Bootstraps Quotes

• None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Teacher, Appreciation, Retirement

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• It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Equality, Men, Jest

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• Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Business, Sacrifice, Men

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• ‎It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, Injustice

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• I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible — I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical.

  Stephen Colbert

  Believe, Guy, Saws

  Stephen Colbert's monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner, www.dailykos.com. April 30, 2006.

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• We are 100 percent responsible for the pursuit of holiness, but at the same time we are 100 percent dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us in that pursuit. The pursuit of holiness is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the Christian life.

  Jerry Bridges

  Christian, Holiness, Spirit

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• Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.

  Julia Cameron

  Motivational, Recovery, New Beginnings

  Julia Cameron (1999). “The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life”, p.15, Penguin

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• I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Believe, Self, People

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• None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Teacher, Soulmate, Teaching

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• A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.

  Betty Smith

  Heart, Compassion, Two

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

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• Depression might have chosen you, but you don't have to choose it back. Sometimes happiness comes with bootstraps, but so what? Pull 'em up. Choose joy.

  Marianne Williamson

  Joy, Ems, Might

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• Now, in Texas, we believe in the rugged individual. Texas may be the one place where people actually still have bootstraps, and we expect folks to pull themselves up by them. But we also recognize there are some things we can't do alone. We have to come together and invest in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow.

  Julian Castro

  Believe, Opportunity, Texas

  Julian Castro's Speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, www.politico.com. September 4, 2012.

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• It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they're not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

  Ron Fournier

  Dream, Country, Hard Work

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• President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

  Ron Fournier

  America, Community, President

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• We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others... It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Helping Others, People, World

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• Pull your boots up by the bootstrap and know that everything is temporary. All good moments are temporary and all bad moments are temporary. Nothing lasts forever.

  Jim Rohn

  Forever, Boots, Lasts

  Source: becomeanonlinetutor.com

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• The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.

  Cory Doctorow

  Country, Home, America

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• Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.

  Upton Sinclair

  Strange, Incredibles, Wander

  Upton Sinclair (2014). “The Profits of Religion”, p.17, Trajectory Inc

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• They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length.

  Andrew Mitchell

  Realizing, Length

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• Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith.

  Peter Watts

  Wise, Intelligent, Analysis

  Peter Watts (2014). “Firefall”, p.32, Head of Zeus

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• The doctrine of thrift for the poor is dumb and cruel, like advising them to try and lift themselves by their bootstraps.

  Norman Thomas

  Dumb, Trying, Doctrine

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• You are not obligated to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and find a way to conquer the odds, to be stronger or transform yourself into some better version of yourself. The pain you are feeling (whatever the degree) may be a reminder that things are not as they should be.

  Tullian Tchividjian

  Pain, Odds, Feelings

  Source: www.lifeisstory.com

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• But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

  Idries Shah

  Trying, May, Able

  Idries Shah (1990). “Sufi Thought and Action”, p.5, Octagon Press Ltd

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• The abstract, especially in those rough sketches, is very important to me, perhaps because of my advertising background, where layout is so important. Sometimes those first few lines cut the paper into such satisfying shapes that I don't want to go on, but I always do, adding nostrils and nipples and bootstraps until I have filled the paper up as usual.

  Tom of Finland

  Cutting, Important, Usual

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• I was told I had to go to business school to succeed. I gave it a shot, but eventually dropped out to bootstrap a restaurant with just a Visa card and a $20,000 line of credit. Everyone told me restaurants were hard work (and they were right! I have so much respect for anyone in the restaurant business). I ran the restaurant for two years, sold a franchise, decided to change paths, and sold the whole operation at a modest profit.

  Ryan Holmes

  Hard Work, School, Years

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