Top 23 Gumption Quotes & Sayings

Writing takes gall. I like to think that's true even for writers with several books under their belt, writers who have been doing it for years. It takes something - guts, gumption, self-delusion - to ask for a reader's time when we all know there's nothing new under the sun; that it's all been said, or written, before.

There are people in poverty who, if they have the gumption, say, "I'm leaving here. I'm gonna take three jobs and make it." There are definitely people who do that, and it shapes the rest of their life. And that's almost as unfortunate as someone who says, "Why bother? I'm not even gonna try." There are people consumed by that, and I've been affected by it. It's been a detriment for sure. It was ridiculous, and I don't want to see anyone go through that again. It makes me compassionate, and when I see it, it makes my shoulders tense up, and you remember it.

The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

'Salaryitis' is when you become so accustomed to that salary that you no longer have the gumption to pull out of the rut and strike out on your own. It destroys the nerve of ambitious, imaginative men, and bowing to it has meant sure defeat for more people than any other sickness, mental or physical.

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that someone else carts it off and makes a killing from it elsewhere.

You walk into an arena with 10,000 people and no security and everybody hating you, it takes some gumption.

There are times when each of us has to have some gumption to take a stand as to what we wish to preserve or change in order to maintain our self-respect and not be as "a reed shaken with the wind" (Matt. 11:7) . . . . We lose much credibility and strength, and we risk being weighed on an uneven balance, when, Don Quixote-like, we go around "tilting windmills".

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit about stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption. If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.

When I was a kid, people who got divorced were people who had no gumption.

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

Everything will come in due course, if you have the gumption to wait for it.

Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain't. So the results of man's labor will never be equal.

Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. "I never knew a girl to have such gumption," she'd say. "But I'm not too sure it's a good thing.

If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.

When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen ... ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business.

Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption.

I admire many entrepreneurs. They bring energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm. What they lack in process, they make up for in gumption.

You've got to have gumption. You've got to be willing to stand up on the stage for no money for ten years.

Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.

Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.