Michael Korda Quotes

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Michael Korda

Profession : Novelist

Birth : October 8, 1933

To succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Michael Korda

Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you desire from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out.

Michael Korda

I once attended a birthday party where Danny Kaye dropped in to entertain the birthday boy and his guests; I was sometimes taken for lunch on Saturdays by my father to The Brown Derby; and my favorite meal is still the Cobb salad in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Michael Korda

The more you can dream, the more you can do.

Michael Korda

If you don't believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man's way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there.

Michael Korda

The pleasure lies not in the cookies, but in the pattern the crumbs make when the cookies crumble.

Michael Korda

Never reveal all of yourself to other people; hold back something in reserve so that people are never quite sure if they really know you.

Michael Korda

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.

Michael Korda

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.

Michael Korda

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

Michael Korda

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility.

Michael Korda

In Eastern Europe, the past is not only always hovering over the present, it is not even passed. It waits, like some malevolent caged beast, ready at any moment to escape and bring back all the horrors.

Michael Korda

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Michael Korda

The purely agitation attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.

Michael Korda

I come from a family that was very strong, very successful, very bizarre, and terrifically exciting. Being a Korda is something I regard as special - not wonderful, or worthy of a national monument, but special.

Michael Korda

Ronald Reagan had a kind of shallow movie-star charisma - a combination of makeup and the skill of a good actor - but it wasn't the real thing, and was something that he could turn off when the cameras weren't running.

Michael Korda

Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement.

Michael Korda

An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition.

Michael Korda

Years of standing in the limelight portraying other people for large amounts of money does not usually lead to a high degree of self-examination, let alone self-criticism.

Michael Korda

The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance.

Michael Korda