Success Quote by Bette Davis

Compulsion is the real star of this line, not ambition. Davis frames work as a sentence handed down by a judge she can’t appeal: “doomed,” “eternity,” “endless.” It’s melodramatic language from a woman who understood melodrama as craft, but it’s not theatrical for show. It’s the diction of someone describing a body-level need, the kind that doesn’t negotiate with comfort or acclaim.

The key move is her refusal of the standard success narrative. Achievement doesn’t arrive as a resting place; it functions like a trigger. “Success only breeds a new goal” treats accomplishment less like nourishment than like acceleration, an addiction with socially acceptable packaging. In Hollywood, where praise is public and insecurity is institutional, that rings as both confession and diagnosis. The industry trains artists to confuse being wanted with being worthy, then keeps moving the finish line.

The “golden apple” image is sly and brutal. A prize that looks mythic and complete turns out to be reproductive: it contains “seeds,” the next round of hunger. Devouring it should end desire; instead it plants it. The subtext is that external rewards (roles, box office, awards, status) are never pure closure because they carry the next expectation inside them: top this, outlast them, prove it wasn’t a fluke.

Coming from Davis - a performer who fought studios, cultivated an unglamorous intensity, and survived on sheer will - it reads like self-mythmaking with teeth. Not “work ethic” as virtue, but work as captivity, and the cage is lined with applause.