A Quote by Joycelyn Elders

Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Joycelyn Elders

Quote Topics

Bootstraps Else Everyone Everyone Else Felt Get Had Judge Man Own Pull Should System Themselves Then Thomas Up Used Wanted

Quote Author

Joycelyn Elders
American - Public Servant
Born: August 13, 1933

We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others... It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length.

Andrew Mitchell

In the fallen there is danger of pride and vainglory, since they prefer their own judgment to the judgment of everyone else, usurping what is not their own by setting themselves up as judges in their own cause when the rightful judge is their superior.

Saint Ignatius

?It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.

Penn Jillette

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

Michael Eric Dyson

I felt strange in my own family, because I had a very liberal mind, and I would ask myself, "Why is there this discrimination between men and women?" In our culture, the man should be outside and the woman should be at home. I wanted to study, or meet my friends, and I couldn't. And I felt very different.

Malina Suliman

I grew up with a single mom who was a waitress. We were on food stamps. My mom then got Pell Grants, put herself through college to get a degree to get a better job. Because we were broke, I then had to go to a state school. I went to Temple University, and had to get loans. So I grew up in a world where I saw the government helping individuals pull themselves up, and saw it work very successfully.

Adam McKay

It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

If America had a motto, it would be pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder than the next guy, have a goal and achieve it.

John Lee Hancock

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

Curtis Jackson

All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. All of a sudden someone threw me in this rock 'n' roll band. They threw these musicians at me, man, and the sound was coming from behind. The bass was charging me. And I decided then and there that that was it. I never wanted to do anything else. It was better than it had been with any man, you know. Maybe that's the trouble.

Janis Joplin

I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media.

Patti Smith

I had been obsessed with insects and creepy-crawlies: I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up, and suddenly, all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing.

George Michael

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.