300 Motivational Success Quotes to Inspire You Today
You’ll see the best quotes about success
We all have moments when we feel like success is just out of reach, don’t we? Whether you’re chasing a big dream or just trying to stay motivated, success can feel like this elusive thing that we can never quite grab hold of.
But the truth is, it’s all about mindset, determination, and believing in yourself. That’s where success quotes come in! They can remind us that we’re capable of achieving great things—sometimes, all we need is a bit of encouragement.
So, if you’re ready to feel inspired and motivated, let’s dive into some of the best success quotes that will help you keep pushing forward!
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Here are my favorite success quotes
- “The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.” – John D. Rockefeller
- “They succeed, because they think they can.” – Virgil
- “In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.” – Montesquieu
- “Success is never accidental.” – Jack Dorsey
- “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn
- “A rare skill can help you pay more bills than usual.” – David Angway
- “Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.” – Shaquille O’Neal
- “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Edison
- “If you don’t have a goal in mind, you can’t expect to achieve it.” – Frank Sonnenberg
- “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass
- “Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.” – Frank Ocean
- “There is no substitute for hard work.” – Thomas Edison
- “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison
- “One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
- “Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.” – Warren Bennis
- “Success is the child of audacity.” – Benjamin Disraeli
- “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.” – Albert E.N. Gray
- “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale
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- “Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.” – Kobe Bryant
- “True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.” – Paul Sweeney
- “Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.” – Norman Ralph Augustine
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Fortune befriends the bold.” – Emily Dickinson
- “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
- “Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” – Chris Grosser
- “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine
- “Life is like a sewer … what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” – Tom Lehrer
- “No one is free who is not master of themselves.” – Epictetus
- “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
- “Small is not just a stepping stone. Small is a great destination itself.” – Jason Fried
- “Impatience never commanded success.” – Edwin H. Chapin
- “Goals must stretch and test your cognitive skills for results achievement.” – Invajy
- “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” – Vince Lombardi
- “Women challenge the status quo because we are never it.” – Cindy Gallop
- “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.” – Joe Girard
- “He that can have patience can have what he will.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali
- “Do not whine. Do not complain. Work harder.” – Joan Didion
- “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” – Carl Sagan
- “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” – Ronald Reagan
- “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
- “Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone.” – Deepak Chopra
- “I’ve learned that something constructive comes from every defeat.” – Tom Landry
- “Give light and people will find the way.” – Ella Baker
- “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” – Dolly Parton
- “The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” – Roseanne Barr
- “Work harder than you think you did yesterday.” – Alex Elle
- “You can’t turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again.” – Bonnie Prudden
- “Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done right.” – Walt Disney
- “It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor
- “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” – Henry Ford
- “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
- “You can’t win unless you learn how to lose.” – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- “People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.” – Harvey MacKay
- “Comfort is the enemy of achievement.” – Farrah Gray
- “Without self-discipline, success is impossible, period.” – Lou Holtz
- “Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu
- “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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- “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
- “The pain of discipline is far less than the pain of regret.” – Sarah Bombell
- “What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.” – Aristotle
- “Success doesn’t just happen. It’s planned for, and it requires discipline.” – Farshad Asl
- “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee
- “We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” – Max DePree
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
- “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” – Walter Elliot
- “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – Jim Rohn
- “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein
- “You define beauty yourself, society doesn’t define your beauty.” – Lady Gaga
- “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” – John C. Maxwell
- “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James
- “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” – Pema Chodron
- “Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
- “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.” – Jim Rohn
- “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” – Dale Carnegie
- “Try not to become a man of success, but rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
- “People with ambition don’t give a damn what other people think of them.” – Diane Setterfield
- “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” – Isabel Allende
- “My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.” – Isaac Newton
- “The more difficult the victory, the greater the happiness in winning.” – Pelé
- “Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” – Dan Reeves
- “The person who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
- “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” – Cormac McCarthy
- “We don’t just sit around and wait for other people. We just make, and we do.” – Arlan Hamilton
- “We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.” – Bruce Lee
- “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
- “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” – A. A. Milne
- “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong & Sally Jenkins
- “You’ll never please everyone, but you only have to please a few people to get an offer.” – Harvey MacKay
- “Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you become your reality.” – Les Brown
- “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke
- “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
- “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.” – Shah Rukh Khan
- “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth
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- “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” – Anne Lamott
- “Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable.” – Dan Kennedy
- “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “There is no substitute for victory.” – Douglas MacArthur
- “Women must learn to play the game as men do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Without hustle, talent will only carry you so far.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- “The only way to prove that you’re a good sport is to lose.” – Ernie Banks
- “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “Just because you fail once doesn’t mean you’re gonna fail at everything.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.” – Mortimer J. Adler
- “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather
- “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” – Harry Golden
- “The only one who can tell you ‘you can’t win’ is you, and you don’t have to listen.” – Jessica Ennis
- “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
- “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle
- “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” – Jim Rohn
- “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Growth and comfort do not coexist.” – Ginni Rometty
- “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford
- “I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” – Jonathan Winters
- “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.” – Carol Burnett
- “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” – Muhammad Ali
- “Much effort, much prosperity.” – Euripides
- “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin
- “Do the best you can. No one can do more than that.” – John Wooden
- “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” – Kurt Cobain
- “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
- “You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.” – Michael Phelps
- “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
- “Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.” – Sam Ewing
- “The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.” – Joe Paterno
- “To achieve big things, you have to have big dreams.” – Conrad Hilton
- “Talent is nothing without persistence.” – Dean Crawford
- “Success is best when it’s shared.” – Howard Schultz
- “Change course, but don’t give up.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison
- “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
- “Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.” – Margaret Thatcher
- “For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.” – Walter Scott
- “The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible.” – Charles Kingsleigh
- “The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra
- “If you’re having fun, that’s when the best memories are built.” – Simone Biles
- “There is little success where there is little laughter.” – Andrew Carnegie
- “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle
- “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso
- “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Estée Lauder
- “If you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” – Conan O’Brien
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- “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi
- “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.” – Bette Midler
- “Don’t focus on numbers. Focus on doing what you do best.” – Casey Ho
- “You are never too small to make a difference.” – Greta Thunberg
- “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” – Molière
- “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
- “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost
- “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- “Success is survival.” – Leonard Cohen
- “Goal setting is the secret to a compelling future.” – Tony Robbins
- “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” – Alan Lakein
- “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” – Maya Angelou
- “To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live.” – Dorothy West
- “I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.” – Miguel de Cervantes
- “Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” – Julia Child
- “Never let success get to your head, and never let failure get to your heart.” – Drake
- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
- “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – E.E. Cummings
- “Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure.” – Aisha Tyler
- “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
- “High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.” – Charles Kettering
- “Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” – Ruth Gordo
- “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.” – Michelle Obama
- “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” – Duke Ellington
- “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” – John F. Kennedy
- “Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” – Howard Schultz
- “I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.” – Laird Hamilton
- “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “I have stood on a mountain of no’s for one yes.” – Barbara Elaine Smith
- “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates
- “To follow, without halt, one aim: that’s the secret of success.” – Anna Pavlova
- “The mind is everything. What you think you become.” – Buddha
- “Dream big. Start small. Act now.” – Robin Sharma
- “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
- “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
- “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” – Albert Einstein
- “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.” – George S. Patton
- “Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.” – Mike Ditka
- “Proper planning prevents poor performance.” – James Baker
- “Achievement is talent plus preparation.” – Malcolm Gladwell
- “The secret of my success is a two word answer: Know people.” – Harvey S. Firestone
- “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan
- “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
- “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
- “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
- “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
- “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.” – Maya Angelou
- “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
- “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
- “Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle.” – Ross Simmonds
- “If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.” – Malcolm X
- “Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.” – David Ogilvy
- “If you’re not positive energy, you’re negative energy.” – Mark Cuban
- “If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.” – Geena Davis
- “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” – Diana Scharf Hunt
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- “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
- “Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.” – James Allen
- “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Confucius
- “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” – Will Rogers
- “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” – Sun Tzu
- “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” – Robert Browning
- “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
- “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
- “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn
- “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
- “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
- “Ideation without execution is delusion.” – Robin Sharma
- “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
- “Live out of your imagination, not your history.” – Stephen Covey
- “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
- “Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
- “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Gain control of your time, and you will gain control of your life.” – John Landis Mason
- “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker
- “The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.” – Epicurus
- “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” – Suzy Kassem
- “Impossible is just an opinion.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” – Dale Carnegie
- “There is no better compass than compassion.” – Amanda Gorman
- “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston S. Churchill
- “If you can’t yet do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill
- “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein
- “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” – Dr. Mae Jemison
- “He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.” – Confucius
- “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.” – Jon Bon Jovi
- “If you prioritize yourself, you are going to save yourself.” – Gabrielle Union
- “Never say never because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.” – Michael Jordan
- “You must plan to be spontaneous.” – David Hockney
- “Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.” – G.K. Nielson
- “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates
- “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
- “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” – Winnie the Pooh
- “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
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- “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
- “Men are born to succeed, not to fail.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” – J. Paul Getty
- “Every master was once a disaster.” – David T.S. Wood
- “You carry the passport to your own happiness.” – Diane Von Furstenberg
- “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” – Shirley Chisholm
- “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn
- “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “Don’t worry about failure. You only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
- “Success is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell
- “Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.” – Dale Carnegie
- “The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.” – Chanakya
- “In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.” – Miguel de Cervantes
- “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins
- “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” – Dalai Lama
- “The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.” – Ayn Rand
- “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
- “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost
- “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.” – David Hurley
- “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” – Coco Chanel
- “Success is not in what you have, but who you are.” – Bo Bennett
- “The future depends on what you do today.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “The first and best victory is to conquer self.” – Plato
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” – Scott Adams
- “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
- “There is no success without hardship.” – Sophocles
- “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” – Stephen McCranie
- “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” – Sheryl Sandberg
- “Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.” – Christopher Reeve
- “Every day you spend at work is a foundation for your future.” – Abhishek Ratna
- “I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.” – Edna Mode
- “More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.” – Michelle Obama
- “If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.” – Maria Edgeworth
- “I don’t believe in failure. It’s not failure if you enjoyed the process.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.” – Bo Jackson
- “The only place where your dreams become impossible is in your own thinking.” – Robert H. Schuller
- “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy
- “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” – Og Mandino
- “The cost of discipline is always less than the price of regret.” – Nido Qubein
- “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Strategic planning is worthless—unless there is first a strategic vision.” – John Naisbitt
- “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” – Erica Jong
- “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis
- “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll
- “With self-discipline almost anything is possible.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals.” – Roy Bennett
- “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca
What are quotes for success, and why should I read them?
Success quotes are words of wisdom that remind us that success doesn’t just happen by accident—it takes hard work, persistence, and the right mindset.
They show us that success is a journey, built on small steps, learning from failures, and staying focused on our goals. Success doesn’t come overnight, but with consistency and effort, it’s achievable.
So, why should you read success quotes? Well, success quotes are incredibly motivating. They encourage us to keep going, even when things get tough, and they remind us that the road to success is full of bumps and lessons.
Success is a process, and these quotes inspire us to believe in that process.
Personally, when I read success quotes, they help me stay grounded and focused. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but these quotes give me that little nudge to keep moving forward.
They remind me that no matter how hard things seem, I can keep pushing and make progress. In a way, they’re like a little friendly reminder that success isn’t a straight path, and the important thing is to keep going.
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