A Quote by Greg McKeown

The word priority was singular for 500 years—what does priorities mean—'many many first things.'

Greg McKeown

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Does First First Thing First Things Many Mean Priorities Priority Singular Things Word Years

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Greg McKeown
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Born: 1977

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things.

Greg McKeown

The other problem is that the priority of many soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is operational security: not getting killed. Now that is a very valid priority, but it has to be balanced against many other priorities, especially not killing too many locals in the process.

Yaroslav Trofimov

The first draft you're pretty much on your own, so I love that. I can let my imagination go wild. I just go crazy. Then, over the years - it takes years to write these things, to make these things come to pass - there are many, many, many drafts. For Maleficent, there were at least 15.

Linda Woolverton

If you asked somebody, 'what do you wish for in life?' they wouldn't say 'happiness.' I would have answered 'excitement, knowledge,' God knows - I mean, many, many different things, but certainly not 'happiness'. It seemed like a foreign concept to wish for something that specific and that singular.

Connie Nielsen

The earth doesn't belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying. You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I've always hated the word spirituality, but now I accept the word, and I think it's a useful term. It just means so many things. And actually, most of the things it does connote are beautiful things.

Diego Cortez

The word "archive" seems so reassuring, but I'm not sure about these things that are now being called archives. Is anything lost by the fact that the word has come to mean so many more things.

David Grubbs

Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty.

Kumi Naidoo

When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

Ava DuVernay

Well, you know, I - again, even in the context of BP, I wonder about this government's priorities. The federal government's top priority right now should be the cleanup. And BP certainly has done so many things wrong. They need to be held to account.

Carly Fiorina

How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take people to see that? We're all in this rat race together!

Marsha P. Johnson

How many years and how many pictures does it take to win the confidence of Paramount? How many years before my fellow workers say, 'I know he is doing his best?'

Preston Sturges

I know that success does not come at once, it is not a thing achieved overnight. It is the result of many, many, many years of working and trying to achieve goals.

Novak Djokovic

Anyone can say 'no'. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion.

Chuck Jones

Now let me make it clear that I believe there can only be one defense policy for the United States and that is summed up in the word 'first.' I do not mean first, but. I do not mean first, when. I do not mean first, if. I mean first - period.

John F. Kennedy

A Quote by Greg McKeown

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