Abstract: The study deals with the success philosophy its historical and cultural transformation. How often in modern life do people face a need to evaluate the actions of others? They have to correlate it to a certain arbitrary scale where the highest estimate is success and the lowest a failure. These estimation standards of certain people’s actions especially actively apply to famous and creative people-politicians, athletes, TV presenters, musicians, etc. The first, perhaps the most eye-catching, level of success is the monetary, financial success. But is it the main and only, the most important and most valuable measure of success? We have analyzed the understanding of success in the ancient biblical time, magic art, antiquity, ancient Chinese philosophy, early Christianity, the renaissance, protestantism and philosophy of pragmatism. The social and philosophical aspect presents the modern understanding of success. The relationship between the objective (external) and subjective (internal) types of success is analyzed; a positive essence of the success as the single desire to achieve a goal and subsequent emotional satisfaction of the choice of ways to achieve the desired are determined. The criteria to achieve positive success in practice and the factors being obstacles to such achievement are presented.