Quotes by American Authors - Page 63

Liberty is always dangerous but it is the safest thing we have.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
To live without risk for me would be tantamount to death.
Jacqueline Cochran
This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness business men who were not afraid of failure scientists who were not afraid of the truth thinkers who were not afraid of progress dreamers who were not afraid of action.
Brooks Atkinson
It is only by risking ... that we live at all.
William James
There's no such thing as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.
Neil Simon
It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.
Erica Jong
You've got to keep fighting-you've got to risk your life every six months to stay alive.
Elia Kazan
If your life is ever going to get better you'll have to take risks. There is simply no way you can grow without taking chances.
David Viscott
We love because it is the only true adventure.
Nikki Giovanni
Only those who dare truly live.
Ruth P. Freedman
If you don't take chances you can't do anything in life.
Michael Spinks
I postpone death by living by suffering by error by risking by giving by losing.
Anaïs Nin
All life is a chance. So take it! The person who goes furthest is the one who is willing to do and dare.
Dale Carnegie
Do not be too timid and squeamish. ... All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is so tempting to try the most difficult thing possible.
Jennie Jerome Churchill
Dancing on the edge is the only place to be.
Trisha Brown
Any life truly lived is a risky business and if one puts up too many fences against the risks one ends by shutting out life itself.
Kenneth S. Davis
Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported insulated and isolated from the risks of life- and if we fall our government stands ready with Band-Aids of every size.
Shirley Temple Black
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
Thomas Jefferson
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air - it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right.
Henry George
Wherever there is a human being I see God-given rights inherent in that being whatever may be the sex or complexion.
William Lloyd Garrison
Heaven itself has ordained the right.
George Washington
Right is the eternal sun the world cannot delay its coming.
Wendell Phillips
Let us have faith that Right makes Might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln
Be sure you are right then go ahead.
David Crockett
He will hew to the line of right let the chips fly where they may.
Roscoe Conkling
Sir I would rather be right than be President.
Henry Clay
We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.
Martha Grimes
The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
Thomas Jefferson
The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society-more briefly to find your real job and do it.
Charlotte P. Gilman
I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
Do what you love the money will follow.
Marsha Sinetar
We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Will Rogers
For me writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (i) when I'm doing it I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and once in a while pride and (3) it's frightening.
Gloria Steinem
We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.
Toni Morrison
I had already learned from more than a decade of political life that I was going to be criticized no matter what I did so I might as well be criticized for something I wanted to do.
Rosalynn Carter
What I wanted was to be allowed to do the thing in the world that I did best-which I believed then and believe now is the greatest privilege there is. When I did that success found me.
Debbi Fields
The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.
Ashley Montagu
In efforts to soar above our nature we invariably fall below it.
Edgar Allan Poe
When I was young I said to God "God tell me the mystery of the universe." But God answered "That knowledge is reserved for me alone." So I said "God tell me the mystery of the peanut." Then God said "Well George that's more nearly your size." And he told me.
George Washington Carver
We may fail of our happiness strive we ever so bravely but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities.
Agnes Repplier
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
Me I'm just a hack. I'm just a schlep-per. I just do what I can do.
Bette Midler
Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his abilities and for no more.
Gail Hamilton
I know that I haven't powers enough to divide myself into one who earns and one who creates.
Tillie Olsen
What really matters is what you do with what you have.
Shirley Lord
I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.
George Burns
The question "Who ought to be boss" is like asking "Who ought to be tenor in the quartet?" Obviously the man who can sing tenor.
Henry Ford
It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly curved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on ... the arrangement of textures and colors in a butterfly's wing?
Ray Kroc
It is not a dreamlike state but the somehow insulated state that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing but his mind is on the playing of his instrument with an internal sense of Tightness-it is not merely mechanical it is not only spiritual it is something of both on a different plane and a more remote one.
Arnold Palmer
Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A musician must make music an artist must paint a poet must write if he to be at peace with himself. What a man can be he must be.
Abraham Maslow
If you have to support yourself you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.
Katharine Hepburn
The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what interests you and that you can do well and put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
John D. Rockefeller III
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The fun of being alive is realizing you have a talent and you can use it every day so it grows stronger.... And if you're in an atmosphere where this talent is appreciated instead of just tolerated why it's just as good as sex.
Lou Centlivre
I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything anything I ever did I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.
Tennessee Williams
I was playing it like Willie Wilson but I forgot that I'm in Clint Hurdle's body.
Clint Hurdle
Everything keeps its best nature only by being put to its best use.
Phillips Brooks