Quotes To Inspire Success (Financial and Otherwise)

I've compiled some quotes about money, success and life in general that remind us that we don't have to reinvent the wheel -- we just need to know how to source it. We also learn, yet again, that a felicity of expression is timeless. So read on for some of my favorite quotes, and share some favorites of your own (along with why they strike a chord) with your fellow readers in the comments section.

"Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards." -- Soren Kierkegaard (Investing, too, in a nutshell.)

"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." -- Thomas La Mance (Applies money-wise as well.)

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end." -- Ursula K. Le Guin (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

"There are three ingredients in the good life; learning, earning and yearning." -- Christopher Morley (What a concept, life governed by a rhyme.)

"Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open." -- Proverb ('Nuff said.)

"No man will work for your interests unless they are his." -- David Seabury (This is always important, where money is concerned at least.)

"The fire at the manufacturing plant was due to friction caused by a large inventory rubbing up against an insurance policy." -- Old Southern Saying.

"Whoever created the name life insurance had to be the sales genius of all time." -- Robert Half (An oldie, but a goodie.)

"Happiness has many roots, but none more important than security." -- E. R. Stettinius (This is an acknowledgement of the value of financial planning, not a tip of the hat to the TSA.)

"Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed; businesses planned for profit are apt to fail." -- Nicholas Murray Butler (If you love what you do for people, your chances for success are multiplied.)

"Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two." -- William Ockham. (Alfred Einstein said something similar, too.)

"He will always be a slave who does not know how to live on a little." -- Horace (It's a hedge against financial overextension, for one thing.)

"One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute." -- William Feather (And, due to varying individual needs at different times, both could be right.)

"Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it." -- Will Rogers (Still true 100 years later.)

"There is no such thing as a self-made man." -- George Burton Adams (It takes a village, no man is an island ... you get the idea.)

"For success, attitude is equally as important as ability." -- Harry F. Banks (So true ... and sometimes a lot more important.)

"Success makes a fool seem wise." -- H.G. Bohn (Do a Google search for "celebrity" to find endless examples.)

"Only a mediocre person is always at his best." -- William Somerset Maugham (Interestingly, Maugham was a physician.)

"The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away." -- John S. Caldwell (He apparently never heard of the deficit.)

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." -- Albert Einstein (And he lived about 1,000 pages of the tax code ago.)

"There is always someone who is paid too much and taxed too little -- and it's always somebody else." -- Cullen Hightower

"Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is quite so satisfying as an income-tax refund." -- F.J. Raymond (Until you realize, however, that you just received back your interest-free loan to Uncle Sam.)

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw (Special-interest groups flourished then, too.)

"You can never 'find' time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." -- George Buxton (As I have written before, busy people always have time for things that they want to do, but never time for the unwanted.)