Quotes on Firsts

The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.

I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.

If you want to make a good first impression, smile at people. What does it cost to smile? Nothing. What does it cost not to smile? Everything, if not smiling prevents you from enchanting people.

Don't worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test... Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap - but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.

In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first

When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do not know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator.

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

People will not lend you a hand until you first touch their hearts.

First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we're going to bring multi-touch to the market. And each of these revolutionary interfaces has made possible a revolutionary product - the Mac, the iPod and now the iPhone.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there.

I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place?

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.

There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.

You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed; lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong.

First become a winner in life. Then it's easier to become a winner on the field.

The first proof of a well-ordered mind is to be able to pause and linger within itself.

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise.

Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.