Quotes About Success

Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty.

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

If we want to, say, develop schools in disadvantaged communities that can successfully counteract the poisonous atmosphere of their surrounding neighborhoods, this tells us that we're probably better off building lots of little schools than one or two big ones.

Working really hard is what successful people do

when we understand how much culture and history and the world outside of the individual matter to professional success--then ... We have a way to successes out of the unsucessful.

the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We

Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.

There are, I think, two important lessons here. The first is that truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking. [...] The second lesson is that in good decision making, frugality matters

Underdog strategies are hard.

Students who attend what they considered to be their first-choice school were less likely to persist in a biomedical or behavioral science major," they write. You think you want to go to the fanciest school you can. You don't.

Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive.

I think overall it's a disadvantage," Jeb Bush once said of what it meant for his business career that he was the son of an American president and the brother of an American president and the grandson of a wealthy Wall Street banker and US senator.

The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with. For a young would-be lawyer, being born in the early 1930's was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer, or being born in 1835 was for an entrepreneur.

Achievement is talent plus preparation.

Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play — and by "we" I mean society — in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities

Farkas's Jewish family trees go on for pages, each virtually identical to the one before, until the conclusion becomes inescapable: Jewish doctors and lawyers did not become professionals in spite of their humble origins. They became professionals because of their humble origins.

Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

That the best students from mediocre schools were almost always a better bet than good students from the very best schools.

Truly succesful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

David and Goliath is a book about what happens when ordinary people confront giants.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it's the biggest nine-and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call "accumulative advantage.

Gosh darn it," Gau said, "if you don't try, you'll never succeed." 10.

That late bloomers bloom late because they simply aren't much good until late in their careers.