Gumption Quotes

• Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

  Seamus Heaney

  Epic Poems, Two, Mind

  Seamus Heaney (2009). “Beowulf”, p.30, Faber & Faber

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• A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit about stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption. If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Track, Motorcycle, Important

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• It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

  Jessamyn West

  Forgiveness, Easter, Mistake

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• Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Motivational, Needs, Defining

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2016). “L. M. MONTGOMERY – Premium Collection: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry & Autobiography (Including Anne Shirley Novels, Chronicles of Avonlea & The Story Girl Series): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, The Golden Road, Kilmeny of the Orchard, The Watchman, Songs of the Sea & many more”, p.641, e-artnow

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• Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Waiting, Courses, Dues

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• Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.

  Paul Hawken

  Party, Healing, Persistence

  Paul Hawken (2007). “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beau ty to the World”, p.14, Penguin

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• Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption.

  James Agee

  Success, Spunk, Enough

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.115, Penguin

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• When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen ... ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business.

  B. C. Forbes

  Perseverance, Order, Hens

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• If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Strong, Fighting, Wind

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• There are times when each of us has to have some gumption to take a stand as to what we wish to preserve or change in order to maintain our self-respect and not be as "a reed shaken with the wind" (Matt. 11:7) . . . . We lose much credibility and strength, and we risk being weighed on an uneven balance, when, Don Quixote-like, we go around "tilting windmills".

  James E. Faust

  Strength, Self, Order

  James E. Faust (1990). “Reach Up for the Light”, Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Company

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• Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain't. So the results of man's labor will never be equal.

  Bess Streeter Aldrich

  Equality, Men, Sight

  Bess Streeter Aldrich (1939). “Song of Years”

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• I admire many entrepreneurs. They bring energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm. What they lack in process, they make up for in gumption.

  Michael J. Silverstein

  Entrepreneur, Energy, Enthusiasm

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere.

  Boris Johnson

  Country, Jet Engines, Hands

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• When I was a kid, people who got divorced were people who had no gumption.

  Phil Donahue

  Kids, People, Divorced

  Phil Donahue (1979). “My own story, Donahue”

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• The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

  Robert Reich

  Dream, Moving, Hard Work

  "The Meaning of a Decent Society" by Robert Reich, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 19, 2013.

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• You've got to have gumption. You've got to be willing to stand up on the stage for no money for ten years.

  Samantha Bee

  Years, Stage, No Money

  Interview with Catherine O’Hara, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 4, 2016.

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• Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. "I never knew a girl to have such gumption," she'd say. "But I'm not too sure it's a good thing.

  Jeannette Walls

  Girl, Mom, Age

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