Top 500 Firsts Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Three reasons problems are inevitable; first, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity; second, we interact with people; and third, we cannot control all the situation we face.”

— John C. Maxwell

352. “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.”

— Charles A. Beard

353. “If you asked me to marry you all over again today I’d say yes, said Valentine. And if I had only met you for the first time today, I’d ask.”

— Orson Scott Card

354. “To me one man is worth ten thousand if he is first-rate.”

— Heraclitus

355. “The first principle of all action is leisure.”

— Aristotle

356. “There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became...”

— Walt Whitman

357. “Get the facts. Let’s not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner.”

— Dale Carnegie

358. “Oh Ireland my first and only love Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove!”

— James Joyce

359. “Anything that is western origin, first you verify it, then accept it. Anything that is Indian origin, first accept it, then verify it if necessary.”

— Swami Vivekananda

360. “All history was at first oral.”

— Samuel Johnson

361. “Remember this: all suffering comes to an end. And whatever you suffer authentically, God has suffered from it first.”

— Meister Eckhart

362. “Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

363. “The first step to becoming is to will it.”

— Mother Teresa

364. “Let us first understand the facts and then we may seek the cause.”

— Aristotle

365. “What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.”

— Mark Twain

366. “The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.”

— Marcus Aurelius

367. “The existence of a prime mover- nothing can move itself; there must be a first mover. The first mover is called God.”

— Thomas Aquinas

368. “There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, “What business am I in?” Second, “How’s business?””

— Peter F. Drucker

369. “Get money first; virtue comes after.”

— Horace

370. “All service ranks the same with God,- With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.”

— Robert Browning

371. “I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.”

— Samuel Johnson

372. “Being infinitely amazed, so do I give thanks to God, Who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things, unrevealed to bygone ages.”

— Galileo Galilei

373. “Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he, “to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer is forgotten.”

— Henry David Thoreau

374. “When we pass through what we call death, we do not loose the world. Indeed, we see it for the first time as it really is.”

— Dallas Willard

375. “Smile first thing in the morning. Get it over with.”

— W. C. Fields

376. “Choose the day and choose the sign of your day! The day’s divinity! First thing you see!!”

— Jim Morrison

377. “Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.”

— Ayn Rand

378. “I’m doing philosophy like an old woman, first I’m looking for my pencil, then I’m looking for my glasses, then I’m looking for my pencil again.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

379. “In my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love.”

— J. M. Coetzee

380. “The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.”

— Socrates

381. “First study the science, and then practice the art which is born of that science.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

382. “Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.”

— Horace Mann

383. “Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

384. “No one can go back, but everyone can go forward. And tommorow, when the Sun rises, all you will have to say to yourself is: I am going to think of this day as the first day of my life.”

— Paulo Coelho

385. “The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.”

— Charles Babbage

386. “First do it, then say it.”

— Sergei Bubka

387. “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

388. “As far as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself in relation to any action taken by another: “What is his point of reference here?” But begin with yourself: examine yourself first.”

— Marcus Aurelius

389. “Before prayer changes others, it first changes us.”

— Billy Graham

390. “Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.”

— Hermann Hesse

391. “The first point of courtesy must always be truth.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

392. “The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.”

— Thomas Merton

393. “Say first, of god above or man below; what can we reason but from what we know.”

— Alexander Pope

394. “The coach is first of all a teacher.”

— John Wooden

395. “The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?”

— Louise Bogan

396. “No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

397. “Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes.”

— Ulrich Beck

398. “Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.”

— Blaise Pascal

399. “To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.”

— Mary Shelley

400. “See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.”

— Galileo Galilei