Quotes
All 116 quotes used on the Freedom Countdown page.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
—Douglas Adams“Just remember, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it takes action, perseverance, and facing your fears.”
—Gillian Anderson“Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.”
—Maya Angelou“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.”
—Maya Angelou“Love baby, love. That’s the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we’d solve lots more problems.”
—Louis Armstrong“I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn.”
—Louis Armstrong“Seems to me, it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doin’ to it.”
—Louis Armstrong“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”
—Jane Austen“The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”
—Richard Bach“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”
—J. M. Barrie“You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.”
—Warren Beatty“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”
—Henry Ward Beecher“I want to seize fate by the throat.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven“Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven“What I have in my heart must out; that is why I write.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
—Yogi Berra“You can observe a lot by watching.”
—Yogi Berra“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”
—Yogi Berra“Little things are big.”
—Yogi Berra“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.”
—Yogi Berra“We can be heroes, just for one day.”
—David Bowie“Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been.”
—David Bowie“I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me.”
—David Bowie“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”
—Ray Bradbury“With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”
—Thomas Buxton“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
—James Branch Cabell“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”
—G. K. Chesterton“For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else.”
—Winston Churchill“Courage is what others can’t see, what is never affirmed. It is made of what you have thrown away and then come back for.”
—Leonard Cohen“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
—Robert Collier“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
—Miles Davis“My ego only needs a good rhythm section.”
—Miles Davis“Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.”
—Democritus“Everybody needs money. That’s why it’s called ‘money’.”
—Danny DeVito“Here’s the rule for bargains: Do other men, for they would do you.”
—Charles Dickens“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
—Walt Disney“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”
—Benjamin Disraeli“The times they are a-changin’.”
—Bob Dylan“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
—Bob Dylan“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
—Bob Dylan“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
—Amelia Earhart“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
—Albert Einstein“What makes life dreary is the want of motive.”
—George Eliot“There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.”
—Duke Ellington“If it sounds good it is good.”
—Duke Ellington“My band is my instrument more than the piano.”
—Duke Ellington“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”
—Walter Elliott“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson“A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson“Money often costs too much.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson“To fail spectacularly is a loser’s paradise.”
—Jasper Fforde“Nothing recedes like success.”
—Bryan Forbes“To do for the world more than the world does for you, that is Success.”
—Henry Ford“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
—Benjamin Franklin“I am an irrepressible optimist, but I always base my optimism on solid facts.”
—Mahatma Gandhi“Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.”
—Ruth Gordon“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
—Billy Graham“He started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn’t be done, and he did it.”
—Edgar Albert Guest“The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.“Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts.”
—Elbert Hubbard“Always look on the bright side of life.”
—Eric Idle“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
—Samuel Johnson“If there is effort, there is always accomplishment.”
—Jigoro Kano“Have courage to use your own understanding!”
—Immanuel Kant“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
—Helen Keller“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.“No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.”
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.”
—Harper Lee“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
—John Lennon“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
—Sam Levenson“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
—C.S. Lewis“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
—Vince Lombardi“The smallest effort is not lost, each wavelet on the ocean tost aids in the ebb-tide or the flow.”
—Charles Mackay“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
—Nelson Mandela“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
—Nelson Mandela“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”
—Don Marquis“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid? That is the only time a man can be brave.”
—George R. R. Martin“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”
—Groucho Marx“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.”
—Groucho Marx“I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.”
—Groucho Marx“I like pancakes, but I haven’t got a closet full of them!”
—Groucho Marx“No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.”
—Groucho Marx“To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals—this alone is worth the struggle.”
—William Osler“People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things.”
—Norman Vincent Peale“Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently.”
—Shimon Peres“Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow.”
—Plutarch“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
—Christopher Reeve“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”
—Eddie Rickenbacker“Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.”
—François de La Rochefoucauld“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt“Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better.”
—Jonathan Sacks“Partly cloudy means mostly sunny.”
—Devin Schumacher“My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.”
—George Bernard Shaw“Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”
—George Bernard Shaw“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.”
—George Bernard Shaw“I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.”
—George Bernard Shaw“Diamonds are only chunks of coal, that stuck to their jobs, you see.”
—Minnie Richard Smith“The plans of the diligent surely lead to success, but all who are hasty surely head for poverty.”
—Solomon“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
—Mark Twain“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
—Mark Twain“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
—Mark Twain“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
—Mark Twain“Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.”
—Mark Twain“Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.”
—Mark Twain“Honesty is the best policy—when there is money in it.”
—Mark Twain“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
—Mark Twain“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
—Oscar Wilde“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”
—Oscar Wilde“Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”
—Oscar Wilde“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
—Oscar Wilde“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
—Oscar Wilde“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”
—Oscar Wilde“A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
—Oscar Wilde“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.”
—Earl Wilson“If you think you are beaten, you are.”
—Walter D. Wintle