Will Smith Quotes

You never know why something works or doesn't.

Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

Things happen in weird, serendipitous ways.

The truth is, success often occurs for reasons we don't expect, under circumstances over which we have little control and sometimes unrelated to our own efforts. There is only one other lesson that success should teach us: Be as amazed by your own success as your friends are. If you truly are, you stand the best chance to repeat it.

I never really thought I'd be successful. I never though I'd get books published, but this was something completely beyond me. The fact that it happened is wonderful, but it is not something that I was aiming for.

My recipe for success is chance, basically. Just luck. It's a miracle that people still hire me after some of the stuff I've gotten away with. Honestly!

It's always the people who don't want things who get them.

I think whenever I've thought something might go well, it hasn't, and when I've thought, 'Oh yeah, just chuck it out there,' that's when it kicks off, so now, I don't claim to understand anything.

I played at Sony, Warner Bros., Universal, Big Machine, Capitol... after I played every one of those places, everyone offered me a record deal. I was just like, 'Who am I? Why do I even deserve this?' There are people busting their butts on Broadway doing this hardcore, playing three hours a night for tips, and I didn't even ask for it.

I won't lose my mind now that I have fame, nor will I lose myself once it goes away.

If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident.

Bad things can happen even to the best players.

Sometimes you get lucky and things are as easy as you had imagined, but that's rarely the case.

I just think I got lucky. Every step of the way, I've gotten lucky with everything I've gotten to do and be a part of.

For most human beings, if what they want happens, it is a success. If what they could not have imagined happens, it is luck. If what nobody could foresee happens, it is a miraculous existence.

Football works in mysterious ways.

Of course it's all luck.

There are just times when it seems you can't do anything wrong. Then there are other times when whatever you do is wrong. I think I could have had more drive. I was never very ambitious.

If he ever had a bright idea it would be beginner's luck.

People really don't like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either. If you use better data, you can find better values; there are always market inefficiencies to exploit, and so on. But it has a broader and less practical message: don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation.

It won't be easy, that is why I have always failed where others have succeeded.

Winning often teaches you about losing and losing often teaches you about winning and a lot of things also happen by luck and you have to be at the right place at the right time.

...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.

I did not succeed in everything I did. And even where it did seem I was succeeding it was not always the case. The human heart has a million facets.