In the field of economic development, economists like to think Western economics is value-neutral, but in truth, it is not. Success is defined according to production units or monetary worth. The contrast with successful indigenous development is stark. For example, since they understand the environment to be a living being, the Northern Cheyenne have opposed coal strip mining on their reservation because it kills the water beings. There are no cost measurements of pollution, production, or other elements that can capture this kind of impact. There is an emerging recognition of the need for a spiritual base, not only in our individual lives, but also in our work and in our communities.
-- Rebecca Adamson

* “Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.”
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

"To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary: nature, study and practice."
-- Henry Ward Beecher

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.
-- Henry Ward Beecher

* "If I've impacted on one heart, one mind, one soul, and brought to that individual a greater truth than that individual came into a relationship with me having, then I would say that I have been successful."
-- Harry Belafonte

For complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean only "money economy." It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement. I am no economist, but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more profitable than anything that is healthy. What is wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national product" than what is right with us.
~ Wendell Berry

* “Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”
~ Andrew Carnegie

* I believe that success brings responsibility... The bottom line is that all of us should be involved in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.
-- Harry Chapin

* When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have, it is a world that moves away from unequal, unstable, unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally, nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.
~ Bill Clinton

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

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-- Bill Cosby

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
-- Bob Dylan

* The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury... Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree—a matter profoundly important to him.
-- Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa)

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
-- Thomas A. Edison

* Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
-- Albert Einstein

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

* "...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

* To me, success is choice and opportunity.
~ Harrison Ford

If you look around Green Festival, you'd be convinced that the movement for a just and sustainable world is booming. But is it? The answer is a resounding 'yes'! And success is being fueled by creative, passionate, people using powerful economic strategies to promote fair trade, renewable energy, local economies, and investment in healthy communities.
-- Alicia Gravitz

* It's easy to become hopeless. So people must have hope: the human brain, the resilience of nature, the energy of young people and the sort of inspiration that you see from so many hundreds of people who tackle tasks that are impossible and never give up and succeed.
~ Jane Goodall

* "Never be discouraged from being an activist because people tell you that you'll not succeed. You have already succeeded if you're out there representing truth or justice or compassion or fairness or love."
-- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

* The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and errors, its successes and setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.
--Dag Hammarskjold

* Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
-- Vaclav Havel

“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”
--Elbert Hubbard

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success?" - Elbert Hubbard

* We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.
-- Arianna Huffington

“The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure -- but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.”
-- Hubert Humphrey

* Your success and happiness lie in you... Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
-- Helen Keller

* We all have someone or something to forgive . . . and when we learn how, we become free to increase success in every area of our life.
-- Azim Khamisa

"That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln

"What exactly is success? For me it is to be found not in applause, but in the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one’s ideal."
-- Anna Pavlova

"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture. Do not build obstacles in your imagination. Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can."
-- Norman Vincent Peale

Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
~Norman Vincent Peale

We've all heard that we have to learn from our mistakes, but I think it's more important to learn from successes. If you learn only from your mistakes, you are inclined to learn only errors.
- Norman Vincent Peale

* Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
-- Pablo Picasso

* The measure of our success will be the condition on which we leave the world for the next generation.
~ Robert Redford

* We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure.
-- E.F. Schumacher

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

* "...if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him."
-- Henry David Thoreau

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

“Four steps to achievement: Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.”
- William Arthur Ward

“Men never plan to be failures; they simply fail to plan to be successful.”
- William Arthur Ward

* “I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you. ”
-- Oprah Winfrey

* For everyone of us that succeeds, it's because there's somebody there to show you the way out. The light doesn't always necessarily have to be in your family; for me it was teachers and school.
-- Oprah Winfrey