It's both. Success requires hard work and lot of luck. Mere hard work is not enough -- there are millions of hard-working people living paycheck to paycheck. S

It's both. Success requires hard work and lot of luck. Mere hard work is not enough -- there are millions of hard-working people living paycheck to paycheck. Successful people are proud of their hard work, and usually they are right. But the smart ones among them notice that they worked equally hard at different projects A, B, C, and while project A was a success, projects B and C have failed, for reasons unrelated to how hard they worked, often pure luck. So they can imagine an equally hard-working person who just got unlucky with all their projects. It's as if in return for your hard work you got lottery tickets. No hard work, no tickets, no money. But sometimes it's also lot of hard work, many tickets, and still no money. Maybe the arrogant successful people are those who succeeded at their first project, so they believe the relation between hard work and success is automatic? Or maybe people who had enough of safety net, so they knew they can keep trying over and over again until they succeed?