Top 50 Cullen Hightower Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos.”

— Cullen Hightower

2. “When performance exceeds ambition, the overlap is called success.”

— Cullen Hightower

3. “Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.”

— Cullen Hightower

4. “Our freedom to discipline ourselves is a freedom we can lose if we don’t use it.”

— Cullen Hightower

5. “Faith is building on what you know is here so that you can reach what you know is there.”

— Cullen Hightower

6. “The true measure of your worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.”

— Cullen Hightower

7. “A good education prepares a child to be a good employee and a good citizen-in that order, with the importance of the former never exceeding the importance of the latter.”

— Cullen Hightower

8. “One difference between savagery and civilization is a little courtesy. There’s no telling what a lot of courtesy would do.”

— Cullen Hightower

9. “Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.”

— Cullen Hightower

10. “Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.”

— Cullen Hightower

11. “When we put our best foot forward, the other one had better be good enough to stand on.”

— Cullen Hightower

12. “The only way some of us exercise our minds is by jumping to conclusions...”

— Cullen Hightower

13. “The gratification of a thoughtless pleasure soon evaporates; the pleasure of a gratifying thought never ends.”

— Cullen Hightower

14. “A stepping-stone can be a stumbling block if we can’t see it until after we have tripped over it.”

— Cullen Hightower

15. “Of all creatures on earth, we humans have the highest level of stupidity.”

— Cullen Hightower

16. “The prime of life is that fleeting time between green and over-ripe.”

— Cullen Hightower

17. “Failure can be bought on easy terms; success must be paid for in advance.”

— Cullen Hightower

18. “Courtship brings out the best. Marriage brings out the rest.”

— Cullen Hightower

19. “The human body was designed to walk, run or stop; it wasn’t built for coasting.”

— Cullen Hightower

20. “A day’s pay for a day’s work is more than adequate when both the work and the pay are appreciated as much as they are expected.”

— Cullen Hightower

21. “Older generations are living proof that younger generations can survive their lunacy.”

— Cullen Hightower

22. “The wheel was invented so we could move faster. Credit was invented so we would have to.”

— Cullen Hightower

23. “We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message.”

— Cullen Hightower

24. “We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.”

— Cullen Hightower

25. “Only the poor can know all the disadvantages of poverty. Only the rich can know all the disadvantages of wealth.”

— Cullen Hightower

26. “Strangers are what friends are made of.”

— Cullen Hightower

27. “Money can be fickle, having a lasting relationship with a few and a brief fling with others, while just flirting with the rest of us.”

— Cullen Hightower

28. “There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they’re called humorists.”

— Cullen Hightower

29. “Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.”

— Cullen Hightower

30. “Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.”

— Cullen Hightower

31. “It’s hard to see a halo when you’re looking for horns.”

— Cullen Hightower

32. “A mind becomes a detriment when it acquires more intelligence than its integrity can handle.”

— Cullen Hightower

33. “Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it.”

— Cullen Hightower

34. “Getting even with somebody is no way to get ahead of anybody.”

— Cullen Hightower

35. “In our nation there are two classes of nobility: the law-abiding workers and the law-abiding employers who sustain each other.”

— Cullen Hightower

36. “Sometimes we deny being worthy of praise, hoping to generate an argument we would be pleased to lose.”

— Cullen Hightower

37. “People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they’ve done.”

— Cullen Hightower

38. “There’s always somebody who is paid too much, and taxed too little – and it’s always somebody else.”

— Cullen Hightower

39. “A figment of the imagination is just a harmless illusion – unless you are victim of it.”

— Cullen Hightower

40. “Why is the press America’s showcase for freedom? Because just about everything else has been regulated.”

— Cullen Hightower

41. “Our laws can be friendly to those who obey them, and too often useful to those who don’t.”

— Cullen Hightower

42. “The American way is the way most law-abiding Americans live – in debt. Does this make a balanced budget un-American?”

— Cullen Hightower

43. “If we fixed a hangnail the way our government fixes the economy, we’d slam a car door on it.”

— Cullen Hightower

44. “If television encouraged us to work as much as it encourages us to do everything else, we could better afford to buy more of everything it advertises.”

— Cullen Hightower

45. “Every adult should be an expert on teenagers, after spending life’s seven longest years being one.”

— Cullen Hightower

46. “We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex – but Congress can.”

— Cullen Hightower

47. “Don’t expect other nations to have a democracy like ours – they don’t have enough lawyers.”

— Cullen Hightower

48. “The mistakes made by Congress wouldn’t be so bad if the next Congress didn’t keep trying to correct them.”

— Cullen Hightower

49. “The only new ideas that are not subject to our skepticism or suspicion are our own.”

— Cullen Hightower

50. “After our ages-long journey from savagery to civility, let’s hope we haven’t bought a round-trip ticket.”

— Cullen Hightower