Quotes About Persistence

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one?

Say you're in the middle of nowhere, nobody for miles and no hope of rescue. You sit down and start playing solitaire and somebody will immediately come along and tell you to play the red eight on the black nine.

Eureka!s like the one Archimedes had when he stepped in a bathtub and suddenly realized the answer to the problem of testing metals' density are few and far between, and mostly it's just trying and failing and trying something else, feeding in data and eliminating variables and staring at the results, trying to figure out where you went wrong.

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart." —DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN

Nothing worth while comes easy. Hard work just makes you appreciate it more.

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. [ Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction , New York Times, April 19, 1992]

I dont think you havin a bad day, Professor. I think you havin a bad life.

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere. [ Interview with Oprah Winfrey , June 5, 2007]

This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They don't give up.

You either stick or you quit. And I wouldnt quit you I dont care what you done.

I'd rather to make a good run as a bad stand.

The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. but I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It don't move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that's what it is.

whoever approaches his goal dances

Other than a light beading of sweat on his forehead there was little evidence that his labors had cost him anything at all.

If you knew there was somebody out there afoot that had two million dollars of your money, at what point would you quit lookin for em? That's right. There aint no such a point.

The wisdom of the journeyman is to work one day at a time and he always said that any job even if it took years was made up out of a day's work. Nothing more. Nothing less. That was hard for me to learn. I always wanted to be finished. In the concept of a day's work is rythme and pace and wholeness.

Ever's a long time.

There's too much shit still down the road that I got to deal with. It aint goin to end here.

They struggled forever in the roads cold coagulate.

Okay. This is what the good guys do. They keep trying. They dont give up. Okay.

De acuerdo. Esto es lo que hacen los buenos. Seguir intentándolo. Jamás se rinden.