Will Rogers strips away the mythology of success by insisting it requires something far harder than talent or luck: genuine conviction. Notice he doesn't say "work hard" or "be smart"—he says *believe*, which demands you've done the harder interior work of settling your doubts. A surgeon who merely knows the anatomy and performs the motions competently will never match one who actually loves the work and trusts in its value, and patients sense that difference in their outcomes long before any objective measure could prove it. What makes this formulation bite is its implication that success without this trinity isn't really success at all, just accomplished drudgery.