Tony Dorsett

I don’t cheat to win, I’d rather lose.

I was determined to succeed in what I loved to do. I wasn’t going to let my disability stand in my way.

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

If I had to select one quality and one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick persistence I and determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, “Here comes number seventy one”.

Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.

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.

Keys to success: Research your ideas, plan for success, expect success, and just do it.

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

A lot of people don’t like to win. They actually don’t know how to win, and they don’t like to win because down deep inside they don’t want to win.

There are only two rules for being successful. One, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.

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

You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.