Self Made Quotes - Page 3

• The only 'break' anyone can afford to rely upon is a self-made 'break'.

  Napoleon Hill

  Self, Rely Upon, Break

  Napoleon Hill (2012). “Think & Grow Rich”, p.157, Courier Corporation

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• Critics say the OWS protesters hate the rich. Come on! Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning - they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

  Matt Taibbi

  Cheating, Wall, Hate

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• What I loved about bike racing was that it was not a mainstream sport. My heroes were self-made. There were no coaches, no training centers, and only a handful of sponsors. Training rides were not totally devoted to bike talk. I got to know a lot of riders this way, not just as good sprinters or good climbers, but as people who had ideas different from mine, jobs different from mine, and dreams different from mine.

  Steve Tesich

  Sports, Dream, Jobs

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• in addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, and partly out of them, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their human origins notwithstanding, possess the same conditioning power as natural things. whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence. this is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings. whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition.

  Hannah Arendt

  Character, Men, Self

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• I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Believe, Self, People

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• My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Self, Intellectual

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.344, Hackett Publishing

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• Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.

  Russell Baker

  Grandmother, Men, Self

  "Russell Baker: Gerald Boyd’s Book On Being Fired From The New York Times", www.huffingtonpost.com. June 8, 2010.

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• It is better to be a self-made man,--filled up according to God's original pattern,--than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Self, Filled Up

  J. G. HOLLAND (1866). “PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS”, p.41

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• Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

  Michael Moorcock

  Fate, People, Sinking

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• Harris had the egotistical dogmatism of the self-made man who had painfully educated himself without contact with superior brains.

  Beatrice Webb

  Education, Men, Self

  Beatrice Potter Webb (1963). “American diary, 1898”

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• the struggle for the right to become politicians in itself made women into politicians.

  Eleanor Rathbone

  Struggle, Politics, Politician

  Ray Strachey, Eleanor Florence Rathbone (1936). “Our freedom and its results”

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• Some of the biggest bores I've ever known are men who have been highly successful in business, particularly self-made heads of big companies. Before the first olive has settled into the first martini, they pour the stories of their lives into the nearest and sometimes the remotest ears capturable.... These men have indeed paid the price of success. To rise to the top of a big company often takes a totality of effort, concentration and dedication. Others, too, have to pay part of the price. Wife and children are out of mind even when in sight.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Children, Successful, Men

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• The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, He Man, Get Up

  Frederick Douglass (2013). “Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass”, p.134, Courier Corporation

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• The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.

  Kurt Lewin

  Maturity, Men, Self

  "The Research Center for Group Dynamics".

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• Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Self, Analysis, Lasts

  Pope Benedict XVI (2004). “Introduction to Christianity”, p.73, Ignatius Press

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• Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Self, Soul, Elements

  Elizabeth Bishop, “The Imaginary Iceberg”

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• Fortune may crowd a man's life with fortunate circumstances and happy opportunities, but they will, as we all know, avail him nothing unless he makes a wise and vigorous use of them.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wise, Men, Opportunity

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• Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth. Like the tiger Mohini, I inhabited a self-made prison that stopped me from living fully.

  Tara Brach

  Self, Years, Roots

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• If in the well and truly made martini DeVoto finds "water of life" and the blessing to the spirit, so also DeVoto's The Hour brings to its readers the breath of life and a vision of themselves made generous, indomitable and wise.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Wise, Blessing, Water Of Life

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• My father started with nothing and is a self-made man. No matter what I do with my life, I can never match his accomplishments.

  Tamara Ecclestone

  Father, Men, Self

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• The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth

  Che Guevara

  Lying, Men, Self

  Ernesto Guevara, Che Guevara (1991). “A New Society: Reflections for Today's World”, Ocean Press (AU)

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• Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us--through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Mean, Men, Compassion

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• It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

  Giambattista Vico

  Men, Mind, Doubt

  Giambattista Vico, Thomas Goddard Bergin (1948). “The new science of Giambattista Vico”

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• Basically, the Buddhist attitude is that you should not accept certain things through sheer faith. And for that you need a skeptical attitude. Buddha himself made this clear to his followers. He said you should not accept those things I taught out of respect for me, but rather through investigation by yourself.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Attitude, Needs

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• Politically I am neither left nor right! And this kind of political-ethical standpoint-- being in the middle-- usually brings about seclusion and isolation! But now I do not mind it anymore and, instead, I work more and more in my self-made solitude!

  Javad Alizadeh

  Self, Political, Solitude

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