Richard M. Devos

I thought I’d be a success even back in the mailroom at William Morris. It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.

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.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

A successful person finds the right place for himself. But a successful leader finds the right place for others.

I’ve always won, and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is.

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

It’s next to impossible to build a successful business without relationships.

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.

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who do nothing and succeed.

Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.

When you’re successful, things have a momentum and you can’t tell if you have created the momentum or it’s creating you.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

[As a child] I want to earn a thousand dollars a week, have an apartment on Ocean Parkway, and drive a Cadillac convertible.

Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!