Top 500 Firsts Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.”

— Bill Gates

102. “Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.”

— Thomas Mann

103. “We want Christ to hurry and calm the storm. He wants us to find him in the midst of it first.”

— Beth Moore

104. “The first time you do a thing is always exciting.”

— Agatha Christie

105. “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.”

— Jim Rohn

106. “You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.”

— Robert Greene

107. “To find yourself, you must first lose yourself.”

— Jared Leto

108. “Reasons come first. Answers come second.”

— Jim Rohn

109. “If the kingdom of God is not first, it doesn’t matter what’s second.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

110. “I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.”

— Toni Morrison

111. “If at first you don’t succeed, give up.”

— Homer

112. “Do one thing at a time. Start the day with a list of things you have to do, and do the most important things first.”

— Brian Tracy

113. “The first colony on Mars is not going to be built by a private company. How are you going to make money? You’re not.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

114. “First feed the face, then talk right and wrong.”

— Bertolt Brecht

115. “Be first the master of yourself.”

— Baltasar Gracián

116. “First rule, stick them with the pointy end!”

— George R.R. Martin

117. “It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.”

— Lucille Ball

118. “First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots.”

— Warren Buffett

119. “My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.”

— George Carlin

120. “If you want to discover new oceans, you must first have the courage to leave shore.”

— Winston Churchill

121. “Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.”

— Sarah Dessen

122. “The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”

— Charles Dickens

123. “The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

124. “Drifting, without aim or purpose, is the first cause of failure.”

— Napoleon Hill

125. “Everywhere’s been where it is ever since it was first put there. It’s called geography.”

— Terry Pratchett

126. “Never throw the first punch. If you have to throw the second, try to make sure they don’t get up for a third.”

— Brandon Sanderson

127. “There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.”

— Thomas A. Edison

128. “In order to have friends, you must first be one.”

— Elbert Hubbard

129. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself.”

— Audrey Hepburn

130. “In order to change your life outside, you must first change inside.”

— Louise Hay

131. “How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars.”

— Steve Martin

132. “Do first things first, and second things not at all.”

— Peter F. Drucker

133. “First be the best and then be first.”

— John Wooden

134. “The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.”

— George Bernard Shaw

135. “We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!”

— John F. Kennedy

136. “Every one wants to command, and no one wants to obey; and this is owing to the absence of that wonderful brahmacharya system of yore. First, learn to obey. The command will come by itself. Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.”

— Swami Vivekananda

137. “In war, truth is often the first casualty.”

— Winston Churchill

138. “First master the fundamentals.”

— Larry Bird

139. “Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting there.”

— Kenneth H. Blanchard

140. “The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.”

— Sri Aurobindo

141. “Every monster was a man first.”

— Edward Albee

142. “A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later. I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.”

— John Wayne

143. “Everyone who has ever built anywhere a “new heaven” first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

144. “The care of the public health is the first duty of the statesman.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

145. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”

— Leonard Cohen

146. “I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.”

— Henry David Thoreau

147. “If you have two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”

— Brian Tracy

148. “The First 40 hours of work per week are for survival. Everything after that is for success.”

— Thomas A. Edison

149. “If at first you don’t succeed, Call an airstrike.”

— Banksy

150. “To win, the first thing you have to do is not lose.”

— Warren Buffett