Quotes About Perseverance

I auditioned for 'West Side Story' just like everybody else, and I nearly had a heart attack, because I hadn't danced in about - oh, I don't know, about 15 years.

The sun doesn't always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.

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.

There are so many great things happening in West Virginia, and I will continue to work every day to move our state forward.

Looking back on the long haul in my career, little films, big films, TV, the Western thing has been really good to me.

My grandparents left the Pale of Settlement at the border of western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti-Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.

When I first went to college, I went to Western Michigan. I had been rejected by a bunch of schools for theater. I was like, 'I'm obviously not cut out for this, so I might as well just go into film.'

I was always looking ahead. I used to do all kinds of things for entertainment. When I was young, we had no radio, no TV. We were 30 miles from the public library, out in the sticks in Western Kansas, and so I'd do arithmetic exercises.

Well, pioneers always suffer. I don't care who is the first to embark upon things. For instance, settlers that settled the West, Western Canada and the U.S... they went though hell doing it, but it had to be done.

My first break was in a Hong Kong movie that I shot in China - I was going out there and working as a western stunt man, if you like, but at the same time in England I was working in daytime soap stuff. Eventually I put the two together.

Back in 2008, after we'd won the election, no one really expected me to keep teaching. But I couldn't just walk away... So I did both. For eight years, that was my life's dichotomy. State receptions - and midterms. Dinner with the most powerful man on earth - and study sessions with single moms.

That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.

Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do.

You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything: You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

One of our secret-sauce powers is that our people don't just write checks and place the ads, but our employees go the extra mile to get things done.

I just take it one day at a time. Austin Powers has given me a lot of opportunities as far as my career.

What you learn from my life is, first of all, that anybody can be a leader. You can be a leader. I wasn't born that way - I developed it, I worked at it. And also that the grassroots can organize and take on all the powers that be and defeat them. That is the lesson.

The 'Will Powers' story is like my life to a certain degree.

If I am going to be phased out by whatever powers, then I want people to know that it is not because I am bad at my work.

Limitations, be they practical or arbitrary, force artists to dig more deeply instead of settling for easy answers.

When we built Amblin, we even put Murphy beds in there because we thought that was so practical. Why would anybody, if you were working on something, need to go home at night? You'd just stay there, wake up in the morning, and carry on.

My folks were very practical. They were also kind of able to think outside of the box. They were not going to let circumstance paralyze them. They knew sometimes you just had to take some new initiative. I think they passed that on to all of us... If you don't find a way, you make one.

The answer is that I do want to climb Everest, but I don't want to go to Everest. I don't want to be cold. I can't take the time. It's just not practical.

I love fighting and I love this sport, and as a competitor, I never really wanted to step away. But I have to be practical. I kind of had to think about how long I could continue to do this.