Along time, and more so as socially-aware, close-knit communities developed, success has been counted as the pretermost tool for proving worthiness. Success in hunting, building houses, selling pastry, starting an IT business, it all came to mean that the person who could do something successfully was granted a better place in society. And yet, is…

I disagree with Washington. ‘Measures of success’ implies something we can quantify. In my opinion, accomplishment involves concrete achievements, the sort of thing we can put on a resume: ‘My GPA at Wisconsin was 4.0.’ ‘I became a vice-president of the company at age 32.’ ‘I completed the 5K run in 18 minutes.’ The struggles…

Struggle is more important measure of success than accomplishment. All things being equal, the accomplishment is a good measure. However, not all things are equal and not all start from the same point. When one is attempting to measure success, one must consider the effect of where the person started. In the case of success,…

Booker T. Washington tells us that, ‘success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.’ I agree with the claim to a certain extent – struggle can often be thought to be a more important…

In Western culture, people are often too concerned with the product of their work and not enough with the process. They want to be authors, not actually to write. They want to be actors, but eschew spending 14 hours slaving on a set. So the first question when going for success is: do you actually…

There is no question that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment. The person who struggles up from abject poverty to attain a comfortable middle-class existence shows much more strength of character than the guy born into wealth and privilege. Setting a goal and reaching it is admirable. Setting the bar high…

My belief on this topic is that success, as defined by realization of self- or externally- defined goals, is impossible without both struggle and accomplishment. To call struggle without accomplishment not successful flies in the face of ostensible American cultural values regarding respect for others and most importantly respect for hard word, but let’s face…

I agree with Booker Washington that success ought to be measured by what obstacles a person overcomes. To use the other standard, and judge a person by the position that they have reached in life, is to take no account of the accidents of birth or inheritance. Success, on the other hand, depends on a…

Not that I wish to place myself at loggerheads with such a venerable figure as Booker T. Washington, but I would take issue with the very notion of ‘success’ itself. The word ‘success’ is too loaded to properly answer the question. Pardon me if I deconstruct for a moment. In America, at least, success carries…

Washington’s point is well taken, especially considering that, as former slave, he had many obstacles to overcome and yet achieved a great deal. Generally speaking, I agree with Washington’s statement. After all, the world is rife with people who have accomplished much — after a great head start, namely a family fortune. The Rockefeller brothers…