Quotes about first
page 67

“Very proud of this moment that I'm going to be taking on my first job as a head coach. Yeah, so, of course, some apprehension but not in a nervous kind of way, more in a really-excited-to-get-started way.”

Paul Clement, INTERVIEW I PAUL CLEMENT EXCLUSIVE ON DERBY APPOINTMENT https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=169&v=1KMy_5vdeCc, Youtube.co.uk, 31 May 2015

Frederick Douglass photo
William Wordsworth photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Slim Burna photo

“If we are to understand the interactions of a large number of agents, we must first be able to describe the capabilities of individual agents.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 1. Basic Elements, p. 7

Antonio Negri photo
Edward Bellamy photo

“If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 18.

Charles Henry Fowler photo

“After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"The Express" (l. 1–3) in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1988) edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair

Michael Chabon photo
George Peacock photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Kathy Griffin photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“In my country we go to prison first and then become President.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Clayton M. Christensen photo

“Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge. There is strong evidence showing that companies entering these emerging markets early have significant first-mover advantages over later entrants.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Source: 1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), p. 3; cited in: Parminder Bhachu (2004), Dangerous Designs: Asian Women Fashion, the Diaspora Economies. p. 172

Lang Lang photo
Richard Nixon photo
Franz Stangl photo

“Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-black corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity-it couldn't have; it was a mass-a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said, 'What shall we do with this garbage?”

Franz Stangl (1908–1971) Austrian-born SS officer, commandant at first Sobibór extermination camp and then Treblinka extermination c…

I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo.
About the victims. Quoted in "Good and Evil After Auschwitz: Ethical Implications for Today" - Page 96 - by Jack Bemporad, John Pawlikowski, Joseph Sievers - History - 2000.

William James photo

“My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Sometimes paraphrased as "Thinking is for doing", perhaps originally by S.T. Fiske (1992)
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 22

Wisława Szymborska photo

“They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Anton Chekhov photo

“Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (May 14, 1889)
Letters

Francis Parkman photo
Fred Brooks photo
David Lynch photo

“Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.”
Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 911; one of the most famous renditions of the ancient Greek proverb (which is anonymous and dates to the 5th century BCE or earlier). The provenance of the proverb and its English versions is at Wikiquote's Euripides page, under the heading "Misattributed".
Sentences

Noam Chomsky photo

“If the principle is, "Let's not get lethal substances out to the public", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The next one you'd go after is alcohol. Way down the list you'd get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you'd get to marijuana.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Dialogue with trade unionists, February 2, 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/20051226071614/http://zpedia.org/Chomsky_on_pot.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Robert Seymour Bridges photo
J. F. C. Fuller photo
E. Lee Spence photo

“First understand infinity then you will understand God and how evolution is intelligent design.”

E. Lee Spence (1947) German anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, historian, photojournalist and academic

from 'An Interview with Dr. E. Lee Spence' by Aaron Harding,Journal of the Sea Research Society, Volume 5, #3, p. 24.

Greg Egan photo
Galway Kinnell photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Felix Adler photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Daniel Day-Lewis photo
Humphrey Lyttelton photo

“Now it's time to play a brand new game called Name That Barcode. Here's the first one: "Thick black, thin white, thick black, thick white, thick black, thin white."”

Humphrey Lyttelton (1921–2008) English jazz trumpeter

OK who's going to identify that?
The Guardian, Saturday 26 April 2008

Marc Randazza photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Leon M. Lederman photo

“That's the eureka moment, when suddenly you know something. Your hands sweat, you get into all kinds of symptoms of tremendous excitement. First of all, it's fear. Is it right? And it's incredible humor. 'How could it be any other way? It had to be that way! How could we have been so stupid, not to see this?”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

June 27, 1992 Las Vegas, Nevada interview with Lederman.
From Subatomic World Explorer, as noted on American Academy of Achievement web site http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/led0pro-1 (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

Richard Leakey photo

“The first major discovery of prehistoric art was the Spanish cave of Altamira, which, like Lascaux, is one of the most spectacular examples of Upper Paleolithic art yet known.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Homér photo
Nicomachus photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo
Titian photo

“I should be acting the part of an ungrateful servant, unworthy of the favours which unite my duty to your great kindness, if I were not to say that his Majesty [ Charles V ] forced me to go to him and pays the expenses of my journey, I start discontented because I have not fulfilled your wish and my obligation in presenting myself to my Lord [ Pope Paul III ] and yours, and working in obedience to his intentions [to paint the Pope's portrait].... But I promise as a true servant to pay interest on my return with a new picture in addition to the first.... So with your license, Padron mio unico, I shall go, whither I am called, and returning with the grace of God, I shall serve you with all the strength of the talents which I got from my cradle..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter to Cardinal Farnese in Rome, from Venice 24th December 1547; after the original in Rochini's 'Belazione' u.s. pp. 9-10; as quoted in Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2., J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, pp. 164-165
Titian had to chose between Pope & Emperor when they were on the worst of terms; he decided to obey the Emperor Charles V who ordered Titian to come to his court at Augsburg, Germany
1541-1576

Sören Kierkegaard photo
Maurice de Vlaminck photo
Gerd von Rundstedt photo

“We should have known better after the first war.”

Gerd von Rundstedt (1875–1953) German Field Marshal during World War II

Quoted in "Crossroads of Modern Warfare" - by Drew Middleton - History - 1983

Friedrich Engels photo
Garth Brooks photo
Vannevar Bush photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Cary Grant photo
Daniel McCallum photo
Michelle Obama photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, August
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-protests-idUSKCN1AV0WT Trump, again, casts blame on both sides for deadly violence in Virginia] at a press briefing in Trump Tower, New York (15 August 2017) Transcripts: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/read-the-transcript-of-donald-trumps-jaw-dropping-press-conference.html https://www.vox.com/2017/8/15/16154028/trump-press-conference-transcript-charlottesville note: 2010s, 2017, August

Hillary Clinton photo
James Anthony Froude photo
Aron Ra photo
Paul Klee photo

“Pictures have their skeleton, muscles, and skin like human beings. One may speak of the specific anatomy of the picture. A picture representing 'a naked person' must not be created by the laws of human anatomy, but only by those of compositional anatomy. First one builds an armature on which the picture is to be constructed.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 840, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

Pauline Kael photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“Protection is the first necessity of opulence and luxury.”

Source: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 2

Rahm Emanuel photo
Charles Lyell photo
Timothy Leary photo
Silas Weir Mitchell photo

“The first thing to be done by a biographer in estimating character is to examine the stubs of his victim's cheque-books.”

Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) American physician

Quoted by Harvey W. Cushing in The Life of Sir William Osler http://books.google.com/books?id=Vo01Mhanh64C&q="The+first+thing+to+be+done+by+a+biographer+in+estimating+character+is+to+examine+the+stubs+of+his+victim's+cheque+books"&pg=PA583#v=onepage, Vol. 1, Ch. 21 (1925).

Alan Greenspan photo
Aleister Crowley photo

“The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), Ch. 13 : Of the Banishings and of the Purifications.

José Argüelles photo

“Calendar Reform is the final act of history, and the first step toward Earth Regeneration in the cradle of galactic culture.”

José Argüelles (1939–2011) American author and artist

Quoted on Calendar Reform and the Future of Civilization, Preparatory Reflections for the World Summit on Peace and Time University for Peace http://www.lawoftime.org/timeshipearth/articlesbyvv/calendarreform.html%20Full%20Text, Costa Rica, June 22, 1999 - June 27, 1999).

Albert Gleizes photo
Jeff Flake photo

“Metaphor… is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Matter of Metaphor" in Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

Giosuè Carducci photo
Lytton Strachey photo

“Pass a person through your mind, with all the documents, and see what comes out. That seems to be your method. Also, choose them, in the first place, because you dislike them.”

Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) British writer

Walter Raleigh, letter to Lytton Strachey, May 8, 1918. Published in The Letters of Walter Raleigh (1879-1922) (1926) Vol. 2, p. 479.
Criticism

R. H. Tawney photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Jerry Siegel photo
Christopher Isherwood photo

“My song is of the straits first navigated by the mighty sons of gods, of the prophetic ship that dared to seek the shores of Scythian Phasis, that burst unswerving through the clashing rocks, to slink at length to rest in the starry firmament.”
Prima deum magnis canimus freta pervia natis fatidicamque ratem, Scythici quae Phasidis oras ausa sequi mediosque inter iuga concita cursus rumpere flammifero tandem consedit Olympo.

Source: Argonautica, Book I, Lines 1–4

Burkard Schliessmann photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Th. Jefferson returns his thanks to Dr. De La Motta for the eloquent discourse on the Consecration of the Synagogue of Savannah, which he has been so kind as to send him. It excites in him the gratifying reflection that his country has been the first to prove to the world two truths, the most salutary to human society, that man can govern himself, and that religious freedom is the most effectual anodyne against religious dissension: the maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where its true form is "divided we stand, united, we fall."”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson to Jacob De La Motta, September 1, 1820. Manuscript Division, Papers of Thomas Jefferson. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/madison.html For the background of the letter see "Thomas Jefferson's Letter on Religious Freedom" Dr. Kenneth Libo Ph.D and Michael Skakun from the Center for Jewish History, New York City, New York. http://sephardicoralhistory.org/education/essays.php?action=show&id=19
1820s

Theodore Kaczynski photo
Ian McCulloch photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Nick Hornby photo