Quotes on Firsts

Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefield and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business.

Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again--until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other.

i was raped, too sexually assaulted in seventh grade, tenth grade. the summer after graduation, at a party i was 16 i was 14 i was 5 and he did it for three years i loved him i didn't even know him he was my best friend's brother, my grandfather, father, mommy's boyfriend, my date, my cousin, my coach i met him for the first time that night and- 4 guys took turns, and- i'm a boy and this happened to me, and- ...i got pregnant i gave up my daughter for adoption... did it happen to you, too?

When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are - not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth. The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.

From the apparent usefulness of the social virtues, it has readily been inferred by sceptics, both ancient and modern, that all moral distinctions arise from education, and were, at first, invented, and afterwards encouraged ... in order to render men tractable, and subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness, which incapacitated them for society.

I think no matter what you look like, the key is to first of all be happy with yourself. And then you know if you want to try to improve things that you don't like about yourself, then do it after your appreciate yourself.

Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence.

[About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to.

You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

Never think that success is down to your own performance alone. If you start listening only to yourself you take the first step back towards the bottom. The flowers of victory belong in many vases.

The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.

As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier in medicine, is energy medicine. It's not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our body. It's understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel.

I don't want to be the next Mark Spitz; I want to be the first Michael Phelps

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

If you would seek health, look first to the spine.

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience.

I'm too busy acting like I'm not Naive. I've seen it all, I was here first.

It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means.

It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy : capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.