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Good fashioned hard work is the best determiner of success…

• No-one gets an iron-clad guarantee of success. Certainly, factors like opportunity, luck and timing are important. But the backbone of success is usually found in old-fashioned, basic concepts like hard work, determination, good planning and perseverance. Mia Hamm
• Work diligently. Work patiently and persistently. And you’re bound to be successful. Goenka
• Concentrated effort—plain old hard work—is what it takes to realize any difficult goal. And that is exactly what it takes to sculpt and polish a human life into the work of art it is intended to be. Tom Morris
• If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession. Carlos Castaneda
• Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Napoleon Hill
• Yes, the elevator to success is out-of-order—you will need to labor up the stairs. MJ DeMarco
• The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…one step at a time. Joe Girard
• Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. Henry David Thoreau
• The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. Oprah Winfrey
• Success is a ladder you cannot climb with your hands in your pockets. American Proverb
• Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. Stephen King
• You may have the loftiest goals, the highest ideals, the noblest dreams, but remember this: nothing works unless you do. Nido Qubein
• The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.
• Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. Henry Ford
• There is no substitute for work. Worthwhile results come from hard work and careful planning. John Wooden
• Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment. Heywood Hale Broun
• I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work. Louis C. K.
• Diligence,  Effort,  Commitment,  Perseverance

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…for there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going

• If you spend too much time learning the tricks of the trade, you may not learn the trade. If you’re working on finding a short cut, the easy way, you’re not working hard enough on the fundamentals. You may get away with it for a spell, but there is no substitute for the basics. And the first basic is good, old- fashioned hard work. John Wooden
• There is no substitute for hard work. Thomas Edison
• I challenge you to show me one single solitary individual who achieved his or her own personal greatness without lots of hard work. John Wooden
• The road to success is aways under construction. Lily Tomlin
• Those at the top of the mountain didn’t fall there.
• The elevator to success is not running; you must climb the stairs. Zig Ziglar

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Hard work is what sets men apart

• The only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren’t is the willingness to work very, very hard. Helen Gurley Brown
• I have always maintained that excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work. Charles Darwin
• Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. William Feather

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Make the effort

• Success is dependent on effort. Sophocles
• Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. Napoleon Hill
• Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory. Mahatma Gandhi
• Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply. Denis Waitley
• Welcome the task that makes you go beyond yourself. Frank McGee
• If you feel you are down on your luck, check the level of your effort. Robert Brault
• Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results. It produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last. Hamilton Holt
• A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. Elbert Hubbard
• Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing. David Letterman
• About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age. Gloria Pitzer
• All I’m saying is that behind extraordinary achievement you will always discover extraordinary effort. Robin Sharma
• I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end. Larry Bird
• Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. Will Rogers
• It’s never crowded along the extra mile. Wayne Dyer
• Plough deep while sluggards sleep. Benjamin Franklin
• Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential. Winston Churchill
• In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of effort is the measure of the results. James Allen
• There’s no ceiling on effort! Harvey C. Fruehauf
• Effort,  Effortlessness

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Adopt a professional mindset

• The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. Steven Pressfield
• The amateur plays part-time, the professional full-time. The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven days a week. Steven Pressfield
• The difference between a creative person and a creative producer is hard work. Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

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Do your level best, especially in the important things

• Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self- judgment, self- abuse and regret. Miguel Ruiz
• Any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day. Booker T. Washington
• Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best. Andrew Carnegie
• Do your best and be a little better than you are. Gordon B. Hinckley
• Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. Oprah Winfrey
• Give the world the best you have, and the best will come to you. Madeline Bridge
• I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got. Walter Cronkite
• I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. Abraham Lincoln
• I have done my best. That is all the philosophy of living one needs. Lin-yutang
• I hope you will simply do what you can do in the best way you know. If you do so, you will witness miracles come to pass. Gordon B. Hinckley
• I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end. Larry Bird
• Mediocre men work at their best; men seeking excellence strive to do better. Edwin Louis Cole
• My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. Charles Dickens
• My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. Oprah Winfrey
• Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for. Woodrow T. Wilson
• The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other. Orison Swett Marden
• The key ingredient to any kind of happiness or success is to never give less than your best. Russell Simmons
• The man who has done his level best is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure. C. Forbes
• There is one single thread binding my way together… the way of the Master consists in doing one’s best… that is all. Confucius
• To me success would be to be able to do your very best in everything you do. Paul Cummings
• We do not have to be the best to be effective, but we do have to be at our best. Bob Briner
• We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility. Albert Einstein
• When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. Helen Keller
• You only get this one blessed opportunity to make the effort to do your best. And then it’s over. No second chance. John Wooden
• You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day. Marian Wright Edelman
• Do your best

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Work hard and you’ll succeed among many who expect things to just come to them

• Many people think they want things, but they don’t really have the strength, the discipline. They are weak.  I believe that you get what you want if you want it badly enough.  Sophia Loren
• It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don’t have to. Walter Linn
• If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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Motivation, meaning and enthusiasm is what makes hard work sustainable

• Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation. Malcolm Gladwell
• Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. Malcolm Gladwell
• Motivation,  Meaning,  Enthusiasm

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Don’t just work hard, work smart too

• Many people think the key to success is hard work. And that is important. Very important. But it’s more important to work smart. Tom Morris
• The combination of hard work and smart work is efficient work. Robert Half
• Efficiency

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Work physically hard while remaining still and calm inside

• You may be engaged in several directions and work with enormous zest, yet remain inwardly free and quiet, with a mirror like mind, which reflects all, without being affected. Nisargadatta  Maharaj
• Stillness,  Calmness

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Don’t waste effort doing what is unimportant

• The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other than that intended. That is why great men produce such a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. Walter Russell
• Do less, and you’ll force yourself to choose between what’s just busywork, and what really matters. Life then becomes effortless, as you accomplish big things while being less busy. Leo Babauta
• Put first things first

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Fuel your work with enthusiasm

• Hard work should be a by-product of enthusiasm and when that’s the case, the work is no longer hard. Anthony Lambert
• There is nothing more marvelous than doing something you love to do and getting paid for it. It ceases to become work, money, and effort; and it becomes fun, your expression of the joy of life. Stuart Wilde
• Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation. Malcolm Gladwell
• Dropping the things I hate frees me up to do the things I love. How much more skillful, soulful, and useful could your best work get if you didn’t spend so much energy pushing yourself into doing stuff you hate? Leo Babauta
• Enthusiasm

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Don’t work hard swimming against the tide

• To swim a fast 100 metres, it’s better to swim with the tide than to work on your stroke. Warren Buffett
• Go with the flow

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• By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost
• Every good idea sooner or later degenerates into hard work. Calvin Trillin
• Executive ability: The art of getting the credit for all the hard work that somebody else does.
• Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
• Hard work is an accumulation of easy things that should have been done last week
• Hard work is damn near as overrated as monogamy. Huey Long
• Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
• Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves some turn up their noses and some don’t turn up at all. Sam Ewing
• He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears but by diligent hard work he overcame them. James Reston
• I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early. Charles Lamb
• I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. Jerome K. Jerome
• I’m not a very good sleeper but you know what? I’m willing to put in a few extra hours every day to get better. That’s just the kind of hard worker I am. Jarod Kintz
• I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance? Ronald Reagan
• I’ve met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work. And it was just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the time. Bill Gold
• If hard work is the key to success most people would rather pick the lock. Claude McDonald
• If hard work were such a wonderful thing surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves. Lane Kirkland
• Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. Jules Renard
• Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.
• Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. Ann Landers
• Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment. Broun Heywood Hale
• The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Vince Lombardi
• The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen. Sarah Brown
• The reason most people do not recognize an opportunity when they meet it is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like Hard Work.
• They say hard work never hurt anyone, but I figure why take the chance? Ronald Reagan
• Triumph is just a little oomph added to try.
• When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work ask him: ‘Whose?’ Don Marquis

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