This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Remember, results aren’t the criteria for success — it’s the effort made for achievement that is most important.
Achievement | Effort | Success |
Seven Steps to Success 1) Make a commitment to grow daily. 2) Value the process more than events. 3) Don't wait for inspiration. 4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity. 5) Dream big. 6) Plan your priorities. 7) Give up to go up.
Commitment | Plan | Pleasure | Sacrifice | Success | Value |
The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year
Success |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.
Attention | Body | Commerce | Evil | Experience | Government | History | Law | Objectives | Power | Problems | Public | Rhetoric | Service | Success | Work | Government | Commerce |
To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements, and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world," - all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.
Defeat | Evolution | God | Greatness | Hope | Mind | Progress | Sense | Success | Vision | World | God |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.
Choice | Initiative | Success | Will |
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one's own life and environment beautiful, as far as one's power reaches.This includes moral beauty, one of the qualities of humanity, though it seems not to appear elsewhere in the universe. But I would have each person realize that his contribution is not important, its success not really a matter for exultation nor its failure for mourning; the beauty of things is sufficient without him.
Beauty | Failure | Life | Life | Power | Qualities | Success | Failure | Beauty | Think |
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
I think, here is your emblem to hang in the future sky; not the cross, not the hive, but this; bright power, dark peace;Fierce consciousness joined with final disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon’s realist eyes and act married to the massive mysticism of stone, which failure cannot cast down nor success make proud.
Consciousness | Failure | Future | Life | Life | Mysticism | Success | Failure |
Remember that the subconscious mind has determined the success and wonderful achievements of all great scientific workers.
Joseph Goebbels, fully Paul Joseph Goebbels
The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.
Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it's all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you're willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you're willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you've got the potential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in securing the success which you seek but it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. So, day by day, and week by week; so month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that progress gain in strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it.
Business | Conquest | Day | Enjoyment | Progress | Receive | Strength | Success | Work | Business |
Julius Erving, fully Julius Winfield Erving II, aka Dr. J
The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life - mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical.
Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.
Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
Disappointment, failure, and frustration are the main agents of change. Success is a poor teacher, for it usually only confirms us in what we thought we already knew.
Success is not who you are in relation to the person sitting next to you. Success is who you are in relation to where you began and what you began with.
Success |
Kenneth B. Clark, fully Kenneth Bancroft Clark
All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.
Success |
Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
Seven Laws of Salem: Give children the opportunity for self-discovery. [Give them a chance to discover themselves.] Make the children meet with triumph and defeat. [See to it that they experience both success and defeat.] Give the children the opportunity of self-effacement in the common cause. [See to it that they have the chance to forget themselves in the pursuit of a common cause.] Provide periods of silence. [See to it that there are periods of silence.] Train the imagination. [Train the imagination, the ability to participate and plan.] Make games important but not predominant. [Take sports and games seriously, but only as part of the whole.] Free the sons of the wealthy and powerful from the enervating sense of privilege. [Free them of the rich and influential parents and from the paralysing influence of wealth and privelege.]
Ability | Chance | Children | Experience | Important | Influence | Opportunity | Parents | Sense | Success | Wealth |