Top 1200 First-Rate Quotes & Sayings

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

It's better to read first rate science fiction than second rate science-it's a lot more fun, and no more likely to be wrong.

The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

First, the oil and gas business pays its fair share of taxes. Despite the current debate on energy taxes, few businesses pay more in taxes than oil and gas companies. The worldwide effective tax rate for our industry in 2010 was 40 percent. That's higher than the U.S. statutory rate of 35 percent and the rate for manufacturers of 26.5 percent.

But no work from a first rate mind is ever really second rate.

Groupon's model: Getting the group discount rate first, finding the group second. The daily deal goes out and, if a minimum number of people sign up, they can all share in the group rate. Vendor gets customers, customers get a discount, Groupon gets a cut.

Monetary policy is like juggling six balls... it is not 'interest rate up, interest rate down.' There is the exchange rate, there are long term yields, there are short term yields, there is credit growth.

It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

I knew Id always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, Well, Id rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one.

There is no room in music for the second-rate - it might just as well be the nineteenth-rate.

In climbing, being first-rate is part of the whole enterprise. The important climbers want to be the first man up the mountain, the one who put up the first route. You're usually only remembered if you put up the first route on a very important climb. The route might even be named after you. That's a kind of glory.

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

Of the second-rate leaders people speak respectfully saying, "He has done this, he has done that." Of the first-rate leaders, they do not say this. They say, "We have done it all ourselves."

Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of around 2 percent, to fall at a rate of 2.9 percent in the first half of 2013.

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.

Our tree is actually a tree of the short-term interest rate. The average direction in which the short-term interest rate moves depends on the level of the rate. When the rate is very high, that direction is downward; when the rate is very low, it is upward.

Young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate.

Every man who can be a first-rate something -- as every man can be who is a man at all -- has no right to be a fifth-rate something; for a fifth-rate something is not better than a first-rate nothing.

A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel: expensive, but worth it.

First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people.

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.

If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

A list of authors who have made themselves most beloved and therefore, most comfortable financially, shows that it is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa.

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

The Interest Rate Reduction Act takes a first step toward providing critical stability by eliminating the threat of an immediate interest rate increase, while making clear the need to move toward a long-term solution that serves the best interests of taxpayers and borrowers.

To reduce repossessions caused by unemployment, Gordon Brown needs to look at cutting the rate of corporation tax for small companies to 20 per cent and the main rate to 25 per cent, while reducing the rate of employers' national insurance by 1% for the smallest companies.

When they so-called 'target the interest rate', what they're doing is controlling the money supply via the interest rate. The interest rate is only an intermediary instrument.

Opt for a fixed-rate rather than an adjustable-rate mortgage.

Walk rate is probably the area in which a pitcher has the most room to improve, but a rate that high is tough to overcome.

I don't pretend that I can predict the future value of the growth rate or rate of return.

The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.

There are three things you need to do as a CEO-founder. Think strategically, drive design, and drive technology. Some people who are really good at one can build a pretty foundational company. Most people who are very successful are good at two. But Jack is the only person in the Valley I've met who's all three. He's a first-rate strategist, a first-rate designer, and a first-rate technologist.

A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson’s biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It’s first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing.

No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.

If a country is an attractive place for foreigners to invest their funds, then that country will have a relatively high exchange rate. If it's an unattractive place, it will have a relatively low exchange rate. Those are the fundamentals that determine the exchange rate in a floating exchange rate system.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself.

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

You are demoted from First Tiger to bulk rate.

First, pay off your high-interest-rate debt. If you have student loan debt - that's low interest rate; that has a tax benefit - you can leave that out. A mortgage can be an OK one. Credit card debt is poison. That needs to be paid off right away.

It's often better to read first-rate science fiction than second-rate science - it's far more stimulating, and perhaps no more likely to be wrong.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate

If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.

First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

What central banks can control is a base and one way they can control the base is via manipulating a particular interest rate, such as a Federal Funds rate, the overnight rate at which banks lend to one another. But they use that control to control what happens to the quantity of money. There is no disagreement.

I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.

American workers are first rate.