Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up.
Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps.
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length.
America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.
If America had a motto, it would be pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder than the next guy, have a goal and achieve it.
Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.
If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.
We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.
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.
I'm actually loving the soundtrack to 'The Secret Circle' that our music supervisor Liza Richardson puts together, like Washed Out and Cults, but my favorite band is Bootstraps.
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.
I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.
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.
My mother lived through the Great Depression. Her family of 11 children pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and moved to wherever there was work at the time. And in rural Oklahoma, that wasn't easy to find.
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.
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?
People say, 'Well, why don't they get another job, why don't they pick themselves up by their bootstraps?' Well, the people that say that probably have the kind of jobs where they don't work that hard, so maybe they could have another job.
We're all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, et cetera - I think that's a harmful mythology, that the choices that we make and the things that we do in our lives are not connected to anything else. So I'd like to help to debunk that.
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.
Many movies about people recovering, moving on, and redeeming themselves are really wonderful and inspiring. But I think the more sentimental ones that are less good make me feel isolated - like, if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the guys in the movies, there is something wrong with you. That's a shame.
Little by little, the U.S. has allowed questionable domestic policies to chip away at the only hope poor students have at a better future. The Right Wing loves to distract voters from these realities by making it seem as though the poor remain so because they lack the work ethic necessary to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps.'
We continue to see our elected officials working extra hard to create a 'good climate for business' that leads to disinvestment in public infrastructure and tax incentives to the detriment of cities, while enriching private business and further entrenching poverty. And our cities are told by legislators to use their bootstraps to survive.