People pursue to become success and forget to nurture their character. Albert Einstein says that become a man of value, in other words, keeps honesty, diligence, equality or empathy towards others as the core values that you should abide to. Because when you do that you not just nurture your character but also influence the people you care in a good way.

But if you just pursue to become the most successful man, may it be becoming the world’s richest man or win a Nobel prize or win an Academy Award. You would only achieve success, and achieving success without having good core values like honesty, diligence, equality or empathy towards others, you might alone standing on the top with no one to care for you.

Dhirubhai Ambani and Dawood Ibrahim are both considered successful in their respective fields yet while Ambani holds immense respect among the people, Dawood is known to be a deadly terrorist. This shows that though achieving success is necessary yet if a person does not have values his actions and success does not hold much importance.

The system of education where success is measured by marks, success in occupation measured by money one makes has put values on backseat. Cheating in exams becomes socially acceptable, deceitful means to get promotions in jobs become a norm as people give more importance to being successful than possessing values.

Relevance of quotes in contemporary society

• Politicians though they are considered successful in their carrier and one of the most powerful people are involved in scams like Coalgate, 2G SPECTRUM, Rafal Deal etc, due to lack of values of integrity, transparency, and sense of duty.
• There are several incidences pertaining to suicide attempts by young youths just because they have failed to make a difference between success and possessing values in life.
• In sports as well, education and awareness about rules do not necessarily give rise to good sportsmanship but rather it comes from good morals and values. The recent instances of spot and match-fixing are a case in point.
• Bureaucrats are all well educated and successful but still, sometimes it has been seen their involvement in bribery or corruption cases is common in our society.
• In economics as well, the “invisible hand” seems to do good only as far as certain basic norms and values of the economic system are maintained, like penchant for quality, transparency, and accountability. Otherwise, the whole economic system may be subverted by vested interests for indiscriminate profit-making.
• Cyber-crime – India is vulnerable to cyber-crime done by people who are well educated and expertise in computer technology but since they lack ethical values they support such criminal activities.
• A complete collapse of ethical values among well educated higher section of the society is evident in the lives of the many Dalit men and (mostly) women who have been pushed into the denigrating “profession” of accumulating human excreta for waste disposal.
• Similarly rising violence against elders, desertion, old-age homes and neglect(eg-Vrindavan) shows declining moral values of showing love, care and compassion to elders in their most needed time.
• The involvement of educated young youth to carry out terrorist activities is rampant in our society due to a lack of values. Let’s take the example of Yakub Memon who was alumni of the Institute of the Chartered Accountants of India, worked hand and glove with his brother, Tiger Memon in conspiring the heinous 1993 Mumbai bombings 

Gandhi too focused on Means rather than focussing on ends , so that values are truly incorporated in our means of achieving success & Sarvodaya is attained. In today’s era when the success of a person is influenced by and in turn influences many in the social and personal web, a person could easily weigh end higher than the means. A person with a high value system would surely focus on the means rather than the end since for him/her the real definition of success would mean. For e.g the IAS officer Ashok Khemka who valued fair means despite facing rough times in his job was awarded a post of Principal Secretary depicting that valuing values are certainly more important than success-sans-values.