Top 500 Firsts Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.”

— Bob Dylan

452. “I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

453. “Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.”

— Antisthenes

454. “The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.”

— Voltaire

455. “We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.”

— John Ruskin

456. “People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments...”

— John Steinbeck

457. “People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity.”

— Douglas Coupland

458. “It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself.”

— André Breton

459. “Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”

— Jack London

460. “The words carry their own momentum. A confession in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton’s first law of jealousy.”

— Erica Jong

461. “Biblical community is first of all the sharing of a common life in Christ.”

— Jerry Bridges

462. “First, we become aware of that which is Divine around us. Then we become aware of that which is Divine within us. Finally, we become aware that all is Divine, and that there is nothing else. This is the moment of our awakening.”

— Neale Donald Walsch

463. “What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?”

— Nick Hornby

464. “If it’s a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.”

— Khalil Gibran

465. “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

466. “The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

467. “Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.”

— Frank Herbert

468. “The fourth landing of the Columbia is the historical equivalent of the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad. It marks our entrance into a new era.”

— Ronald Reagan

469. “We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the Government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong.”

— Calvin Coolidge

470. “Hitler was the first superstar.”

— David Bowie

471. “The first thing I learned was that even if you have a lot of money and power and fame, you can still suffer very deeply.”

— Nhat Hanh

472. “Two bricklayers work side by side. The first lays bricks. The second builds magnificent cathedrals. Think small vs. think big.”

— Richard Branson

473. “When people don’t like themselves very much, they have to make up for it. The classic bully was actually a victim first.”

— Tom Hiddleston

474. “The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”

— René Descartes

475. “For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.”

— Jack Kerouac

476. “Learning to be extremely disciplined has been the key for me. I work really hard during work hours and family really hard during family hours. Family does always come first though, in any situation.”

— Gerard Way

477. “God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.”

— Alexandre Dumas

478. “Be quiet, or my wife will take away your first born and make him or her work in one of her sweatshops!”

— Marc Anthony

479. “First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.”

— Thomas Fuller

480. “Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.”

— Frederick Douglass

481. “On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.”

— Stephen King

482. “When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”

— C. S. Lewis

483. “I’ve set my own rules to live by. The first one is: ‘Never believe ANYthing the government says.’”

— George Carlin

484. “We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.”

— Will Rogers

485. “You’ll never be a winner of souls unless you’re first a weeper for souls.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

486. “One must have first of all a solid foundation.”

— Sri Aurobindo

487. “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”

— John Locke

488. “Trust is the first step to love.”

— Munshi Premchand

489. “The ancient saying, “There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in some way in the senses,” and senses being explorers of the world, opens the way to knowledge.”

— Maria Montessori

490. “Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.”

— Dave Brubeck

491. “I get it. Allah put me through it first so I could rise back up and help those around me. He trains you first. Then He sends the people to you and you to the people.”

— Yasmin Mogahed

492. “After the first death, there is no other.”

— Dylan Thomas

493. “Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first one who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.”

— J.D. Salinger

494. “The first step toward success will be the biggest one.”

— Denis Waitley

495. “We should not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not now ask for what God wants?”

— Watchman Nee

496. “The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.”

— Thomas Merton

497. “I am convinced that companies should put staff first, customers second and shareholders third – ultimately that’s in the best interest of customers and shareholders.”

— Richard Branson

498. “The Christmas gift of peace was the uncoiling of the links of a triple chain that first unites a person with God, then with himself, then with his neighbor.”

— Fulton J. Sheen

499. “Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.”

— Herman Melville

500. “If at first you do succeed, try something harder.”

— Ann Landers