Success Myth Quotes

Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.

An important lesson: Things that look like an overnight success usually aren't.

With comics, you always talk about a big break, but there are a lot of big breaks in your life and not one of them makes a big difference.

It is fashionable to be a college dropout, no? Like Steve Jobs.

The secret of success is this: there is no secret of success.

Success doesn't mean that you are healthy, success doesn't mean that you're happy, success doesn't mean that you're rested. Success really doesn't mean that you look good, or feel good, or are good.

Well, success does not mean doing well.

Black people in the US are told all the time, from all aspects, that they're nothing, that they're less than. And of course that bears fruit, but no one wants to shoulder part of the blame. A lot of people here can't see around their own family's history. They don't want to see that where they come from and the people they surround themselves with might have played a role in all this. This is all part of our national myth about the individual. We think that a lack of success comes from the individual not working hard enough. A lot of people in this country really believe that.

Yes, we worship the idea of the "self-made man" - otherwise we'd go on strike against Bill Gates having all that money! We worship that idea.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 was in large part the result of the so-called 'success' of people who did not understand their fiduciary duty. This kind of 'success' is extremely harmful to all of society.

You can work for 10 years without making it... we aren't actually all living in mansions.

There's a tendency for us to think that the secret of our success is something that is mystical and maybe someday my time will come. And it's certainly out there somewhere; it's around the bend; it's at the top of the hill.

If anything, I'm the most hesitant to bring on a label. That terrifies me. I think people believe major labels are linked to success. They're absolutely not that.

One naively thinks that by winning the Olympics, it's going to be this switch, and then your life is going to be perfect, and that's not reality.

Everyone saw me on TV or read articles, and it was all about my great marriage, the white picket fence, all this success and my perfect life. But behind the scenes, it was a struggle.

I don't believe in the transformation myth, where if you have more success, life changes for you.

There's no success story. Everybody's got a ghetto story. You always want to make it bigger than what it is.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.

We are told, if you work hard, you'll succeed—but if that were true, Black people would own this country.

I think that it's a myth that there's one job that makes your whole career, unless you're winning an Oscar. But even that doesn't work for some people.

A lot of people think you go to a top college, you come into the NBA and it'll be all a breeze and easy. It's not like that.

There are some parts of my life that are wonderful, and it's amazing to get to go to cool events and award shows and things like that, but I think the outside perception is that your life just changes overnight and you wear Dolce and Gabanna suits and drive a Mercedes. But life's just not like that.

Remember, I come from such an excessively overdone, red-carpet place called Hollywood. So I'm used to people blowing up their success in ways that are far above and beyond the truth.

The success that Americans are said to worship is success of a specific sort: accomplished not through hard work, primarily, but through the ingenious angle, the big break. Sit down at a lunch counter, stand back up a star. Invest in a new issue and watch it soar. Split a single atom, win a war.