Self Made Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• I didn't realize that I was in a self-made prison of human approval and human acceptance. Didn't even realize it. Most of the prisons we live in we are not conscious of.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Acceptance, Self, Approval

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• Then, finally, the third year, begging the parents, I got the Superman Halloween costume. Cardboard box, self-made top, mask included. Remember the rubber band on the back of that mask? That was a quality item there, wasn't it? That was good for about 10 seconds before it snapped out of that cheap little staple they put it in there with.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Halloween, Self, Years

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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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• I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician.

  Liberace

  Self, Soapbox, World

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• Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.

  Josh Billings

  Jobs, Men, Self

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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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• Over time we are able to undermine habitual modes of thinking formed by our self-made self in early childhood, which tries to squeeze happiness from the gratification of our desires for the symbols in our culture of survival and security, power and control, and affection and esteem.

  Thomas Keating

  Thinking, Self, Childhood

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness.... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well.

  Edmund White

  Real, Believe, Home

  1980 States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, ch.5.

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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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• 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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• I was an older brother. So I had to do a lot of things first. My father was a self-made man, and he would beat me senseless. But he was a Scotsman, and stubborn. I'm his son, and I'm stubborn, too. I go on being stubborn.

  Harry Hay

  Brother, Father, Son

  Source: www.progressive.org

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand.

  Gerald Stanley Lee

  Men, Hands, He Man

  Gerald Stanley Lee (1913). “Crowds: A Study of the Genius of Democracy and of the Fears, Desires, and Expectations of the People”

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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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• Even if you're an observer of a story that you yourself made up, you're still very much connected to it. You love it and feel it, no less than somebody's who's writing from their direct 'I' or 'me.' I'm just so much more interesting in stories than confessions.

  Regina Spektor

  Writing, Interesting, Stories

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• Robinson Crusoe, the first capitalist hero, is a self-made man who accepts objective reality and then fashions it to his needs through the work ethic, common sense, resilience, technology, and, if need be, racism and imperialism.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Fashion, Hero, Technology

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• His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.

  Margaret Atwood

  Mother, Father, Self

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.56, Anchor

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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