Quotes on Firsts

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.

A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.

As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?

My visual landscape as a child was the inside of a lot of these old churches. And the Baroque drama of the things was what I was first engaging with artwise. I'm much more attracted to the aesthetic of religious iconography than the actual religious side. The passion and the blood and the violence and the gaudy side of it I find really fascinating.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

People are the common denominator of progress. So no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar furniture of economic development. But we are coming to realize that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.

'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try.

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.

I'm not alone, I'm free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody.

I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may, in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent, or reach for a man: as one might stretch for the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the top of the tree; too ripe for any moment but this, they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness, sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since, the answering yes.

(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.

Those who have wrought great changes in the world never succeeded by gaining over chiefs; but always by exciting the multitude. The first is the resource of intrigue and produces only secondary results, the second is the resort of genius and transforms the universe.

Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.

It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.

Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.

Men have physical needs, and they have emotions. While physical needs are unsatisfied, they take first place; but when they are satisfied, emotions unconnected with them become important in deciding whether a man is to be happy or unhappy.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they're seeing now, what we'll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.