Quote of the Day: Woody Allen on Success

Notice he says “showing up,” not “trying.” Trying is a private intention; showing up is a public, verifiable act. The phrase refuses to romanticize effort and instead honors attendance, the unglamorous choice to be present where life is actually happening. That’s the wager inside “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

The line lands because it punctures a common myth: that progress belongs to the most gifted, the most connected, the most flawlessly prepared. In practice, the advantage often goes to the person who keeps appearing, at the meeting, the rehearsal, the interview, the hard conversation, long enough for competence to compound. Showing up is how you end up in the room when the problem is named, when the solution is proposed, when the next role quietly opens.

It’s also a discipline of attention. “Being there” isn’t just logging hours; it’s arriving mentally, listening closely, taking notes, asking the second question, staying five minutes after. Opportunities rarely present themselves with fireworks. They look like routine, or inconvenience, or a calendar invite you almost decline. The habit of showing up short-circuits perfectionism and fear: you don’t have to be brilliant on day one; you just have to be present on day one, and then again tomorrow.

As a comic and filmmaker, Woody Allen built a long, conspicuous career by putting work into the world repeatedly, year after year. Whatever one thinks of his legacy, he understood the grind behind the curtain: output is often the byproduct of consistent attendance.

August invites a quiet reset, summer’s halfway mark, routines restarting, ambitions resurfacing. Apply the quote as a practical rule: choose one place you’ve been avoiding and show up this week, then do it again. That’s how success gets built, through resilience that looks, at first, like simple presence.