Quotes about second
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John Ruysbroeck photo
Nick Drake photo

“Please give me a second grace.
Please give me a second face.
I've fallen far down
The first time around.
Now I just sit on the ground in your way.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Fly
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Mickey Mantle photo

“If we were choosing sides and every player was in the pool, my first pick would be Whitey Ford and my second would be Ted Williams. Beyond that there would be just too many and I'd be afraid of leaving somebody out. Besides, with Whitey on the mound and Williams in the lineup, we'd still beat just about anybody.”

Mickey Mantle (1931–1995) Professional baseball player

When asked "to choose the ideal team he would field if he had to win game," with "the stipulation that he confine his choices to one-time teammates and rivals"; as quoted in The Greatest Team of All Time: As Selected by Baseball's Immortals, From Ty Cobb to Willie Mays (1994), compiled by Nicholas Acocella and Donald Dewey, p. 121.

Pauline Kael photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Margot Fonteyn photo

“The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.”

Margot Fonteyn (1919–1991) English ballerina

As quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations‎ (1988) by James Beasley Simpson; also quoted in Running on Empty: Meditations for Indispensable Women (1992) by Ellen Sue Stern, p. 235
Paraphrased variants: The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

Amir Taheri photo
Doug Stanhope photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Two things greater than all things are,
The first is Love, and the second War.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Ballad of the King's Jest, Stanza 9
Other works

Pat Robertson photo

“Pat Robertson: He's going to have a second term. He's going to win. Romney will win the election.
Benny Hinn: You believe that.
Pat Robertson: I absolutely believe that.
Benny Hinn: What makes you believe that?
Pat Robertson: Cause the Lord told me.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

2012-10-31
This Is Your Day
TBN
10:47, quoted in * 2013-05-09
Pat Robertson, Who Said 'The Lord Told Me' that 'Romney Will Win,' Urges Viewers to Beware False Prophets
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-robertson-who-said-lord-told-me-romney-will-win-urges-viewers-beware-false-prophets
Regarding 2012 US presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Jonathan Swift photo
Frank Wilczek photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Barbara Boxer photo
Robert Lanza photo
African Spir photo

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

Hovhannes Bagramyan photo
Carlos Menem photo

“English: "The second round will be a formality, nothing more."”

Carlos Menem (1930) Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999

"La segunda vuelta será un paso formal, nada más."
Said on April 28th, 2003, after winning the first election round

Clay Shirky photo
Joe Biden photo

“I'll start the show any second now, I'm just warming myself up into a bundle of spite.”

Mark Lamarr (1967) British DJ

Uncensored and Live (1997)

Väinö Linna photo

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics won, but racing to the line for a strong second place came feisty little Finland.”

Vanhala, the eternal comedian, summarizing the war after it ends, p. 466.
The Unknown Soldier

Bryant Gumbel photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Ethan Hawke photo
John Kasich photo

“If all of a sudden, you couldn't buy an AR-15, what would you lose? Would you feel as though your Second Amendment rights would be eroded because you couldn't buy a God-darn AR-15?”

John Kasich (1952) American politician and former television host

On CNN's State of the Union on February 18, 2018 ([CNN, Transcript, State of the Union, February 18, 2018, September 6, 2018, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1802/18/sotu.01.html]; [GOP Sen. Lankford has 'no issue' with stronger gun background checks, Kailani, Koenig, February 18, 2018, August 22, 2018, NBC News, Meet the Press, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/gop-sen-lankford-open-stronger-gun-background-checks-n849176]; [Highlights: Students Call for Action Across Nation; Florida Lawmakers Fail to Take Up Assault Rifle Bill, Julie, Turkewitz, Anemona, Hartocollis, February 20, 2018, August 24, 2018, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/gun-control-florida-shooting.html]).

Eugene Jarvis photo
Gordon R. Dickson photo

“The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Robert Heller cited in : Jonathon Green (1984) The Cynic's Lexicon: A Dictionary of Amoral Advice. p. 92

Thomas Carlyle photo
John Prescott photo

“Because of the security reasons for one thing and, second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about. Have you got another silly question?”

John Prescott (1938) Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007)

Comment on ITN news when asked why he had taken a car 250 yards from his hotel to the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth, instead of walking (30 September 1999), as quoted in "Prescott walks it like he talks it " BBC News online (30 September 1999) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/461555.stm

Roger Ebert photo
Dmitri Shostakovich photo
John Calvin photo

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

Ayn Rand photo

“The second handers offer substitutes for competence such as love, charm, kindness - easy substitutes - and there is no substitute for creation.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Journals of Ayn Rand (1997)

“And so, what we've done all of these years is very simple, is use the little tool, which is ask three whys in a row. Because the first why you always have a good answer for. The second why, it starts getting difficult. By the third why, you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing.”

Ricardo Semler (1959) Brazilian businessman

TED: "How to run a company with (almost) no rules" https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules/ (October 2014)

Mickey Spillane photo

“I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor. Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me.
If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash onto his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire.
Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once. That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so that I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share, I had forgotten all about it.”

The Big Kill (1951)

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Sueton photo

“Twenty-three dagger thrusts went home as he stood there. Caesar did not utter a sound after Casca's blow had drawn a groan from him; though some say that when he saw Marcus Brutus about to deliver the second blow, he reproached him in Greek with: "You, too, my child?"”
Atque ita tribus et viginti plagis confossus est uno modo ad primum ictum gemitu sine voce edito, etsi tradiderunt quidam Marco Bruto irruenti dixisse: και συ τέκνον.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, Ch. 82

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Newton Lee photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Sam Houston photo

“All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.”

Sam Houston (1793–1863) nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, namesake of Houston, Texas

As quoted in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum http://www.shsu.edu/~smm_www/History/quotes.shtml.

William F. Buckley Jr. photo
Bernard Harcourt photo
Maureen O'Hara photo
Nick Clegg photo
Francis Escudero photo
Roger Ebert photo

“This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-life-of-david-gale-2003 of The Life of David Gale (21 February 2003)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Steve Jobs photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“George Bernard Shaw is said to have told W. S. C.:
Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
W. S. C. to G. B. S.:
Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Version given in Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit by Kay Halle, 1966
Apocryphal, originally featured Noël Coward and Randolph Churchill (Winston’s son); attested 1946 (columnist Walter Winchell, attributed to anonymous United Press journalist in London). Originally only featured first half about lack of friend; second half (retort about lack of second performance) attested 1948, as was replacement of personages by George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. Specific plays added in later variants, ranging from Man and Superman (1903) to Saint Joan (1923), and appeared in biographies and quote collections from the 1960s.
The quote is presumably apocryphal due to earliest attestations being too different, less famous personages (easily replaced by more famous ones), the quotation becoming more elaborate in later versions, the 20+ year gap between putative utterance and first attestation, and the approximately 50 year gap between putative utterance and appearance in reference works, all as undocumented hearsay.
Detailed discussion at “ Here are Two Tickets for the Opening of My Play. Bring a Friend—If You Have One http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/25/two-tickets-shaw/”, Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/, March 25, 2012.
Misattributed

Ajahn Brahm photo
William Graham Sumner photo

“Any prosperity policy is a delusion and a path to ruin. There is no economic lesson which the people of the United States need to take to heart more than that. In the second place the Spanish mistakes arose, in part, from confusing the public treasury with the national wealth.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

"The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, speech at Yale 1899 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-boll-11-w-g-sumner-the-conquest-of-the-united-states-by-spain-1898.

Mitch Albom photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Section 80; translation by J. F. Stout
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

El Lissitsky photo
Eric Hobsbawm photo

“In the simplest terms the question who or what caused the Second World War can be answered in two words: Adolf Hitler.”

Source: The Age of Extremes (1992), p. 36 <Ref> https://libcom.org/files/Eric%20Hobsbawm%20-%20Age%20Of%20Extremes%20-%201914-1991.pdf</ref>

William Herschel photo

“I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it.”

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American author and playwright

"I was a Sand Crab" http://books.google.com/books?id=teAQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+make+mistakes+I'll+be+the+second+to+admit+it%22&pg=PA17#v=onepage
The Snake Has All the Lines (1960)

Jim Rogers photo
Ernest Gellner photo
Jack Buck photo

“There's the snap; there's the kick. It is up; it is…NO GOOD! Norwood missed! Four seconds left. The Giants have won Super Bowl XXV by the score of 20–19.”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling Scott Norwood's missed field goal in Super Bowl XXV
1990s

Amit Chaudhuri photo
Elton John photo
Josip Broz Tito photo
Philip Schaff photo

“Progress of his Version. Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."
He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.
He began with the New Testament in November or December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg, with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures; Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The translation was then hurried through three presses, and appeared already Sept. 21, 1522, but without his name.
In December a second edition was required, which contained many corrections and improvements.
He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's competence as a Bible translator

Vytautas Juozapaitis photo

“Bad boys have long fascinated audiences as well as storytellers, whatever the medium. Such rebels, often without causes beyond self-gratification, have been at the center of much of contemporary popular culture. One of the paradigms for such dramatized morality tales is Mozart's magnificent "Don Giovanni," whose musical and theatrical turns evoked awe and laughter and terror from the more that 1,500 music fans who on Saturday night flocked to Lawrence's Lied Center for the Mozart Festival Opera production. The libertine is thoroughly disreputable. Nonetheless, we look on in fascination because of his devilish smile, dashing good looks, ready wit, and the audacity of his hyper-inflated ego. If you can imagine a young Jack Nicholson with mustache, cape and a flair for sword play, you've got it. Lithuanian baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis gave the Don appropriate swagger and voice. He also brought a comic twist that gave the roué a touch of the trickster. Stepping out of character for a second in the midst of a briskly paced recitative, he paused, turned, and looked up at the supertitled English translation as if to check his lines. It was a joke shared by all. The pleasure of performing, even in the opera's most dramatic moments, was evident.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Chuck Berg, "Mozart's 'Don Giovanni' triumphs", Topeka Capital Journal (February, 2007) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Roy Jenkins photo
Bonar Law photo
Antonio Negri photo

“If I could have those sixty seconds within Bradypus… would I not receive a plea for humans to pause, reassess - and above all, slow down?”

"Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?" pp. 391
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Peter F. Drucker photo

“We are now in the middle of a long process of transition in the nature of the image which man has of himself and his environment. Primitive men, and to a large extent also men of the early civilizations, imagined themselves to be living on a virtually illimitable plane. There was almost always somewhere beyond the known limits of human habitation, and over a very large part of the time that man has been on earth, there has been something like a frontier…
Gradually, however, man has been accustoming himself to the notion of the spherical earth and a closed sphere of human activity. A few unusual spirits among the ancient Greeks perceived that the earth was a sphere. It was only with the circumnavigations and the geographical explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, that the fact that the earth was a sphere became at all widely known and accepted. Even in the thirteenth century, the commonest map was Mercator's projection, which visualizes the earth as an illimitable cylinder, essentially a plane wrapped around the globe, and it was not until the Second World War and the development of the air age that the global nature of tile planet really entered the popular imagination. Even now we are very far from having made the moral, political, and psychological adjustments which are implied in this transition from the illimitable plane to the closed sphere.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, 1966, p. 3

Amir Khusrow photo
Vladimir Mayakovsky photo

“Tramp squares with rebellious treading!
Up heads! As proud peaks be seen!
In the second flood we are spreading
Every city on earth will be clean.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

"Our March" (1917); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 125

Michelle Obama photo

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my "Blackness" than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

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

" Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community http://pt.scribd.com/doc/2305083/Princeton-Educated-Blacks-and-the-Black-Community", senior thesis, Princeton University (1985), p. 14-15 quoted in "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" by Jeffrey Ressner at Politico.com (23 February 2008) http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42FC5818-3048-5C12-005E33B3C0F4E64B
1980s

Edwin Hubble photo

“I chucked the law for astronomy, and I knew that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.”

Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) American astronomer

as quoted by [N. Y. Mayall, Biographical memoir. Volume 41, Memoirs of the National Academy of sciences, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), National Academy of Sciences, 1970, 179]
Attributed

Edouard Manet photo

“I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third place, and teaching the fourth.”

James O. Fraser (1886–1938) missionary to China, inventor of Tibeto-Burman Nosu alphabet

1922 Source: Geraldine Taylor. Behind the Ranges: The Life-changing Story of J.O. Fraser. Singapore: OMF International (IHQ) Ltd., 1998, 269.

Henry Clay Trumbull photo
Chris Cornell photo
Walter Benjamin photo
Sharron Angle photo