How Successful People Think Quotes & Sayings

Barry Bonds is outspoken. I think that the people of Pittsburgh felt, it's a syndrome of you've got to apologize for being successful if you're successful (as well as) black and outspoken. — Dave Parker

There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men ... these things are about nothing; they are about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey ... I really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back. — G.K. Chesterton

One universally common trait in ultra successful people (including the ones with ADHD!) is the ability to consistently take action in a specific direction. This has three components: 1) Direction 2) SMART goals 3) Consistency — Grant Weherley

I'm young. You can't just sit there and be satisfied. People are like, "You've got all these number ones!" "Yeah ... what else?" It all translates into money, and that's how people think of being successful, but my success, I feel like, is credit - credit for a good job. I haven't even gotten a Grammy, yet I've already decided I want an Emmy. — Ester Dean

I dont only want to Be successful in life. I also want to Live a Life that the people will remember for a Better tomorrow — Antoni Omeihe

You should focus relentlessly on something you're good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future. For the startup world, this means you should not necessarily start your own company, even if you are extraordinarily talented. If anything, too many people are starting their own companies today. People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it's growing fast. The power law means that differences between companies will dwarf the differences in roles inside companies. You could have 100% of the equity if you fully fund your own venture, but if it fails you'll have 100% of nothing. Owning just 0.01% of Google, by contrast, is incredibly valuable (more than $35 million as of this writing). — Peter Thiel

Now, success is not the result of making money; making money is the result of success - and success is in direct proportion to our service. Most people have this law backwards. They believe that you're successful if you earn a lot of money. The truth is that you can only earn money after you're successful. — Earl Nightingale

There are really only three kinds of people. Those who don't succeed, those who achieve success temporarily, and those who become and remain successful. Character is the only way to sustain success. — John C. Maxwell

Those who broadcast your messy failures are the same people who will telecast your mass fortunes. But this can only happen when you accept your responsibility to turn your life around! — Israelmore Ayivor

This is a group playing together and that's the only way, I feel, this play can be successful and moving. I am so lucky to have the people that are in it. When I came here I didn't know who was going to be in the play. — Gavin MacLeod

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. — Steve Harvey

What's the difference between people who feel successful and people who feel they've failed? The answer is mindset: If you learn and grow from failure, suddenly it becomes a personal asset. People who are successful don't want instant gratification. They don't think about hitting a point of success and never working again. Instead they ask, How do I improve myself and continue to do that consistently over time? — Eben Pagan

I found every single successful person I've ever spoken to had a turning point. The turning point was when they made a clear, specific unequivocal decision that they were going to achieve success. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50, and most people never make it at all. — Brian Tracy

I think personality correction is necessary for successful men, like prime ministers, businessmen, politicians ... it's essential that one should keep an eye on one's own personality. You must have seen people in politics who become chief ministers and then pass into oblivion - how egotistical they became and how pathetic they look. — Dilip Kumar

Most people think the more money, luxury or fame they have, the more successful they are; but I think that the true sign of success depends on how many positive emotions they experience each day. — Maddy Malhotra

One of the first things successful people realize is the old adage, "If it is to be, it is up to me." That is, for you, the fact that your success and your course is up to you. This doesn't mean that you do it all alone. It simply means that you take responsibility for your life and your career. — Jim Rohn

Money is not my definition of success; inspiring people is the definition of success. — Kanye West

People "at the top" are eager to attribute their position to their own intellect, savvy, and hard work. The reality is much more complicated. Personal connections, family environment, and what appears to be plain luck determine how successful a person is. We are the product of three things- genetics, environment, and our personal choices- but two of these three factors we have no power over. We are not nearly as responsible for our success as our popular views of God and reality lead us to think. — Timothy Keller

There are multiple ways to be externally focused that are very successful. You can be customer-focused or competitor-focused. Some people are internally focused, and if they reach critical mass, they can tip the whole company. — Jeff Bezos

Can you remember, Acte ... how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again. — Lion Feuchtwanger

On the path to successful action, we will fail - possibly many times. And that's okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn't come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting - because they've taken failure the wrong way. — Ryan Holiday

The one common denominator of all successful people is their hunger to push through their fears. — Tony Robbins

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be. — Randy Alcorn

Even the most daring and accomplished people have undergone tremendous difficulty. In fact, the more successful they became, the more they attributed their success to the lessons learned during their most difficult times. Adversity is our teacher. When we view adversity as a guide towards greater inner growth, we will then learn to accept the wisdom our soul came into this life to learn. — Barbara Rose

I don't have regret about things I've done that are successful or not successful or what people perceive or don't know or whatever. I just know for me it had to be the right choice at the time. Sometimes that choice is just about getting a job. — Mark Harmon

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid. — Branford Marsalis

One problem people have is that they lie to themselves. You may think you are more talented then the next guy. Which is exactly what the next guy thinks as well. Rarely is talent enough. You have to find ways to make yourself stand out. You do so by playing to your strengths and making people aware of those strengths. Always remember that no matter how many times you get shot down, you will get smarter, better and you only have to be right once to be successful. — Mark Cuban

But-when you really think about it-that emotional support only applies to the experience of living in public. We don't have ways to quantify ideas like "amazing" or "successful" or "lovable" without the feedback of an audience. Nobody sits by himself in an empty room and thinks "I'm amazing." It's impossible to imagine how that would work. But being "amazing" is supposed to be what life is about. As a result, the windows of time people spend by themselves become these meaningless experiences that don't really count. It's filler. They're deleted scenes. pg 156 — Chuck Klosterman

I think I always was a bit of a class clown, but I don't know how successful I was at that. I always think, when I read about people being class clowns, I imagine them being actually very funny, and I don't know that I was. But I tried to be, I think. — Chris Parnell

Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day. — Arthur Miller

You have to have the service mentality in the sense that you subjugate your own ego, and you subjugate a large part of your own life to really helping other people, being successful on their behalf. — Herb Kelleher

I know people who are incredibly successful who still dress the way they did when they were 18, just because they still think that's how they look good. — Noah Baumbach

I think there's a huge lack of political artists in America, and I think it really speaks to our consumeristic culture and how people are driven to be financially successful here. It's such a shame that we don't have people who are more inspired than that. — Corin Tucker

Think of the most successful people that you personally know. Think about how they live life. Do they wait for opportunities to come to them or do they go out and take what they want? I guarantee that they take what they want. I guarantee they take action on ideas. I guarantee they take initiative towards life day after day after day. And you know what? It works, regardless of the situation. — Dave Rogenmoser

People say movies are escapist, just entertainment, but I think that's only an alibi, a way of hiding from ourselves just how effective what we do actually is. When something is in a movie, and especially when something is in a particularly successful film, its language, its grammar, is added into the grammar of possible reality. The banal fact that sharks are terrifying was cemented into our cultural imagination after Jaws. We have no idea how much power we have and absolutely no idea how to use it. It's like we invent people's dreams. — Jacob Wren

Too many people, right now are playing it small. If you want to be SUCCESSFUL, Live BIG, Think BIG, & make every day of your life COUNT! — Joel Brown

If you want to live and you want to prosper, you've got to be ambitious. You've got to be ready to sacrifice leisure and pleasure, and you've got to plan ahead. I was forty years old before I had any money at all. But these things don't happen overnight. Now, how many people are there who will wait that long to be successful, and work all the time? Not very many. Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm a bloody fool. But I don't think I am. — Roy Thomson

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

And indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system, so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. — Virginia Woolf

I cannot bear successful people who are miserable. — Elton John

I'm glad that young black people are successful with the music. I'm not a hater. — DMX

The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not - as we flatteringly think - how lazy they are, but how hard they work. — Alain De Botton

People's lives are already cut out for them, and it's decided whether they will be successful or not. — Lee Eun-sang

The most successful people are those who are good at plan B. — James A. Yorke

Either way, we both agree that ambivalence is a key to success. I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about your work but not the result. You have to care about how good you and how good you feel, but now about how good people think you are or how good people think you look I realize this is extremely difficult. I am not saying I am particularly good at it. I'm like you. Or maybe you'er better at this and I am. You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, 'I made it!' You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else's. It doesn't matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG. — Amy Poehler

Too many people are living below their privileges. It's because their vision has been clouded by past mistakes, disappointments, or how they were raised. They don't feel like royalty. They don't think they could be successful and really accomplish what God has put in their hearts. But I believe today, as I'm speaking faith into you, something is happening on the inside. — Joel Osteen

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius. — Robert Green Ingersoll

A truly successful life is one filled with friends so it helps if people like being around you. If you suspect they don't, have a think about how strongly you exhibit 'likeable' qualities such as listening well, being trustworthy, kind, generous, compassionate, fun, positive and unselfish. The good news is that you can learn such qualities even if they don't come naturally to you. — Nigel Cumberland

Successful politicians are people who know how to make us think well of them without our realizing that that's what they're doing; they know how to make us admire and trust them. — Barton Swaim

Hollywood is like high school, there are always going to be people who hate you and people who like you. When you're a teen, [that's tough] because you're hyper-aware of what other people are gonna say and think. But neither defines who you are as a person or how successful you are unless you let them. — Debby Ryan

How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life (Maxwell, John C.) - Your Highlight on page x | Location 32-32 | Added on Wednesday, September 3, 2014 8:56:47 PM 2. Changed Thinking Is Difficult — Anonymous

The way you dress or the car you drive or what you spend is to impress other people with how, I guess, successful and rich you are. But you're not, and you shouldn't, and who gives a damn what other people think anyway. So, that mentality, I think, is very destructive. — Aaron Patzer

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful. — Ben Bernanke

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete. In — Brian Tracy

Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through.
Politics is full of them ... so is businesses ... so is the church. They're popular. Successful. Some of them work hard, other are slack, but all of them could tell a good story.
Never where there such charming gravediggers in the world's history. — James Hilton

When people evaluate their life, they compare themselves to a standard of what a successful life is, and it turns out that standard tends to be universal: People in Togo and Denmark have the same idea of what a good life is, and a lot of that has to do with money and material prosperity. — Daniel Kahneman

My mother was a teacher. She was grooming my brother and me to be successful, accomplished people. — Laverne Cox

I am not an alcoholic. I'm a social catalyst. People pay me to illustrate for other partygoers the chemical process involved in transforming from one persona into another drunker, more fun one. It's a matter of going from dull point A to exciting point B. And I'm a raving success at it. So successful that sometimes I wind up at Mysterious Point C. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

I wish to say to you that the life of an enlightened people and a vibrant nation cannot be measured by the life of an individual. A successful person is one who manages to lay down a new stone, a brick that would help firm up his nation's existence. — King Hussein I

Successful people aren't born that way. They become successful by establishing the habit of doing things unsuccessful people don't like to do. The successful people don't always like these things themselves; they just get on and do them. — William Makepeace Thackeray

When you're around enormously successful people you realise their success isn't an accident - it's about work. — Ryan Tedder

If I can bring joy into the world, if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment, or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off ... then I'll be successful. — Bobby McFerrin

In avoiding any situations reminiscent of the past trauma, or any initiative that might involve future planning and risk, traumatized people deprive themselves of those new opportunities for successful coping that might mitigate the effect of the traumatic experience. Thus, constrictive symptoms, though they may represent an attempt to defend against overwhelming emotional states, exact a high price for whatever protection they afford. They narrow and deplete the quality of life and ultimately perpetuate the effects of the traumatic event. — Judith Lewis Herman

The secret to being successful is to find a way to bring yourself through, even in your stories. People are looking for the essence of your truth. When you can bring your own truth to it, that's when it works. — Oprah Winfrey

What makes a media company successful is how it copes with competitive markets in which people have a choice. Competition today is at a more intense level than it has ever before been because the barriers to providing information in the virtual world are so low and the choice of provider nearly infinite. — James Murdoch

The most successful people are so original. — Idina Menzel

People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas. — Todd Rundgren

Timing is so important! If you are going to be successful in dance, you must be able to respond to rhythm and timing. It's the same in the Spirit. People who don't understand God's timing can become spiritually spastic, trying to make the right things happen at the wrong time. They don't get His rhythm - and everyone can tell they are out of step. They birth things prematurely, threatening the very lives of their God-given dreams. — T.D. Jakes

Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job. — Toi Derricotte

Successful people know what they want. They seek clarity in their lives and follow their own dreams. — Kishore Bansal

Just like us, successful people are also given 24 hours each day. The only differences between them and unsuccessful individuals are their winner mindset and self discipline. — Kevin J. Donaldson

All geniuses are not successful just like all successful people are not geniuses. I would rather be successful than a genius. — Majid Kazmi

At some point, we all have to decide how we are going to fail: by not going far enough, or by going too far. The only alternative for the most successful (maybe even the most fulfilled) people is the latter. — Harriet Rubin

People that I know, the vast majority, who are successful work really, really hard. Sure, there's some people that either get lucky or inherited it or don't have to work hard for some reason, but the vast majority who are successful work really, really hard. — Will Packer

You are where you are and what you are because of yourself, nothing else. Nature is neutral. Nature doesn't care. If you do what other successful people do, you will enjoy the same results and rewards that they do. And if you don't, you won't. — Brian Tracy

Successful people jump at opportunity and take advantage of it. — Sir Mix-a-Lot

What's not to love about us! People got to know Misty and me in Athens. We've continued to be successful and continued to connect with the fans. I promise we're going to be tough to get rid of. — Kerri Walsh

When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less. This truth is both shocking and unsurprising: shocking because no one would ever admit to stereotyping on the basis of gender and unsurprising because clearly we do. — Sheryl Sandberg

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services. — Brian Tracy

The campaign of anti-Islamic slander was so successful that to this day some textbooks in European and American schools refer to Muhammad as having epilepsy, the Qur'an as being copied from Bible, Muslim armies forcing conversions on people (by the sword), and Islam as being against science and learning. All of these are quite untrue, and enlightened Western authors from Arnold Toynbee and Bertrand Russell to Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito have been dispelling these myths on book after book for decades; nevertheless, the message hasn't reached the masses, who still believe numerous myths concerning Islam. — Yahiya Emerick

We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight — Malcolm Gladwell