Quotes about lifetime
page 4

Phil Brooks photo

“I tried. I tried so hard to empathize with all of your weaknesses. I implored every single one of you to just say "no," and all my empathy got was for you to love Jeff Hardy that much more than you already did. But this will not deter me. I will stay the course; I still believe in teaching you people the difference between right and wrong. (Audience chants "Hardy!") Oh, obviously it's gonna be challenging, listening to you people, and by the looks of some of you, it's gonna be a big challenge. But just like any other challenge that's come down the pipe in my lifetime, I'm gonna meet that challenge head on like a man, just like I did last week. Let's take a look. (Recap of Punk's assault on Hardy) See, now I know why you people love Jeff Hardy so much. It's because you are all just like him; and, in turn, Jeff Hardy is just like all of you. The reality is, none of you have the strength to be straight-edge. (Audience resumes chant) You gravitate towards Jeff because it's the easy way out: it's easier to weak like Jeff, because you sure can't be strong like me. Oh, you can boo all you want. I know why you boo, you know why you boo. It's because I tell the truth. And the truth sometimes hurts, doesn't it? For instance, what does it say on your prescription bottle of pills? "Take one every four hours"? Well, don't tell me you people don't gobble four, six, eight at a time like they were Pez. That is drug abuse—I don't do that. I also don't smoke, and those who do are stupid. You gotta be stupid to not listen to the Surgeon General, especially when he prints the warning label on the package of smokes. You gotta be a fool. And we can talk about those funny cigarettes, and you obviously know what I'm talking about because you cheer, and that's utterly sad. That's pathetic. I…I can't even wrap my head around you people cheering, 'cause when you smoke those funny cigarettes, not only is that hazardous to your health, it's also illegal. So those who have taken a puff, not only are you poisoning yourself, you're also breaking the law, so the vast majority of everybody here in this arena is a criminal. I am not a criminal—I never have been, and I never will be. Now let's talk about alcohol. I've saved the best poison for last, see because this is a gateway drug. Don't tell me not a single one of you here has ever said, "I'm gonna go out for one drink," and one leads to two, and two drinks leads to three, and then it's a double of this, and a shot of that, and then your head winds up in the toilet, night in and night out. Congratulations, that is alcoholism. And in my book, if you even take one drink, you're an alcoholic. So I understand why you people love Jeff Hardy so much, I understand why Jeff loves you—it's because you're all weak. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, you deserve better. This entire world deserves better. What you need is a leader. You need a strong leader who's gonna stand up in the face of adversity and just say "no."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

You need a strong leader that's gonna carry the banner of the World Heavyweight Championship with honor, with pride, respect, dignity, integrity, and class. What you people need is a straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion. You need CM Punk.
August 7, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo

“I am 83 this year and after a lifetime of Jewish activism, I have determined that what I hold to be the greatest Jewish value is our ability to question.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2012/10/09/bronfman-why-civil-discourse-is-imperative-for-inter-jewish-dialogue/11782.

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
George W. Bush photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Torrey DeVitto photo
David Prowse photo

“I mean it's wonderful to see that something you have done in your career has attracted so much attention. It was basically giving it what I call a lifetime achievement, it's something people will never forget.”

David Prowse (1935) English bodybuilder, weightlifter, and actor

Interview with David Prowse http://www.galaxiki.org/feature/darthvader.html (April 9, 2008)

Captain Beefheart photo

“You look dandy in the sky but you don’t scare me
Cause I got you here in my eye
In this lifetime you got my human gets me blues”

Captain Beefheart (1941–2010) musician

My Human Gets Me Blues
Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Chuck Klosterman photo

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person who you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real--but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005)

Ray Bradbury photo
Ernst Mach photo

“There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements of mathematics many operations can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods would take a lifetime.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

Source: 19th century, Popular Scientific Lectures [McCormack] (Chicago, 1898), p. 197; On mathematics and counting.

M. K. Hobson photo
Douglas Coupland photo

“For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you are a wise man, Van Helsing.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Dracula, to Van Helsing, who has discovered his secret
Dracula (1931)

Erich Fromm photo

“To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968)

Gérard Debreu photo

“I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.”

Gérard Debreu (1921–2004) French economist and mathematician

" Gerard Debreu - Biographical http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1983/debreu-bio.html". in: Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1983, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1984; Republished at Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014.

Prince photo
Marcus Orelias photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Last week, i… i extended a hand to the WWE Universe in a much needed intervention. You know, i don't know if you people know this or not, but i'm not the only one who knows that pills and cigarettes and alcohol are harmful. Medical science has proven this, so there's a surgeon general put in place to put warning labels on all of these products. I guess he's just there to warn the smart people that already know, huh? This is my crusade, and i will continue my crusade for as long as there are people who need help, as long as there are people out there who need change in their lives. One person in particular i've been helping for quite some time now, i'd like to introduce him to the world. Ladies and gentlemen, i give you… Luke Gallows. (Gallows raises his fist) That's right, some of you may recognize him as "Festus", but that was a lifetime ago. And it's a lifetime that he'd just as soon regret. It's a lifetime of torturous drug abuse and neglect, you see, it started just like it started for all of you people, one, one little pill. Just one little pill to take the edge off, one painkiller. And then one turns to two, two turns to four, four turns to eight, so on and so forth. And sure, his friends, his family were there, but they enabled him. They didn't help him, they thought they were but they were slowly rotting him from the inside out. But then i helped him, just like i could help all of you. Trust me, this is just the start, this doesn't end here, it begins here and now. I will continue to reach out and help those who can't help themselves. Holds up brown paper bag On December 1st, this is scary, people, pay attention. On December 1st, a very dangerous addictive new drug hits the streets. Now this scares me because it's a socially accepted over-the-counter drug and it's gonna be widely available all over the world. And it's scary because it's more dangerous than any prescribed medication, it's more harmful than chain smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes, it is more dangerous than corroding your liver with a fifth of gin or vodka and then chasing it with your Daddy's favorite beer. (Punk pulls a Jeff Hardy DVD out of the bag) "Jeff Hardy, My Life, My Rules" And what an appropriate title, for a loser who destroyed his life and his career living by his rules. And what makes me sick to my stomach is Jeff didn't just ruin his life, he didn't just end his career. (Crowd chants Hardy) He ruined the lives of all his fans because he's planted seeds of destruction in all of the people, all of the drug addicts like yourself who actually looked up to the Charismatic Enabler like he was some sort of a prophet. Well, if you people have any brain-cells left, if there's anything left of your memory that's not burnt out, all you need to know is that the last chapter of this DVD is the most important one you need to watch because it tells the whole story. It's a cage match between myself and Jeff Hardy, where i ended Jeff's career in the WWE… FOREVER! I'm the reason he's not here! And I know how hard it is to deprogram your weak little brains from all the lies you've been fed all over the years, but you owe it to yourselves. Look yourself in the mirror, search inside yourself for that shred of self-respect that might be left, and when it comes to this, when it comes to this garbage, (Holds up DVD) just say no.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

November 27, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Roger Ebert photo
Miss Shangay Lily photo
Michelle Obama photo

“Barack is one of the smartest men we will see in our lifetime.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Campaign rally, Las Vegas, Nevada http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/601mzofy.asp (17 January 2008)
2000s

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land. Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of its freedom. How many times—in my lifetime and in yours—have the American people gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and tell them of danger? Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that the security and the freedom of this nation required. And they do again tonight in Vietnam. Not too many years ago Vietnam was a peaceful, if troubled, land. In the North was an independent Communist government. In the South a people struggled to build a nation, with the friendly help of the United States. There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was dim. Then, little more than six years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest. And from that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from North to South in a swelling stream that is swallowing the remnants of revolution in aggression. As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed. And we will stay until aggression has stopped.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Will Eisner photo

“The tenement – the name derives from a fifteenth-century legal term for a multiple dwelling – always seemed to me a “ship afloat in concrete.” After all didn’t the building carry passengers on a voyage through life? No. 55 sat at the corner of Dropsie avenue near the elevated train, or the elevated as we called it in those days. It was a treasure house of stories that illustrated tenement life as I remembered it, stories that needed to be told before they faded from memory. Within its “railroad flats,” with rooms strung together train-like lived low-paid city employees or laborers and their turbulent families. Most were recent immigrants, intent n their own survival. They kept busy raising children and dreaming of the better lie they knew existed “uptown.” Hallways were filled with a rich stew of cooking aromas, sounds of arguments and the tinny wail from Victrolas. What community spirit there was stemmed from the common hostility of tenants to the landlord or his surrogate superintendent. Typically, the buildings tenants came and went with regularity, depending on the vagaries of their fortunes But many remained for a lifetime, imprisoned by poverty or old age. There was no real privacy or anonymity. Everybody knew about everybody. Human dramas, both good and bad, instantly gathered witness like ants swarming around a piece of dropped food. From window to window or on the stoop below, the tenants analyzed, evaluated and critiqued each happening, following an obligatory admission that it was really none of their business.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XV-XVI, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Arnold J. Toynbee photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“I don't think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On Val meets the V.I.P.s, BBC Television (5 March 1973) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=101992
Education Secretary

Jack McDevitt photo
Jared Diamond photo
Valentino Braitenberg photo
John Boehner photo

“We lost one of one of the great leaders of our lifetime on Monday. She was a true friend of America, and a champion of freedom. We're going to ensure that Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is honored by the United States government in a way commensurate with her enormous achievements.”

John Boehner (1949) Former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

On the death of Margaret Thatcher. Southern Maryland News, April 14, 2013 http://smnewsnet.com/archives/58622
2010s, 2013

Evelyn Waugh photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing. It is only fit for idlers, people who are always bored, who sleep for a third of their lifetime, fritter away another third in eating, drinking, and other necessary or unnecessary affairs, and don’t know—though they are always complaining that life is so short—what to do with the rest of their time. Such lazy Turks find mental solace in handling a pipe and gazing at the clouds of smoke that they puff into the air; it helps them to kill time. Smoking induces drinking beer, for hot mouths need to be cooled down. Beer thickens the blood, and adds to the intoxication produced by the narcotic smoke. The nerves are dulled and the blood clotted. If they go on as they seem to be doing now, in two or three generations we shall see what these beer-swillers and smoke-puffers have made of Germany. You will notice the effect on our literature—mindless, formless, and hopeless; and those very people will wonder how it has come about. And think of the cost of it all! Fully 25,000,000 thalers a year end in smoke all over Germany, and the sum may rise to forty, fifty, or sixty millions. The hungry are still unfed, and the naked unclad. What can become of all the money? Smoking, too, is gross rudeness and unsociability. Smokers poison the air far and wide and choke every decent man, unless he takes to smoking in self-defence. Who can enter a smoker’s room without feeling ill? Who can stay there without perishing?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Heinrich Luden, Rueckblicke in mein Leben, Jena 1847
Attributed

Enoch Powell photo
Paul A. Samuelson photo
John Bright photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Warren Farrell photo
Marvin Minsky photo
Carl Panzram photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Michelle Pfeiffer photo
Nancy Pelosi photo

“This president goes into office with more expectations than any president I can ever remember in my lifetime.-2008”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Dan Reed, Obama Has Much to Do Before Even Taking Office, USA Today, November 6, 2008 1B, 2008-11-08]
2000s

Paul Newman photo

“Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul Newman: A Life in Pictures, ed. Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac (2006), p. 93

Warren Buffett photo

“From a theoretical point of view, lifetime income would be ideal, but the practical problems in estimating it are enormous.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 6, Political Economy, p. 140

Dan Fogelberg photo
William Hazlitt photo

“No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"The Indian Jugglers"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

John Pilger photo

“During my lifetime, America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, "Blair has made Britain a target" 21 September 2001 http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,555452,00.html

Ervin László photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Wladyslaw Sikorski photo

“One experienced minute sometimes teaches us more than a lifetime.”

Wladyslaw Sikorski (1881–1943) Polish military and political leader

in Szkoła Podstawowa im. gen. Władysława Sikorskiego w Kostrzycy. Witaj na stronie głównej http://www.kostrzyca.edu.pl/, World of Tanks: 4TP Polish Squad http://worldoftanks.eu/community/clans/500004184--4TP-/ and Cytatybaza: Władysław Sikorski http://cytatybaza.pl/autorzy/wladyslaw-sikorski.html
Original: Jedna przeżyta chwila czasami uczy nas więcej, aniżeli całe życie.

Colette photo

“As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

“The South of France”, Earthly Paradise (1966) ed. Robert Phelps

Garry Kasparov photo
Bernard Lewis photo
George Carlin photo

“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony. If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large. Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Giovannino Guareschi photo

“Minutes and seconds are strictly city preoccupations. In the city people hurry, hurry so as not to waste a single minute, and fail to realize that they are throwing a lifetime away.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

The Dance of the Hours
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Sun (1952)

Roy Jenkins photo

“The sense of shame that the Chancellor should have felt is far more personal. It is a sense of shame for having taken over an economy with a £1,000 million surplus and running it to a £2,000 million deficit. It is a sense of shame for having conducted our internal financial affairs with such profligacy that our public accounts are out of balance as never before. It is a sense of shame for having presided over the greatest depreciation of the currency, both at home and abroad, in our history. It is a sense of shame for having left us at a moment of test far weaker than most of our neighbours…There is, I believe, a greater threat to the effective working of our democratic institutions than most of us have seen in our adult lifetimes. I do not believe that it springs primarily from the machinations of subversively-minded men, although no doubt they are there and are anxious to exploit exploitable situations. It comes much more dangerously from a widespread cynicism with the processes of our political system. I believe that the Chancellor contributed to that on Monday. I believe that it poses a serious challenge to us all…None of us should seek salvation through chaos. There is a duty too to recognise that we could slip into a still worse rate of inflation and a world spiral-ling downwards towards slump, unemployment and falling standards, with our selves, temporarily at least, well in the vanguard. What is required is neither an imposed solution nor an open hand at the till. The alternative to reaching a settlement with the miners is paralysis…The task of statesmanship is to reach a settlement but to do it in a way which opens no floodgates for if they were opened, it would not only damage everyone but it would undermine the differential which the miners deserve and which the nation now needs them to have.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/dec/19/economic-and-energy-situation in the House of Commons (19 December 1973)
1970s

Henry David Thoreau photo

“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Hillary Clinton photo

“I don't think President Obama and Vice President Biden get the credit they deserve for saving us from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

“I discovered that the computer is not like the violin; it doesn't take inborn genius or a lifetime of practice to get sweet music out of it.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Preface, p. x
Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008)

Narendra Modi photo
Jack Vance photo
Sam Harris photo

“The power of psychedelics… is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Drugs and the Meaning of Life http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/ (5 July 2011)
2010s

Enoch Powell photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Neil Armstrong photo

“I’m quite certain that we’ll have such [lunar] bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts, continually manned.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

BBC interview (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtdcdxvNI1o

Bill Clinton photo
Vyjayanthimala photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Chuck Jones photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
Pat Cadigan photo
Graham Greene photo
Richard Evelyn Byrd photo

“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

Source: Alone (1938), CH. 7

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“After a lifetime of living on hope because there is nothing but hope, one loses the taste for victory.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“The Day Before the Revolution” p. 270 (originally published in Galaxy, August 1974)
Short fiction, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975)

Bryan Caplan photo
Warren E. Burger photo

“If I were writing the Bill of Rights now there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.... This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Interview (from min 7:49) https://vimeo.com/157433062 at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, PBS television broadcast (Dec. 16, 1991)

Robert Sheckley photo
Richard Nixon photo
William Hague photo
Bill Maher photo
Jacques Derrida photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Kerry McCarthy photo
Ernest Hemingway photo