Quotes About Hardship

Hoover himself had risen from the most modest means of any president since Abraham Lincoln. Orphaned as a small boy, he worked his way through Stanford's 'pioneer' class - the first freshmen at Stanford. He started his mining career in hard labor.

I worked check-to-check, worked in dead-end jobs my whole life before I got into stand-up, and even during stand-up, I was working at a retail job and Starbucks, all those places.

It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.

To deal with the stark reality of having hit or hurt a woman or child, to deal with the initial responsibility you have not to do that and the knowledge you did do it, can be incredibly hard.

In my first start-up, I didn't get any salary for four years, so I had to move back with my parents.

My mother cleaned homes and drove school buses, and when my family was on the brink of foreclosure... I started bartending and waitressing.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.

I was a walk-on at Maryland, I had to earn my scholarship and starter spot, and the things that've come after.

Just like many great boxers before me, regardless of where they're from, they're not always starting out with the nicest stuff. You don't need the latest stuff to get where you're heading - all you need is focus and drive.

We lived in the mountains for 14 months without much food. People were dying from starvation.

When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

I've been fortunate to have had the life I had prior to Hollywood. I wasn't starving; I was going to eat the next day.

Oh yes, after the war, and we were all starving - we had no proper food or anything - no proper shoes.

When I left my grandmother's home in 1986 headed to Savannah State with two brown grocery bags filled with my belongings, nothing was going to keep me from realizing my dreams.

Both my mother and my father grew up in Asia, in a time of political instability. They'd earned college degrees before setting foot in the States but had to work menial jobs early on in order to make ends meet.

I grew up hearing stories about how my maternal grandfather had put himself through engineering school in New York City. He saved money by walking down to a gas station once a week to take a shower. When I applied to college, both education and investment value were important to me.

As a young player, achieving All-Star status isn't as easy as you might think.

It's hard to edit. It's hard to stay focused. And yet, we know we'll only do our best work if we stay focused. And so, you know, the hardest decisions we made are all the things not to work on, frankly.

My father was an ironworker who eventually co-founded a construction business. My mother, Jeanette, was a stay-at-home mom who had been an operating-room nurse until my older brother, Jimmy, was born.

After graduating from high school, even though I was working, I didn't have enough money to pay rent, so I stayed with my Nana.

I had to change the shape of my own voice. It was quite hard to pull off and so once I had it, I stayed in Hitchcock's voice all day on set.

It wasn't easy to get the family to this point. I had to work two jobs. I had all nine kids. I stayed there with them and got them all into show biz. I don't care what anyone else said, I did my job.

Mum stayed home to look after us, and Dad was an electrician, working long hours to support us. We never went without, but we did have to be careful.

I was quite a plain boy. I stayed in work and eeked out a living, bit parts on TV, walk-ons in films, repertory companies.