Quotes on Firsts

I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.

I try not to think about marks, the first place or gold medal. The most important thing is to show what you are capable of on ice. The rest will come on its own.

The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence.

Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

Remember that our nation's first great leaders were also our first great scholars.

Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.

The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish ... the kind of war on which they are embarking.

Be the first to seize intersecting ground, that is ground which lies the intersections of borders or intersections of main thoroughfares of commerce and travel. Your occupation of it gives you access to all who border it and all who would covet it. On intersecting ground, if you establish alliances you are safe, if you lose alliances you are in peril.

letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.

If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you are doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking.

For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.

War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy. If we wish to substitute for war the settlement of disputes by justice, we must first substitute for the condition of international anarchy a condition of international order

I think the first duty of society is justice.

The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be slothfulness in prayer.

I always give all the glory to God, but I do not forget that He gave me the privilege of ministering from the first to a praying people. We had prayer meetings that moved our very souls, each one appeared determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession.

It is by no haphazard chance that in every age men have risen early to pray. The first thing that marks decline in spiritual life is our relationship to the early morning.

To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.

The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.

To be the equal of one's opponent-this is the first condition of an honourable duel.

A Dionysian life task needs the hardness of the hammer and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy to be found even in destruction.