“Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but brains saves both.”
Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II
A collection of quotes on the topic of sweat, likeness, blood, doing.
“Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but brains saves both.”
Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II
Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author
Source: Carlos Castaneda (1971) Separate Reality: Conversations With Don Juan. p. 85; As cited in: Eugene Dupuis (2001) Time Shift: Managing Time to Create a Life You Love. Ch. 5: Self Management
“Blood sweat and tears homie I'm made of it”
Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio
-Dat New New
Music
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer
As quoted in Reader's Digest (April 1964)
Variant: I know a cure for everything. Salt water … in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea.
Variant: The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.
Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer
So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)
W.B. Yeats book The Tower
I, st. 4 <br class="br">The Tower (1928), Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1547/
George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 14
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
“I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.”
Barack Obama book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Source: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
“All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave.”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
“Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Speech before the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island (June 1897), reported in "Washington’s Forgotten Maxim", American Ideals (1926), vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., chapter 12, p. 198
1890s
Milkha Singh (1935) Indian track and field athlete
A BBC quote in Flying Sikh': Indian sprinter Milkha Singh biopic set for release."
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
"Sleep, Sweet Sleep" [Süßer Schlaf] first published in Neue Freie Presse [Vienna] (30 May 1909), as translated by Helen T. Knopf in Past Masters and Other Papers (1933), p. 269
“A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”
George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general
Letter (3 March 1944), later published in War As I Knew It (1947) Similar expressions were also used in his famous "Speech to the Third Army" in June 1944. The phrase is similar to one attributed to Erwin Rommel, "Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains saves both", and to an even older one by August Willich: "A drop of sweat on the drill ground will save many drops of blood on the battlefield" from The Army: Standing Army or National Army? (1866)
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
Quoted in The Nazi Party 1919-1945: A Complete History, Dietrich Orlow, New York: NY, Enigma Books, 2012, p 61. Goebbels’ article, “Nationalsozialisten aus Berlin und aus dem Reich”, Voelkischer Beobachter, February 4, 1927
1920s
James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist
Cold Sweat, written with Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis (1967)
Song lyrics
“Which I have earned with the sweat of my brows.”
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book I, Ch. 4.
Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor
Peter Gzowski's 90 Minutes Live interview (1977)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 https://archive.org/details/recollectionsab00lamogoog (1895), by Ward Hill Lamon, p. 90 <br class="br">1860s
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Lincoln was alluding to Jesus' words in in Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (KJV)
1860s, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Context: Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)
Context: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
“I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”
George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general
Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.
“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. ”
Норман Шварцкопф (1895–1958) United States Army general and first superintendent of the New Jersey State Police
David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon
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Fanatacism Of Desperation
“Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath
“It's a long walk back to Eden, sweetheart, so don't sweat the small stuff.”
Variant: It's a long way back to Eden, Sweetheart, so don't sweat the small stuff.
Source: Insomnia
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Source: The Second World War: Alone
“He ran the back of his hand up her cheek, with the pretense of wiping away sweat.”
Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated
Source: Everything Is Illuminated
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: Alice in Zombieland
“There is nothing wrong with God's plan that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist
Source: Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues
William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer
Variant: the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat
“Don't sweat the small stuff… and it's all small stuff.”
Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker
Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff... and it's all small stuff
“i Believe In The Fire Of Love And The Sweat Of Truth”
Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army
“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
Richard Marcinko book Rogue Warrior
Source: Rogue Warrior
Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
[By-Line, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades by Ernest Hemingway, White, William, 1967, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 364]
Source: By-Line: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades
“Reading goes faster if you don't sweat comprehension.”
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
Wilford Woodruff (1807–1898) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Journal of Discourses 7:100 (Jan. 10, 1858)
B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar
Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights
“Worship is not just something we feel, it is something we sweat.”
Donald Miller (1971) American writer
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)
Robert W. Service Ballads of a Bohemian
. . .
Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness -- War."
Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), Michael
Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist
"The Contest" (1959)
Robert Cormier book Beyond the Chocolate War
Source: Beyond the Chocolate War (1985), p. 95
Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. xxxi
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics
"Crossing" describing memories of New Mexico in Hound and Horn (June 1928)
“There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success.”
Bear Bryant (1913–1983) American college football coach
Source: Top Fifty Quotes From Bear Bryant, Drew, Roberts, Aug. 7, 2012, 2015-12-17 http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/2012/bear-bryant-50-quotes/,
Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America
Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)
Greil Marcus (1945) American historian
Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), p. 1.
Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader
Process of Restoration http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon65/SM650213.htm, (1965-02-13)
“I actually share one thing with Whitney Houston, which is, I also have sweating issues.”
Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian
The D-list (2004)