In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that’s by going step by step.

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

I’m just a kid that defied the odds. I’m just a kid that ignored the doubt. I’m just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I’m going to continue to go all the way.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

In my opinion, rankings are a very fickle measurement of one’s success and it is best to not get carried away by it.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

The harder I work, the luckier I become.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.

You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that’s available to us as Christians.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

Winning, to me, is easy. Winning more is the challenge.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Too many people measure how successful they are by how much money they make or the people that they associate with. In my opinion, true success should be measured by how happy you are.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

I’ve always been an underdog. I feel like I beat the odds.

What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.

I could give a flying flip about doing promo because, no disrespect, nobody put me in the position that I’m in.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

I’ve been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

I always make my dreams into goals.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

My understanding of racial discrimination as a child was highly distorted because the most prominent man in Archery was an African-American bishop. When he came home from up north, where he was in charge of A.M.E. churches in five states, it was front-page news. He was the most successful man in my life.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

My name is Adam Sandler. I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multi-millionaire.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

Football is a team game and none can survive or excel without the help of the other.

The successful men I admired all built their bodies.

The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.