First Quotes

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?

It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.

The first thing to recognize not just about Afghanistan but about any poor undeveloped country is that as big as it looks on the map, it's much bigger when you're there.

I didn't lose my virginity until I was 18 The first time was a nightmare. Who shows you how to use a condom?

I think it's always good to take on things that at first seem bigger than you. Then you just try and surmount them.

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

I have a child and I'm a parent first of all.

I remember the first time I put on the Army uniform. I just felt like a totally different person - I felt proud.

Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.

I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.

A girl didn't get an athletic scholarship until the fall of 1972 for the very first time.

The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

The first step is that the Cambodian government has expressed sincerity to apologize for what happened.

That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.

I don't know where to find a good guy. I just think that they're around and I think you have to be good and at some point you'll attract that. I really believe that. First, people should stop looking. The looking thing does not work. Just let love find you.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

My first love is acting on stage. A sitcom is a hybrid of stage and film.

I discovered freedom for the first time in England.

I think we are living in selfish times. I'm the first one to say that I'm the most selfish. We live in the so-called 'first world,' and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

Laws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment... Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag.

Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time.

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

I will never forget experiencing Venice for the first time. It feels like you are transported to another time - the art, music, food and pure romance in the air is like no other place.

Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.