Quotes About Persistence

The most terrible things end, at last.

When I was in kindergarten, it took me like three months to learn how to spell my own name. But that's also not saying much considering I'm a terrible speller.

I get terrible reviews everywhere I go.

As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.

Most awards, you know, they don't give you unless you go and get them - did you know that? Terribly discouraging.

Exactly the style of football I love is like a terrier. We are not the biggest dog, we are small, but we are aggressive, we are not afraid, we like to compete with the big dogs and we are quick and mobile and we have endurance. We never give up. This small dog has fighting spirit for sure.

People like Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas are terrific broadcasters because they get challenged every day.

Charles B. Rangel

Ideas are nothing. They're irrelevant. If you think your idea is so important, you're doomed. The reality is if you don't like one idea, I've got 299 more. If I tell you my idea, and you can execute better against that idea than I can - great; I get to play a terrific game.

When people come to me and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face the next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.

Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard.

I've been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn't really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.

What most people do is they make terrific films, one in three if you're very lucky, maybe one in five. So you just have to keep on, you have to get through the bad bits.

It's fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you're young; your resilience is just terrific.

After all these years of saying the same thing about the Alvin Ailey company - terrific dancers, awful repertory - I'm finally accepting the inevitable: I'm not going to change my mind, and they're not going to change their ways. And why should they, given their juggernaut success all over the world?

You can see areas where maybe you got a bit lazy, perhaps, or you see when you were really on form. I think an actor is very like a sportsman in that respect. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

I think I would've been a bit terrified to have gone and done a lead straight away. Obviously great if you do, but it's all about longevity.

It's really rich territory for me as an actor to have somebody who has such a long way to go, but he's trying and getting it wrong. Because I know that I try and I get it wrong a lot of the time.

'Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere' took me six years to write.

Terrorism as a force is gone. As individuals they are all around and we will continue to look for them.

The fight, this war, this fight against the remnants of terrorism will go on for some time.

It's surreal to think that no one has played as many Test matches for England. I suppose it's a credit to my longevity.

If you play 100-odd Test matches, there's going to be little periods when you don't score runs, and I've always managed to turn it around.

Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.