Quotes About Persistence

You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do.

When I talk to students - and I still think of myself more than anything as a kind of professor on leave - they say, 'Well, how do I get to do what you do?'... And I say, 'Well, you have to start out by being a failed piano major.' And my point to them is don't try to have a 10-year plan. Find the next thing that interests you and follow that.

All I can say is I did the best I could, and I didn't do well enough on many occasions.

I was working on 'My Little Pony' in the '80s, but I got fired because I couldn't draw the ponies well enough. It was a horrible show.

If you want to do this, you've got to last. You've got to be well enough to carry your ideas. I'm not saying I've got great ideas, but if I do I need to be able to deliver them.

I'm an idealist. You do things your way well enough, for long enough, you'll get rewarded.

Coming from a small South Dakota school, it was a different route to get to the NFL. I went from South Dakota State to the World League of American Football with the Amsterdam Admirals, and fortunately I did well enough there that the New England Patriots decided to sign me and give me a chance.

I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.

When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I wanted to be an animator and even took art classes. But by the time I was in college, I realized I couldn't draw well enough.

My singing teacher said it would take three years before I could sing well enough to be accepted as a professional. They were wrong. It took me five years.

That human beings seek their own well-being and that of those close to them is not an especially provocative discovery. What is important is that this universal aspect of human nature persists no matter what economic system is in place; it merely expresses itself in different forms.

I do what I can, but I'll always give it a shot. You're not going to see me playing a Welsh character any time soon, not because I wouldn't love to. I went up to Wales once and read for a film with Rhys Ifans, and haven't been asked back since. We did have a nice time on the train on the way back.

Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.

I don't know about Mario Balotelli saying, 'Why always me?' - England should be saying as a nation, 'Why always us?' You can go back to 1970, when Gordon Banks got food poisoning and we lost to West Germany. Then there was 1986 and Maradona's hand. And last time, Frank Lampard not getting his goal against the Germans.

I started singing backgrounds for Mary Mary and Usher during 'Confessions.' Then I jumped to working with Anthony Hamilton, Jill Scott; jumped again to Kanye West, The Killers. I kept saying, 'OK, this is the last time; then I get to do my music.'

I'm trying to be number one all the way around. It's not just the South, it's not just the East, it's not the West, I'm going for across the world, you know what I'm saying? This is where I'm coming from.

I first came to London as a musician, and when my group broke up, I did 'Guys and Dolls' at the Watford Palace theatre. After that, Ned Sherrin found me and brought me to the West End to do one of his shows. The work went from strength to strength, so I thought: 'This is where the world wants me; I'll stay.'

A lot of people - they might think I fell off, but they don't know I'm eating. I'm on the West coast, eating. It's just they don't hear about me because they don't see me on the TV. But I'm still around.

When people left on the Oregon Trail from St. Louis, they knew that only a fraction of them would make it to the West Coast. But they went anyway.

I have therefore concluded to apply for the privilege of becoming a Cadet at West Point.

In the States, it takes you a lifetime just to get from Chicago's South Side to the West Side.

Katherine Johnson is a shining example of what you can truly do with hard work and persistence. Under what had to be the most difficult of circumstances she persevered and stuck to her values. She is a real West Virginia and American hero. To honor her legacy every August 26th, on her birthday, is the least we can do.

Part of the western movement is this desire that we, Americans, have to keep pressing on.

I remember the first script I wrote after 'Swingers' was a Western, and I just couldn't get it made.