Sometimes, the right words can give you exactly the encouragement you need to keep moving forward.
Of course, success doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some, it might mean reaching a career milestone, building a business, or achieving financial stability.
For others, success may be about personal growth, pursuing a dream, finding more balance, or simply creating a life that feels happy and meaningful.
This collection of inspirational quotes about success has something for every part of the journey.
You’ll find encouraging words for starting something new, working hard, overcoming failure, staying patient when progress feels slow, believing in yourself, and celebrating just how far you’ve already come.
Save your favorites for the moments when you need a little motivation of your own, or share them with a friend, family member, coworker, student, or anyone else who could use some encouragement as they work toward their goals.
Table of Contents
- Short Inspirational Quotes About Success
- Inspirational Quotes About Success and Hard Work
- Inspirational Quotes About Success and Failure
- Inspirational Quotes About Success and Life
- Inspirational Quotes About Success and Growth
- Inspirational Quotes About Success in Business and Career
- Inspirational Quotes About Success for Students
- Inspirational Quotes About Success for Women
- Famous Inspirational Quotes About Success
Short Inspirational Quotes About Success
1. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
2. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain
3. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill
4. “Action is the foundational key to all success.” — Pablo Picasso
5. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
6. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” — Sam Levenson
7. “Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser
8. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
9. “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” — Dale Carnegie
10. “The future depends on what you do today.” — Mahatma Gandhi
11. “If you can dream it, you can do it.” — Walt Disney
12. “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” — Earl Nightingale
13. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Vidal Sassoon
Inspirational Quotes About Success and Hard Work
14. “Nothing will work unless you do.” — Maya Angelou
15. “Without labor, nothing prospers.” — Sophocles
16. “Success is dependent on effort.” — Sophocles
17. “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent van Gogh
18. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs
19. “There is no substitute for hard work.” — Thomas Edison
20. “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt
21. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” — Thomas Edison
22. “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.” — Vince Lombardi
23. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” — Steve Jobs
24. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder
25. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
26. “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.” — Tommy Lasorda
Inspirational Quotes About Success and Failure
27. “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
28. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford
29. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
30. “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” — Elbert Hubbard
31. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” — Nelson Mandela
32. “Failure is success in progress.” — Albert Einstein
33. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
34. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy
35. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” — Coco Chanel
36. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” — Dale Carnegie
37. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” — Napoleon Hill
38. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” — Maya Angelou
39. “Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.” — Henry Ford
Inspirational Quotes About Success and Life
40. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” — Albert Schweitzer
41. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” — Dalai Lama
42. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon
43. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” — Oprah Winfrey
44. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” — Maya Angelou
45. “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
46. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
47. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
48. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” — Albert Einstein
49. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” — Helen Keller
50. “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.” — Arthur Ashe
51. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
52. “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali
Inspirational Quotes About Success and Growth
53. “We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” — Max DePree
54. “Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” — Chinese Proverb
55. “What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
56. “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” — Charles Du Bos
57. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” — John C. Maxwell
58. “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” — Calvin Coolidge
59. “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” — Napoleon Hill
60. “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
61. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” — Albert Einstein
62. “The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you.” — B.B. King
63. “You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow
64. “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” — Denis Waitley
65. “Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.” — Paul J. Meyer
Inspirational Quotes About Success in Business and Career
66. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney
67. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller
68. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” — Steve Jobs
69. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder
70. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” — Dan Millman
71. “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt
72. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” — Steve Jobs
73. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart
74. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” — Milton Berle
75. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
76. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” — Warren Buffett
77. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” — Bill Gates
78. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
Inspirational Quotes About Success for Students
79. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
80. “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” — B.B. King
81. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
82. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
83. “The expert in anything was once a beginner.” — Helen Hayes
84. “Learning is not attained by chance; it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” — Abigail Adams
85. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” — Aristotle
86. “There is no substitute for hard work.” — Thomas Edison
87. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
88. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
89. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” — Zig Ziglar
90. “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing.” — Pelé
91. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Inspirational Quotes About Success for Women
92. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” — Estée Lauder
93. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
94. “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey
95. “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale
96. “We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate.” — Kavita Ramdas
97. “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow.” — Marissa Mayer
98. “You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.” — Shonda Rhimes
99. “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” — Lucille Ball
100. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” — Oprah Winfrey
101. “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” — Tina Fey
102. “Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” — Madam C. J. Walker
103. “I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.” — Joan Rivers
104. “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” — Anne Sweeney
Famous Inspirational Quotes About Success
