Phil Sykora > Phil's Quotes

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom-he fears a drunken poet may crack a joke that will take hold.”
― E.B. White

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“A person’s life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they’re actually willing to sacrifice for it.”
― Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest