Quotes & Sayings About Luck And Success

and two, success is often started by dumb luck, so play the hand that's dealt you and play it hard. — Harry Schuhmacher

Success is less about luck, and more about practice. — Robin Sharma

If people ask me for the ingredients of success, I say one is talent, two is stubbornness or determination, and third is sheer luck. You have to have two out of the three. Any two will probably do. — Fred Saberhagen

Hard work and talent are crucial to success, and intangible qualities like heart and clutch are generally real - but luck is just as important. Nobody gets to the top by accident, but nobody's on top without some pretty phenomenal accidents of fate. — Andrew Sharp

Treat yourself like a fat person with aches and pains and a suitcase full of excuses, and good luck
you'll stay exactly where you are. Train like an athlete and, though you may not look like one now, you will become one. — Chalene Johnson

No-one gets an iron-clad guarantee of success. Certainly, factors like opportunity, luck and timing are important. But the backbone of success is usually found in old-fashioned, basic concepts like hard work, determination, good planning and perseverance. — Mia Hamm

Luck plays no role in art world success. It's your own responsibility to create your success, which is a result of making thousands of constant decisions - focused, professional tenacity - day after day of keeping commitments to yourself and to those you make promises to. If you fail, it's all your fault. If you succeed, you deserve all the credit. — Mark Kostabi

Success is a result of consistent practice of winning skills and actions. There is nothing miraculous about the process. There is no luck involved. — Bill Russell

Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves. — Larry King

You create your own luck by the way you play. There is no such luck as bad luck. Fate has nothing to do with success or failure, because that is a negative philosophy that indicts one's confidence, and I'll have no part of it. — Greg Norman

Not just my parents, but teachers, friends, mentors - a host of people are to be thanked for any success I have had, and a whole lot of just plain luck. — Ellen McLaughlin

There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money. If you fail, do not be discouraged; try again. When you do well, do not change your ways. Success is not just good luck: it is a combination of hard work, good credit standing, opportunity, readiness and timing. Success will not last if you do not take care of it. — Henry Sy

If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man say yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed. And not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his hands. — Chinua Achebe

You just have to work with what God sends, and if God doesn't seem to understand the concept of commercial success, then that's your bad luck. — Michael Frayn

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

Triumphant, Asha felt confirmed in a suspicion she'd developed in her years of multi-directional, marginally profitable enterprise. Becoming a success in the great, rigged market of the overcity required less effort and intelligence than getting by, day to day, in the slums. The crucial things were luck and the ability to sustain two convictions: that what you were doing wasn't all that wrong, in the scheme of things, and that you weren't all that likely to get caught. — Katherine Boo

I know that my success comes from hard work, help from others, and being at the right place at the right time. I feel a deep and enduring sense of gratitude to those who have given me opportunities and support. I recognize the sheer luck of being born into my family in the United States rather than one of the many places in the world where women are denied basic rights. I believe that all of us - men and women alike - should acknowledge good fortune and thank the people who have helped us. No one accomplishes anything all alone.
But I also know that in order to continue to grow and challenge myself, I have to believe in my own abilities. I still face situations that I fear are beyond my capabilities. I still have days when I feel like a fraud. And I still sometimes find myself spoken over and discounted while men sitting next to me are not. But now I know how to take a deep breath and keep my hand up. I have learned to sit at the table. — Sheryl Sandberg

So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star. — William Mathews

Hard work, determination, and talent are key for any successful venture. But sometimes you need that fourth ingredient: dumb luck. Luck can never replace hard work and talent, but sometimes it can win out over both. — Abby Rosmarin

Humor requires perspective. Perspective requires focus. Focus requires balance. Balance requires attention to the present moment. In the 'now' one is freed from labels. Success and failure, good luck and bad - they're all constructs of your mind. — Tom Bergeron

You need an immense amount of luck and perseverance to even be on the playing field for success on a grand scale. — Chris Gethard

Allowing yourself to be a conduit
for opportunity requires a brand new outlook on life. Lady fortune
cannot enter a locked door, you know. And contrary to that wellknown
saying, she has rarely been known to knock — Chris Murray

Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. — Neil Gaiman

I would like to say I've achieved goals, but really, modeling is all luck. You're not really achieving anything. The least hardworking person with a special face can be huge and have a whole world of success. — Brooklyn Decker

Luck is like a lift and hard is like the stairs, lift may fail but stairs will always gets you at the top — Amit Dhiman

I realized that success is not a one-time act or a moment of luck and that "Overnight Success" is never true. Success is created through and by creating a habit caused by proper self-discipline. — Jan Mckingley Hilado

character strengths that matter so much to young people's success are not innate; they don't appear in us magically, as a result of good luck or good genes. And they are not simply a choice. They are rooted in brain chemistry, and they are molded, in measurable and predictable ways, by the environment in which children grow — Paul Tough

Failure is important because the first time you win (or lose), it could be luck, it could be timing, or it could be talent. It's only after you fail once or twice and learn to rely equally on thought, analysis, and anticipation-in addition to speed, talent, and execution-that you can really call yourself an entrepreneur ... In the long run, it's mind over muscle, strategy over strength, and a healthy perspective-not just a lot of perspiration-that make someone a real success in his or her business and in the equally important rest of his or her life. — Howard A. Tullman

I'd say it [success in NASCAR] is probably 50% car, 30% driver and 20% luck. When it comes to the driving, if the driver doesn't do his part, then it's just kind of like multiplying a negative times a positive: The end result is going to be a negative. — John Wes Townley

Cultivate your curiosity. Keep it sharp and always working. Consider curiosity your life preserver, your willingness to try something new. Second, enlarge your enthusiasm to include the pursuit to excellence, following every task through to completion. Third, make the law of averages work for you. By budgeting your time more carefully than most people you can make more time available. Does the combination of curiosity, enthusiasm, and the law of averages guarantee success Indeed it does not ... Success in the final analysis always involves luck or the element of chance. Louis Pasteur grasped this well when he said that chance favors the prepared mind. — John Hanley Jr.

Luck comes and goes; you have to seize it. Bad luck comes and goes; it must be overcome. But I will never, never sit at the side of the road showing my wounds and shouting, 'It's destiny'! — Jean Van Hamme

Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the 'luck' has to be helped along and provided by someone. — Ayn Rand

A lot of people think that success is luck and being in the right place at the right time. But I think if you're willing to work harder than anybody else, you can create an awful lot of your own luck. — Nolan Bushnell

Success comes to you with luck and a lot of hard work, but it doesn't give you the right to be any better than anybody else. — Nick Nolte

I had the luck at 18 to become assistant to Christian Dior, and to succeed him at 21 and to meet with success from my first collection in 1958. That will be 44 years in a few days. Above all it was Christian Dior who was my master and who was the first to reveal the secrets and mysteries of haute couture. — Christian Dior

If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of 'fortune' or 'luck,' then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. — Neal Boortz

I've found that busting your ass on a daily basis to make your art good, clear, and meaningful creates the most luck. — Don Roff

Success is made up of courage, brains, and luck. Since the first two are a function of the third, it's pretty much all luck. — Richard Jeni

Now take a look at the cemetery. It is quite difficult to do so because people who fail do not seem to write memoirs, and, if they did, those business publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call (as to returned e-mail, fuhgedit). Readers would not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success.* The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Patience, persistence and hard work lead to success and happiness. Or you can do whatever the hell you want and with a bit or a whole lot of luck you'll stumble onto success and happiness. — S.A. Tawks

I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I've always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters. — Harrison Ford

My theory is that it depends on how a person explains her success. If someone believes that her success is due to her brilliance and talents alone, she may develop the Phenomenon. If, on the other hand, someone believes that her success is due to not only her attributes but also to the efforts and success of others, as well as some possible good fortune (i.e., luck), she probably will not succumb to The Phenomenon. An — Douglas Soat

Often times I have been asked about the attributes for success, and I have said that you need two attributes for succeeding as an entrepreneur: one, courage, second, luck. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

They'd had so much more luck investing in eccentric B and C students. The rationale was simple: Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it - and were often tainted by it. Especially when success and peer approval beckoned. One did not accidentally graduate from top-tier schools. One strove to get in and to maintain grades once there, and to do that, one usually needed to be a master at conformity. To excel in all the accepted conventions. — Daniel Suarez

People really don't like to hear success explained away as luck, especially successful people. As they age and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There's a reason for this. The world doesn't want to acknowledge it either. Don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that you have had success, you have also had luck. And with luck comes obligation. — Michael Lewis

My success was due to good luck, hard work, and support and advice from friends and mentors. But most importantly, it depended on me to keep trying after I had failed. — Mark Warner

Successes are always unique and hard to copy. The fact that easyJet became a success is due to a mixture of talent and luck. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

I had the good fortune of speaking with Orson Wells many decades ago and he said 'Success is primarily luck anyway.' And I have been very lucky. Of course, Orson Wells was enormously talented and brilliant - so who am I to argue with him! — George Kennedy

Luck tells us that we don't control our own fate, and that our path to success or failure is written by someone, or something, entirely outside ourselves. — Sophia Amoruso

When people say "Oh wow, you're so lucky" ... I always wonder how they define luck. I can assure you people don't achieve their dreams because their lucky; they work day and night, with little sleep, investing their own money and working extremely hard. You don't get lucky in this life, you work hard and show people that luck is something YOU create. So, if you want to chase your own passion start listening to your own little voice, but more than anything, don't wait on getting lucky or your dream will be as misguided as your definition of success! Anyone can change their life and anyone can achieve their dreams. So work hard, get inspired and go out there and do it! — Amanda Bernardo

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world
the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers
from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help
and help on a large, systematic scale
is tantamount to admitting personal failure. — Judith Warner

Luck take a second look at what appears to be someone's good luck. You'll find not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking. — David J. Schwartz

Women attribute their success to working hard, luck, and help from other people. Men will attribute that - whatever success they have, that same success - to their own core skills. — Sheryl Sandberg

I've had enough success for two lifetimes, My success is talent put together with hard work and luck. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

If you want good luck; you must go out there and search for that luck!! Because luck is waiting for you to look for it. — Temitope Owosela

He [the golfer] must have the courage to keep trying in the face of ill luck or disappointment, and timidity to appreciate and appraise the dangers of each stroke, and to curb the desire to take chances beyond reasonable hope of success. — Bobby Jones

So when they win, it's their hard work
And when they lose, it's their bad luck — Sanhita Baruah

Success is very much the intersection of luck and hard work. — Dustin Moskovitz

I wanted to show how humans can have ugly feelings that they might prefer not to acknowledge; how we're all caught up in our own problems and limited by our own life experience," she says. "To judge somebody else, to declare them substandard, to conclude that their misfortunes are due to inherent character flaws, can be a way of boosting our own self-esteem, because it must follow that our comparative success or happiness is not mere luck or chance, but the reward for superior morals or talent. — J.K. Rowling

You cannot underestimate the value of luck in success in life. And I've really learned to appreciate that. — Azim Premji

My best advice to actors is if you love acting, do it every chance you get. Success does not mean success. All that matters is whether or not you're doing your best to entertain. The way this business works is all about luck and timing. — Matthew Gray Gubler

All were successful,and felt like failures.
Gold no longer pretended to understand the nature of success.Instead,he pretended not to. He knew the components that were necessary:
None,
or maybe one:
Dumb luck — Joseph Heller

But no nation can base its survival and development on luck and prayers alone while its leadership fritters away every available opportunity for success and concrete achievement. — Ibrahim Babangida

I don't rely on feng shui. I believe hard work brings us good luck and success. — John Gokongwei

With success it's like 60% talent, maybe 20% luck and then 20% being at the right place at the right time. There are so many artists that have been passed by - even though, on paper, they're the most incredibly talented artists, they don't have the social skills to take it outside of the bedroom. — Seth Troxler

Some famous person said, "Success is 50 percent luck and 50 percent preparedness for that luck." I think that's a lot of it. It's being ready to take advantage of opportunities when they arise. — Jessica Livingston

Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not superhuman. Success does not require a super-intellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success isn't based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never ... yes, never ... sell yourself short. — David J. Schwartz

Luck is one thing. It has always been there, it has always been a part of my success. It's a part of everyone's success. Without it, you can't be successful. But luck is something you have to stimulate, something you have to nurture through the choices you make ... That's why things have always worked out for me. Things work out not just because I'm lucky, but because I plan ahead. I figure out what I want and I go for it. I've always spent a lot of time trying to surround myself with the right people, the kinds of teammates who could lead me to my goals. — Valentino Garavani

What's the truth? The truth is what happened to you and him or her, over the years, and what didn't happen. The truth is what you said and didn't say, how much you tried, how you changed, and whether you were lucky. I believe in luck. I think luck plays a huge part in success. Or failure. In the end, who cares about the truth? You still end up divorced. Finally, the biggest asshole wins. Sort of. At least the biggest asshole takes home the must stuff. If you consider this winning then have at it. You're an asshole. — Margaret Overton

I definitely think it [the key to maintain success] is a number of things. It's having the right people behind you. It's having the right work ethic. It's having the right mind-set. And it's also a little bit of luck. — Jordin Sparks

Social networking technology allows us to spend our time engaged in a hypercompetitive struggle for attention, for victories in the currency of "likes." People are given more occasions to be self-promoters, to embrace the characteristics of celebrity, to manage their own image, to Snapchat out their selfies in ways that they hope will impress and please the world. This technology creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers, using Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and Instagram to create a falsely upbeat, slightly overexuberant, external self that can be famous first in a small sphere and then, with luck, in a large one. The manager of this self measures success by the flow of responses it gets. The social media maven spends his or her time creating a self-caricature, a much happier and more photogenic version of real life. People subtly start comparing themselves to other people's highlight reels, and of course they feel inferior. — David Brooks

The only thing that I have done that is not mitigated by luck, diminished by good fortune, is that I persisted, and other people gave up. — Harrison Ford

Success is more than luck. You have to believe in yourself and make it happen. — Richard Branson

Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive. We can't control luck. But we can control the way we make choices. — Chip Heath

I always thought that the shortest distance between failure and success is luck. It so appears now that if you account for the wait time, the shortest distance between failure and success is action. — Majid Kazmi

When I started 70 odd years ago I was told that to be a success you've got to have talent, personality and luck. I've had 99.9 percent luck and the other miniscule percentage would be having had the luck to have a little bit of talent, being able to stand upright and that's it. It's all luc. — Roger Moore

Luck plays an enormous role in trading success. Some people were lucky enough to be born smart, while others were even smarter and got born lucky. — Ed Seykota

What drives intellectuals and professors crazy is somebody with a high school diploma who made a fortune in business. They agree with Lenin, who thought success in business was a matter of luck, when in reality it is a matter of genius. — James Cook

Opportunities are like night owls. They like to streak naked and howl at the moon. A lot of success in life comes down to luck. So put yourself in a position to get lucky. Because you know what happens if you don't go out?

Nothing. — Ari Gold

The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to accept the idea that the success is a lot to do with the timing and luck and that divorces you from it massively. There are aspects of it that I haven't got used to at all. But I've enjoyed some parts of it massively. It relates to the same reason I did a lot of backpacking - partly for the experience - it's something to tell my grandkids. It's a weird chain of events to have in your life. — Alex Garland

As a fighter pilot I know from my own experiences how decisive surprise and luck can be for success, which in the long run comes only to the one who combines daring with cool thinking. — Adolf Galland

Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck - and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky. — Michael Lewis

Tenacious people don't rely on luck, fate, or destiny for their success. And when conditions become difficult, they keep working. — John C. Maxwell

I don't believe it can be taught as if it were a recipe. There aren't ingredients and techniques that will guarantee success. Parameters exist that, if followed, will ensure a business can continue, but you cannot clearly define our business success and then bottle it as you would a perfume. It's not that simple: to be successful, you have to be out there, you have to hit the ground running; and, if you have a good team round you and more than your fair share of luck, you might make something happen. But you certainly can't guarantee it just by following someone else's formula. Business is a fluid, changing substance. — Richard Branson

Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. — Charlotte Bronte

We get success by hard work and failure by hard luck — Ravi Ranjan Goswami

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too. — Jimmy Buffett

You can't forget about luck. There is nothing in life that says if you're great and unique that you're going to have success financially. — Chris Metzler

The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company's core values), to make the company great. Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius. — James C. Collins

Please allow me to offer you three pieces of advice:

One: Be bold. Never miss an opportunity to let your brilliance shine and dazzle. Take that chance. Accept the challenge, or if the challenge doesn't arise, make your own challenges.

Two: Don't settle for mediocrity. Find a dream and pursue it. Allow every decision you make to bring you closer in achieving that dream.

And three: Have fun. Take time to play, because if you're not having a good tear-squirting belly laugh, chances are you're doing it wrong.

I will not wish you good luck. I don't believe luck to be a necessary ingredient for success. Instead, I wish you the wisdom to make good decisions. I'm sure you will be fabulous.

Grace — Alyssa Brugman

If you are ever going to become the kind of person who achieves huge amounts of success, you must learn to focus only on what you can control. You can't control the weather. You can't control the thoughts of other people. You can't control the overall economy. However you can control your thoughts, your expectations and your luck. — Clay Clark

Despite dissimilarities in our luck and success at looking after ourselves, we are all human beings. — Naguib Mahfouz

If you harbor preferred principles and ways of behaving that have never brought you ANY happiness, or even much luck in your personal relationships over a number of years - this should not be taken as a sign that all women are bad or that none of them are serious, but
A SIGN THAT YOUR OWN ATTITUDE AND DATING STRATEGIES ARE FLAWED AND NOT REALLY SUCCESSFUL - and can only bring you further disappointments with women!

It seems like an elementary, easy thing to accept. Strangely, thousands of people seem, for some reason, to be unable, or stubbornly refuse, to see the truth and draw such a logical conclusion. — Sahara Sanders

But my story is as much one of perseverance and drive as it is of talent and luck. I willed it to happen. I took my life in my hands, learned from anyone I could, grabbed what opportunity I could, and molded my success step by step. Fear of failure drove me at first, but as I tackled each challenge, my anxiety was replaced by a growing sense of optimism. Once you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, other hurdles become less daunting. — Howard Schultz

I hate the concept of luck, especially when people try to apply it to me. Yes, it's true: Hundreds of thousands of businesses fail. Mine succeded. Was that all just because I "got lucky"? I don't really think so.
What I hate about luck is that it implies being devois of responsibility. It implies that you can do nothing and the step into success as easily as stepping into a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk. It implies that success is something given to a knighted and often undeserving few. Luck tells us that we don't control our own fate, and that our path to succes of failure is written by someone, or something, entirely outside overselves. Luck let us believe that whatever happens, whether good or bad, it's not to our credit or our fault. That is why I don't buy luck. But I do buy magic. — Sophia Amoruso