Quotes About Resourcefulness

Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time's worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.

Dear Life: When you give me dilemmas, I make dilemmanade.

Better weak beer than an empty cask.

Who recalls when folks used to git along without somethin' if it cost too much?

Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.

One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of hooch. Rifle broke. She said this last scornfully, as though disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.

How can you manage all alone, Mr. Young?" His large, almost girlish eyes rested on her for a moment before he replied, and then it was in the softest and gentlest of voices. "Oh, I get along pretty well with them. 

We make a notable company, declared Travante. I am as I am! Sir Pom-Pom is strong and brave, while Madouc is clever and resourceful. Also, with her copper-gold curls, her wry little face and her eyes of heartbreak blue she is both quaint and vastly appealing.

War for the nomadic people was a sort of production.

There was no bathroom—there wouldn't be a bathroom until I was almost fourteen, the same year America put a man on the moon. But we had a proper outside WC with a tall rusting iron cistern high up on the wall and a chain for the flush. There was no mains drainage and it often fell to my father to unblock the septic because the access cover for the system that served the whole street was just outside our kitchen window. Oh, those Victorian builders were a clever lot!

Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

with a piece of frontier advice long tested in the crucible of practicality:

The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.

IMPROVE YOUR APPROACH. You keep getting rejected in bars? Find a different place, where the odds aren't stacked against you. Nobody responding to your networking e-mails for "Ten minutes of your time please?" Then offer something. Give something for free so people immediately see value in your approach immediately. You keep cold-calling customers and they hang up? Find a different way to get distribution. CHANGE UP, DON'T GIVE UP.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When everyone spills their guts, they lose their sight. The one who holds on to this very precious resource becomes the one-eyed man, the king.

Sometimes it's wiser to give a quarry extra line -- that's how to catch a fish, neh?

If there is no wind, you must learn to row.   —Polish Proverb

At one stage, I didn't have any money, so I slept on the streets for a few nights. It wasn't uncommon in the 1950s, and it wasn't uncommon to be out of money. There wasn't anywhere to go to get money.

Maybe I didn't get new skates, but I got used skates. I made it to the national championships in used skates that were custom-made for another girl. I still have those skates. Underneath the arch, there was a name crossed out and my dad had 'Michelle Kwan' written in. Granted, they were a little big, but it worked.

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.

You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear.

Once I was unemployed and didn't have money, you can't just go to dinner. The onus is on you to learn to cook... I learned how important the right equipment is.

I wouldn't suggest that being resourceful has anything to do with doing something illegal or unethical, but I've definitely noticed a pattern of being 'creative.'

A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.