicholaw

Early to bed and early to work might get you a success, but late to bed and early to work will get you a glory. — Amit Kalantri

I think the most important reason for our success is that very early in our quest into globalisation, we invested in people - and we have done that consistently and particularly in the service business. — Azim Premji

When I was an actor, I worked with lots of men who had a bit of success early on, who were very good looking, who suddenly made a bit of money and who felt no embarrassment - and nor should they have done - about having a good time. — David Nicholls

People in their early 20s are not often considered the target demographic for new plays; musicals have had much more success in exploring that coming-of-age period of life. — Paul Downs Colaizzo

The theory I'm putting forward here is that storytelling is a genetic characteristic in the sense that early human hunters who were able to organize events into stories were more successful than hunters who weren't - and this success translated directly into reproductive success. In other words, hunters who were storytellers tended to be better represented in the gene pool than hunters who weren't, which (incidentally) accounts for the fact that storytelling isn't just found here and there among human cultures, it's found universally. — Daniel Quinn

If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitous man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may-no matter how generous and good his nature- one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so. — Charles Dickens

We ought also to learn, beginning early, that we don't always succeed. A good batting average in baseball is .300; a good batting average in life is a great deal lower than that. Life holds many more defeats than victories for all of us. Shouldn't we get used to this early? We should learn, too, to aim higher than we think we can hit. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?" What we fail to do today, we, or someone, may do tomorrow. Our failure may pave the way for someone else's success. — Anonymous

A championship contender in the early twentieth century needed charisma and a knack for cultivating sponsorship, and Rubinstein was the epitome of the shy and unsocial chess player. Now matter how great his chess skills, he lacked the people skills to be a self-promoter and fund-raiser. — Garry Kasparov

You want to achieve your dreams early, right? I know of only one back door; that's HARDWORK. Only few people use that entrance so the advantage is that there is no or less traffic there! — Israelmore Ayivor

This isolation was key to Farber's early success. Insulated from the spotlights of public scrutiny, he worked on a small, obscure piece of the puzzle. Leukemia was an orphan disease, abandoned by internists, who had no drugs to offer for it, and by surgeons, who could not possibly operate on blood. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The key to success in life is getting up early. — Jenni Rivera

Jonathan Green had a firm handshake, clear eyes, and a jawline not dissimilar to Dudley Do-Right's. He was in his early sixties, with graying hair, a beach-club tan, and a voice that was rich and comforting. A minister's voice. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a sincerity in his eyes that put you at ease. Jonathan Green was reputed to be one of the top five criminal defense attorneys in America, with a success rate in high-profile criminal defense cases of one hundred percent. Like Elliot Truly, Jonathan Green was wearing an impeccably tailored blue Armani suit. So were the lesser attorneys. Maybe they got a bulk discount. I was wearing impeccably tailored black Gap jeans, a linen aloha shirt, and white Reebok sneakers. Green said, Did Elliot explain why we wanted to see you? — Robert Crais

How much time and energy should companies invest in infrastructure and planning early on in anticipation of success? Spend too much and you waste precious time that could have been spent learning. Spend too little and you may fail to take advantage of early success and cede market leadership to a fast follower. — Eric Ries

It must be noted however, that there were other Europeans that travelled to other parts of the earth, but because they did not take with them the same Protestant culture of dignity of labour, they did not record the same level of success, growth and development as the early Protestant immigrants had done. — Sunday Adelaja

My childhood, adolescence and high school days are unusually important. If there has ever been a time that I developed a uniqueness and sense of humor and the ability to organize, it was then. In those early days, I developed the skills that gave me a certain degree of success in American politics. — Lee Atwater

I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always dangerous. — Agatha Christie

The reason people fail to reach their goals is because they give up too early. They don't understand that most successes are built upon foundations of multiple attempts. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well. — Charles Bukowski

Success doesn't know these things about cold or early or tired. It just knows if you showed up or not. — Greg Plitt

As early as 1999, Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. ("Bud") Selig had taken to calling the Oakland A's success "an aberration," but that was less an explanation than an excuse not to grapple with the question: how'd they do it? What was their secret? — Michael Lewis

The wolf reintroduction has gone so well that, somewhat ironically, the wolves are now threatened by their own success. Indeed, virtually all the conditions for strong public support that were evident in the early years of the program remain intact. The scientific and economic studies cited above support the original predictions of benefits, and agency officials remain committed to the policy. Yet some political actors remain hostile to the program. As NPS management assistant Sacklin said, "No amount of good science will stop a politician. — William R. Lowry

I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes. — John Lescroart

As an old-time small-town merchant, I can tell you that nobody has more love for the heyday of the smalltown retailing era than I do. That's one of the reasons we chose to put our little Wal-Mart museum on the square in Bentonville. It's in the old Walton's Five and Dime building, and it tries to capture a little bit of the old dime store feel. But I can also tell you this: if we had gotten smug about our early success, and said, "Well, we're the best merchant in town," and just kept doing everything exactly the way we were doing it, somebody else would have come along and given our customers what they wanted, and we would be out of business today. — Sam Walton

Early identification of your God-given abilities helps you to become happier and successful earlier in life. — Maxine Phillips

There are many different experiences that cause girls to relinquish their true selves. In early adolescence girls learn how important appearance is in defining social acceptability. Attractiveness is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for girls' success. This is an old, old problem. Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships because she was a hard worker. Juliet wasn't loved for her math ability. — Mary Pipher

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early. — Anthony Trollope

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning. — Jason Bateman

In the early days, I had everything to prove. A very working class lad with a burning ambition. A very crude way of measuring success is how much you are worth. — John Caudwell

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). — Harold Rosenberg

Too many people today on Wall Street go for the quick
buck at the expense of their reputation and client satisfaction, the
rationale being "let's make the money while we can and retire early
in the sun." For me, this is not a sprint but a marathon, besides the
fact that, in my definition, overnight success is 15 years. Anyone who
does not understand the basic tenets of this philosophy is not someone
I can or will do business with. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Now, today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some children are enrolled in mediocre programs. And some are wasting away their most formative years in bad programs ... That's why I'm issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you'll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact. — Barack Obama

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success. — Herbert Read