Silver Platter Quotes

• Almost nothing is presented to you on a silver platter. You have to really work for it.

  Katarina Witt

  Silver

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• Nobody hands you excellence on a silver platter. You earn it through planning, preparing, and persisting in the face of all obstacles.

  Terry Orlick

  Sports, Hands, Excellence

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• Don't you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter?

  Dale Carnegie

  Ideas, Silver

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.137, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• You have to earn money the hard way. Because no-one will serve it up to you on a silver platter.

  Gordon Wu

  Money, Work, Up To You

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• What we don't know is about Jeb Bush and cocaine. But we do know that he did once had his brother Florida on a silver platter.

  Bill Maher

  Brother, Florida, Cocaine

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• Hand me the world on a silver platter, and what good would it be?

  Alicia Keys

  Hands, World, Silver

  Song: If I Ain't Got You, Album: The Diary of Alicia Keys, 2003

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• Leadership is never given on a silver platter, one has to earn it.

  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

  Life, Silver, Given

  "Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Speaks on Governance, Elections and Other Issues". Interview with Abdoulaye W. Dukulé, www.theperspective.org. May 6, 2005.

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• I don't believe in nirvana. If nirvana was handed to us on a silver platter, this would be the first day of our struggle to keep it.

  Holly Near

  Believe, Struggle, Would Be

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• Let no one ever shy away from the claim that Jews have power, that Jews have influence. We have learned the terrible lesson of history; that unless we have influence and power, disproportionate to our small numbers - immoral results will occur. We need power. And we must continue to use our power. Power which we earned, power which no one gave us on a silver platter, power which we worked hard for - use that power in the interests of justice.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Small Numbers, Influence And Power, Justice

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• The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn't supposed to be in!

  Jill Scott

  Art, Growing Up, Grandmother

  "Jill Scott: 'I was told I'd never have kids - my son is due in 5 weeks". Interview with Mirror, www.mirror.co.uk. March 22, 2009.

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• My mother's a genius. She just kept feeding me art on whatever we had; paper plates, silver platter, didn't matter. You know, she just kept feeding it to me. So we went to see all kinds of theater. We would go to the art museum pretty much every Sunday, and I would watch her. She let me know that art was supposed to touch.

  Jill Scott

  Mother, Art, Sunday

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• The role of the opposition leader differs from that of the chancellor. If this government is to be successful, I have to take the emotional state of all partners into account. Besides, the Social Democrats didn't exactly present me with the motto "Let us dare to have more freedom" on a silver platter.

  Angela Merkel

  Successful, Emotional, Government

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• Had I not gone through the ordeal, in more than one country, of landing a job, I would he tempted to lose patience over the number of letters pouring in from fellows who want me or someone else to hand them a job on a silver platter with a guarantee that they will receive the wonderful promotion their talents warrant.... But a tragic number of young men and even older men have a notion that it is not up to them to prosecute the bettering process. They look to someone else to perform the trick for them.

  B. C. Forbes

  Country, Jobs, Men

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• Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.

  Allan Bloom

  Music, Children, Rocks

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• The great piano virtuoso Paderewski was once playing before an audience of the rich and the royal. After a brilliant performance, an elegant lady waxed ecstatic over the great artist. She said, "Ah Maestro, you are a genius!" Paderewski tartly replied, "Ah yes, madam, but before I was a genius I was a clod!" What he was saying was that his present acclaim was not handed to him on a silver platter. He, too, was once a little boy laboriously practicing his scales. And even at his peak, behind every brilliant performance there were countless hours of practice and preparation.

  Eric Butterworth

  Artist, Boys, Practice

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• We need to know why NHTSA, which has officials who are paid to do nothing else but monitor accidents, have been asleep at the wheel when it had information served up to it on a silver platter by State Farm Insurance Company which would suggest grave problems with Firestone tires.

  Fred Upton

  Needs, Information, Wheels

  "New NHTSA Administrator Sue Bailey Already in Hot Seat Over Firestone Tire Problems". "Morning News" with Daryn Kagan, www.cnn.com. September 12, 2000.

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• Akon is a very talented songwriter to work with. His melodies, they're just insane. It's funny, I think about him a lot when I'm doing my melodies because he's so simple, and he's just been great. He keeps me on my feet, very grounded, but he also puts me on a silver platter, which is always very nice. So it's been an incredible influence. It's like every time you work with somebody that's better that you are, you become greater.

  Lady Gaga

  Nice, Thinking, Simple

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