100 Truly Inspirational Success Quotes From Great Leaders

Once in a while, we all need a spark of energy to help us walk the path towards success. And inspirational success quotes from those who have already taken this journey will remind you that success is achievable.

Language has given us the medium to share our experiences and wisdom with the world. The best part is that we can leave our legacy by documenting our life’s journeys.

Leaders of our times are doing the same, and we can't thank them enough. They often share uplifting and inspiring quotes and thoughts that have helped us get through tough times.

Here’s a compilation of the most exquisite success quotes that gave us a push. And we’re sure they’ll work like magic for you too!

1. Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.
   ~ Winston S. Churchill

2. I don't believe in taking right decisions, I take decisions and make them right.
   ~ Ratan Tata

3. The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.
   ~ Colin R. Davis

4. If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.
   ~ Steve Jobs

5. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
   ~ Barack Obama

6. No one is wise by birth, for wisdom results from one own’s efforts. – T. Krishnamacharya

7. The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
   ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

8. Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
   ~ Henry David Thoreau

9. Opportunities don't happen. You create them.
   ~ Chris Grosser

10. Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
    ~ John D. Rockefeller

11. Remember, no one is stopping you from lighting a lamp in a dark night. – Harivansh Rai Bacchan

12. I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
    ~ Thomas Jefferson

13. There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.
    ~ Ray Goforth

14. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better.
    ~ Jim Rohn

15. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
    ~ Helen Keller

16. Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success.
    ~ Thomas J. Watson

17. Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.
    ~ Tony Hsieh

18. I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
    ~ G. K. Chesterton

19. The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.
    ~ Anonymous

20. All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.
    ~ Michael John Bobak

Also read: 50 Handpicked Quotes On Productivity From Successful People Around The World

21. People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self~fulfilling prophecy.
    ~ Tony Robbins

22. Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.
    ~ Robert Kiyosaki

23. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
    ~ Walt Disney

24. The successful warrior is the average man, with laser~like focus.
    ~ Bruce Lee

25. There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
    ~ Colin Powell

26. Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
    ~ Conrad Hilton

27. I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure~It is: Try to please everybody.
    ~ Herbert Bayard Swope

28. Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
    ~ Albert Schweitzer

29. Success isn't just about what you accomplish in your life; it's about what you inspire others to do.
    ~ Anonymous

30. Fall seven times and stand up eight.
    ~ Japanese Proverb

31. Some people dream of success while others wake up and work.
    ~ Anonymous

32. The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.
    ~ Anonymous

33. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that other throw at him.
    ~ David Brinkley

34. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
    ~ Bill Cosby

35. In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.
    ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

36. Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
    ~ Thomas Edison

37. Don't be distracted by criticism. Remember~the only taste of success some people get is to take a bite out of you.
    ~ Zig Ziglar

38. The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.
    ~ John D. Rockefeller Jr.

39. You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
    ~ Oprah Winfrey

40. There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.
    ~ Anthony Robbins

Also read: 105 Famous Work Ethic Quotes to Boost Employee Morale

41. The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows.
    ~ Aristotle Onassis

42. I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.
    ~ Estee Lauder

43. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
    ~ Vidal Sassoon

44. Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.
    ~ Charles F. Kettering

45. Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.
    ~ John Wooden

46. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life–think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
    ~ Swami Vivekananda

47. Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.
    ~ Proverb

48. Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.
    ~ Vaibhav Shah

49. Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
    ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

50. If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents–start charging for it.
    ~ Kim Garst

51. The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.
    ~ Henry Ford

52. Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.
    ~ Anonymous

53. What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
    ~ Oscar Wilde

54. The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
    ~ Anonymous

55. The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
    ~ Bruce Feirstein

56. When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you.
    ~ Lolly Daskal

57. Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.
    ~ A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

58. The starting point of all achievement is desire.
    ~ Napoleon Hill

59. Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.
    ~ Robert Collier

60. You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing.
    ~ Philippos

Also read: 150 Leadership Quotes To Inspire The Leader Within You

61. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear–not absence of fear.
    ~ Mark Twain

62. Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
    ~ Pablo Picasso

63. We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.
    ~ Earl Nightingale

64. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
    ~ Abraham Lincoln

65. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
    ~ Albert Einstein

66. Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.
    ~ Vince Lombardi

67. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.
    ~ Les Brown

68. I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing.
    ~ Martha Stewart

69. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
    ~ Anonymous

70. The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
    ~ Ralph Nader

71. Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
    ~ Maya Angelou

72. As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
    ~ Bill Gates

73. A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.
    ~Henry Kravis

74. If you fully accept the worst that can ever happen in your journey, fear won’t ever be an obstacle in starting-up
    ~ Kunal Shah

75. If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small
    ~ Azim Premji

76. Trust because you are willing to accept the risk, not because it’s safe or certain.
    ~ Anonymous

77. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
    ~ Margaret Thatcher

78. Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
    ~ John R. Wooden

79. Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
    ~ Truman Capote

80. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it.
    ~ Washington Irving

Also read: 30 Thought-Provoking Company Culture Quotes

81. What would you do if you weren’t afraid.
    ~ Spencer Johnson

82. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
    ~ Herman Melville

83. Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.
    ~ Theodore N. Vail

84. You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.
    ~ Booker T. Washington

85. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.
    ~ Dale Carnegie

86. To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.
    ~ Anatole France

87. Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.
    ~ Wayne Dyer

88. Success is … knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.
    ~ John C. Maxwell

89. You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
    ~ George Lorimer

90. Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
    ~ Francis Chan

91. There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
    ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

92. Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
    ~ Jim Ryun

93. You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.
    ~ Michael Jordan

94. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
    ~ Diane Ackerman

95. Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time. ~ George Bernard Shaw

96. In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
    ~ Jane Smiley

97. The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.
    ~ Denis Waitley

98. Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference.
    ~ Robert Frost

99. If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!
    ~ T. Harv Eker

100. If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it–teach yourself to be impatient.
     ~ Gurbaksh Chahal

Also read: 35 Best Quotes About Creativity To Inspire Employees

Wrapping up

There is no definite recipe for success, but a dash of motivation and a pinch of zeal can take you a long way.

Success may be anything you choose it to be, so go and seek it. And as Napoleon Hill said, “You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

After reading our collection of all the most notable success quotes, we hope you're as fired up as we are!

This article is written by Braja Deepon Roy. He works as a Content Creator and Digital Marketer at Vantage Circle. He actively participates in the growth of corporate culture and keeps himself updated in this space. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com