This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.
I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated.
Attention | Business | Competition | Good | Important | Man | Price | Service | Success | Wisdom | Work | Business |
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
Walter Chrysler, fully Walter Percy Chrysler
The real secret of success is enthusiasm. Yes, more than enthusiasm, I would say excitement. I like to see man get excited. When they get excited they make a success of their lives.
Enthusiasm | Excitement | Man | Success | Wisdom |
Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself.
You have removed most of the road blocks to success when you have learned the difference between motion and direction.
Henri Deterding, fully Henri Wilhelm August Deterding
There is a master key to success with which no man can fail. Its name is simplicity. Simplicity, I mean, in the sense of reducing to the simplest possible terms every problem that besets us. Whenever I have met a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have left it alone.
Business | Man | Sense | Simplicity | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Business |
All that happens in the world of nature and man - every war, every peace, every horn of prosperity, every horn of adversity, every election, every death, every life, every success and every failure, all change, all permanence, the perished leer, the unutterable glory of stars - all things speak truth in the thoughtful spirit.
Adversity | Change | Death | Failure | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Peace | Prosperity | Spirit | Success | Truth | War | Wisdom | World |
Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty.
Difficulty | Duty | Endurance | Enthusiasm | Labor | Light | Men | Pleasure | Strength | Success | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Nothing will give permanent success in any enterprise of life, except native capacity cultivated by honest and persevering effort. Genius is often but the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.
Capacity | Discipline | Effort | Genius | Life | Life | Nothing | Success | Will | Wisdom |
The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?
There isn't much thrill in success unless one has first been close to failure.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
If I were to prescribe one process in the training of men which is fundamental to success in any direction, it would be thoroughgoing training in the habit of observation. It is a habit which every one of us should be seeking ever more to perfect.