Striving For Success Quotes & Sayings

When you focus on lack and scarcity and what you don't have, you fuss about it with your family, you discuss it with your friends, you tell your children that you don't have enough - "We don't have enough for that, we can't afford that" - then you'll never be able to afford it, because you begin to attract more of what you don't have. If you want abundance, if you want prosperity, then focus on abundance. Focus on prosperity. (Lisa Nichols)
Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the great home, they want their business to work, they want all these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having these outer things does not necessarily guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. So we go for these outer things thinking they're going to bring us happiness , but it's backward. You need to go for the inner joy, the inner peace, the inner vision first, and then all of the outer things appear. (Marci Shimoff)
— Rhonda Byrne

A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they're lucky, a vacation. — Jeff Merkley

Success for the striven washes away the effort of striving. — Pindar

The thing he hadn't realized about success was that success made people boring. Failure also made people boring, but in a different way: failing people were constantly striving for one thing - success. But successful people were also only striving to maintain their success. It was the difference between running and running in place, and although running was boring no matter what, at least the person running was moving, through different scenery and past different vistas. — Hanya Yanagihara

For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow. men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. — Albert Einstein

The free society does not guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed: it has to be won through personal striving. — Dinesh D'Souza

Surrender is when we stop toiling and striving and we begin receiving and arriving. Nothing is more beautiful to experience than the inner rest that follows surrender. — Shannon Tanner

It's a success story," said Chanu, exercising his shoulders. "But behind every story of immigration success there lies a deeper tragedy."
Kindly explain this tragedy."
I'm talking about the clash between Western values and our own. I'm talking about the struggle to assimilate and the need to preserve one's identity and heritage. I'm talking about children who don't know what their identity is. I'm talking about the feelings of alienation engendered by a society where racism is prevalent. I'm talking about the terrific struggle to preserve one's own sanity while striving to achieve the best for one's family. I'm talking
" p. 88 — Monica Ali

I love 'Braxton Family Values!' I love seeing a strong family unit striving for success while dealing with everyday struggles like everyone else. Whatever drama they find themselves in, they find a way to solve it and get back to the importance of family. A positive show for sure. — Drew Sidora

One does not fail at a task. One merely does not succeed. And since one is always striving for success, so long as one continues striving, one can never truly fail. — Margaret Weis

I don't have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don't think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice. — Richard Stallman

When I say 'The Hunger For More', it could be referring to more success. It could be more money, or respect, more power, more understanding. All of those things lead up to that hunger for more, because my more isn't everybody else's more. I feel like I made it already, because I got already what everybody on the corners of the neighborhood I grew up in is striving to get. God forbid anything happen to me, my family is straight. So anything that happens after this is just me progressing as a person. — Lloyd Banks

I honestly think I'm the kind of person that is driven by fear of failure rather than striving for success. I tend to go to bed scared and wake up terrified. — Anthony Noto

Success doesn't always come in the form of a trophy. Keep striving for success. — Andre Agassi

America's wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success. Take away their incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take care of the needy. — Thomas Peterffy

Learn the difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection. The first is attainable; the second is not. — Douglas Merrill

The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains ...
Why? Because no one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.
Nietzsche was striving to correct the belief that fulfillment must come easily or not at all, a belief ruinous in its effects, for it leads us to withdraw prematurely from challenges that might have been overcome if only we had been prepared for the savagery legitimately demanded by almost everything valuable. — Alain De Botton

Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted. — David Bly

I say all the time that if you really want to feel alive, it's not through striving for yourself. If you really want to feel alive, it's not through trying to get more things or get more success or climbing a corporate ladder or getting to the top. Because, once you get there, you realize that you don't really find happiness in that. If you want to feel alive and if you want to feel peace and happiness, give your life away. Do something that is outside of yourself for someone else. I think that's the way to truly feel alive. — Natalie Grant

So far you've spent your life striving to please others," she heard him say. "With a rather poor rate of success. Why don't you try pleasing yourself for a change? Why not live by your own rules? What has obeying the conventions ever gotten you?" Evie pondered the questions, and her breath hissed in pleasure as he found a particularly sore spot. "I like the conventions," she said after a moment. "There is nothing wrong with being an ordinary person, is there?" "No. But you're not ordinary - or you never would have come to me instead of marrying cousin Eustace." "I was desperate." "That wasn't the entire reason." His low voice sounded like a purr. "You also had a taste for the devil. — Lisa Kleypas

I wake up starving for success, and no matter how much I accomplish I go to sleep striving for improvement; I refuse to let my enemies outwork me. — Noel DeJesus

My whole adult life I've worked toward one goal - the success of our business. But I might as well have been chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What I was looking for, striving for, wasn't really there. Meaning I've been measuring the value of my life all wrong. Then I met you and realized that being a somebody isn't nearly as wonderful as having a somebody. And being somebody to somebody else. — Ally Blake

Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt in the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.
To receive the message, the mental pores must be open. And we white men in striving for our success, in seeking to build a new world from what lies around us, sometimes forget that there are other ways, sometimes forget the Lonesome Gods of the far places, the gods who live on the empty sea, who dance with the dust devils and who wait quietly in the shadows under the cliffs where ancient men once marked their passing with hands. — Louis L'Amour

Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the "Joneses" expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is "built that way," he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function - as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other. — Maxwell Maltz

Despising cowardice in others, I wished to prove myself no coward. Believing in the good, the gentle, the beautiful things of life, I addressed myself to the sweet duty of keeping these attributes for my children's sake and my own. And in striving to provide a living for them, I found a success beyond my wildest dreams. — Alice Foote MacDougall

The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone. — Isabel Allende

Hold it down until you come up — Johnnie Dent Jr.

the striving (and anxious) Christian, deprived of the Catholic's recourse to sacramental justification, could find signs of his being among the elect if he could successfully and unceasingly apply himself to disciplined work and his worldly calling. Material productivity was often the fruit of such effort, which, compounded by the Puritan demand for ascetic renunciation of selfish pleasure and frivolous spending, readily lent itself to the accumulation of capital. Whereas traditionally the pursuit of commercial success was perceived as directly threatening to the religious life, now the two were recognized as mutually beneficial. — Richard Tarnas

I like the image of The Old Man and the Sea, of striving and succeeding but finding that the success was ghost success. In other words, in the long run, after a certain age, the motives for success, pride or oppressing people or getting power. — Allen Ginsberg

For me it's a new experience every single time, because - The dance community has a great strength in synergizing immediately. So we recognize that opposed to being competition, which we are in the audition process, once we're on the job is about cohesion, it's about striving to highlight each individual in their own element, while also creating something that is visually tantalizing to the audience. While the ingredients of each movie has been different, the recipe for success is the same, which is to click immediately and make the best possible movie. — Alyson Stoner

Realize that significance is not dependent upon success. Too many people fall into the trap of thinking, "Once I make it rich, I'll become significant." This is rarely the case. Begin striving for it now. — Joshua Becker

I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society. — Criss Jami

The American Dream has always focused on building a better life for yourself and your family, striving for success, and even fleeing from religious prosecution. — Marc Veasey

Whereas China has set about systematically striving for Olympic success since it re-entered global competition after years of isolation, India has remained complacent about its lack of sporting prowess. — Shashi Tharoor

I don't need to go to heaven or hell. I have been both places and always wanted more. I will settle for somewhere in between, so eternity never becomes dull and every miracle is something I never take for granted. — Shannon L. Alder

It is a better to have your own plan to make it happen;
Since something is going to happen either way. — Johnnie Dent Jr.