Success Quotes Homepage
Quotations To Help You Acheive Greater
Professional & Personal Success - Page 2
Commentary © 2008 Richard J. Chandler & Bonnett Chandler
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States. He is said to have embodied the spirit and the hope of the middle class.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
- Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
From a publication by Rotary International, a service organization of over 32,000 clubs in 200+ countries with at least 1.2 million members world-wide…
“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
- Rotarian
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Igor Stravinsky, perhaps the most influential classical music composer of the 20th century, was successful musically and financially via the royalties from his compositions and writings as well as the piano and conducting performance revenue he earned throughout his long and prolific career.
“Just as appetite comes from eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.”
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Arthur Vangundy is an entrepreneur in the arena of group creativity. Clients in his brainstorming retreats include IBM, Kraft Foods, and AirCanada.
“Throwing away ideas too soon is like opening a package of flower seeds and then throwing them away because they're not pretty.”
- Arthur VanGundy, Ph.D.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Attorney, vegetarian and social activist Mahatma Gandhi worked to alleviate poverty, discrimination, the inequality of woman in society and foreign dominance by utilizing non-violence to take the moral high ground away from the holders of power, who had kept the status quo in place. His influence has reverberated well beyond India and helped to inspire our own civil rights movement.
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me.”
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Alan Cohen is a contributing writer for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, popular for extracting spiritual lessons from the practical experiences of daily living.
“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”
- Alan Cohen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The 21st century mathematician James Yorke is renowned for his work involving the theory of chaos. Here is one of his ‘success’ equations…
“The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.”
- James Yorke (1941- )
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Pablo Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. The Guinness Book of World Records names Picasso as the most prolific painter who ever lived.
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. A man whose name is synonymous with ‘genius’, he realized, at the age of five, that something in empty space was moving the needle in a pocket compass. This made a deep and lasting impression.
“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
America’s most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867. He had a tumultuous personal life, but gained renown with his organic architecture. Wright played with geometric blocks in kindergarten, perhaps influencing his clean, spare lines.
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Albert Ellis, PhD, was considered the ‘grandfather of cognitive behavioral therapy’. He wrote over 50 no-nonsense, opinionated and amusing books.
By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.
- Albert Ellis (1913-2007)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Material for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings were quite often taken from his well-organized and indexed personal journals, which he started while attending Harvard from age fourteen to his graduation at age eighteen. In the following two quotations he shares his belief that one’s past thoughts shouldn’t color one’s present or future thinking.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
“Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I was first inspired by the story of Helen Keller from the 1962 movie “The Miracle Worker” starring a young Patti Duke as Helen and Anne Bancroft as Helen’s teacher, Annie Sullivan. This quote by Keller reminds us that our hardships are more than misfortunes to be lamented, and instead provide the raw material needed sculpt a strong and beautiful life, where our more noble aspirations are made real through our day-to-day actions.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
- Helen Keller (1980-1968)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Garrison Keillor has been writing like a bricklayer… Brick after brick after brick until you notice that he has been building enough audio and print buildings to single-handedly populate a town the size of St. Cloud, Minnesota. This quote, from his 2004 publication, “Homegrown Democrat,” reminds us that misfortune might force us to expand our definition of success, even though we were rather happy with the more conventional and narrower definition having to do with our stuff.
“The gains in life come slowly and the losses come on suddenly. You work for years to get your life the way you want it and buy the big house and the time share on Antigua and one afternoon you’re run down by a garbage truck and lie in the intersection, dazed, bloodied, your leg unnaturally bent, and suddenly life becomes terribly challenging for six months.”
- Garrison Keillor (1942- )