First Quotes

The first time I got up in front of an audience was terror, abject terror, which continued for another four or five years. There still is, a little bit.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

On the fortieth day after his death, we held the ceremony, and I performed for the very first time.

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters.

I was 29 and I really fell in love, I think, for the first time. I was vulnerable in a way I didn't think I could be.

My very first magazine cover was the National Enquirer.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

First of all, just knowing people who grew up in the movie business at that time, no one had Mexican maids.

For the first time in history all the major countries in the world are pushing together to reach this goal... building something in space that is really for all humankind.

I'm a big fan of small business ownership. I think it's the backbone of American innovation. But to be successful, you first have to have the courage to go for it.

I don't really care what the man on the street thinks. I never did anything to please him in the first place, and I'm not going to start now.

I will tell you King's First Law of Recognition: You never get it when you want it, and then when it comes, you get too much.

When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.

For the first time ever I was taking the family on the road. We stayed with my in-laws, which on life's list of experiences ranks right below sitting in a tub full of scissors.

When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so 'don't fuss, dear; get on with it.'

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

Because I think a lot of people felt like, ultimately - and this isn't the first time I've said this, so I'll bore you again with it - but ultimately it was... I think it felt like homework a bit for people.

The debt-ceiling vote isn't about what will be done in the future; it is about the integrity of America's commitment to support the bonds we issue. Elected officials have an obligation to maintain that integrity, regardless of whether they voted for the programs that required the borrowing in the first place.

Family's first, and that's what matters most. We realize that our love goes deeper than the tennis game.

Bill Hanna and I owe an awful lot to television, but we both got our start and built the first phase of our partnership in the movies.

This is what happens, when, for the first time in modern history, a candidate resorts to lawsuits to try to overturn the outcome of an election for president.

Well, first, if I am fortunate enough to be elected to the U.S. Senate, it won't be a party that will have elected me. It will be the people of California.

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.

Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.

I kind of discovered my voice for the first time, and the more I did it, the better it got.

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.