Bootstraps Quotes

He did everything. He studied hard. He went to Harvard. He got married. He had children. He worked. He dreamed big. He pulled his bootstraps all the way up from his humble beginnings to the presidency. He lived the American Dream. And he was called an African Witch Doctor. People asked for his birth certificate. A congressman shouted at him "YOU LIE!" He faced the most recalcitrant Republican Congress ever that was elected by a constituency that wanted to "take the country back."If a black man can be elected as guardian of the American empire, do exactly that, and still not be shielded from racism, what hope is supposed to be left? ~ Mychal Denzel Smith

You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots. ~ Rutger Bregman

Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are.
~ Julia Cameron

(Post Katrina) . . . He was reminded of the first time he'd run on a track with spikes. "You just fly on the track." The poor kids he saw in New Orleans were trying to run the same race in life that he was. But he was wearing spikes and they weren't. "There's a real idealism that you have to indulge to think that people in New Orleans were now going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. There were no bootstraps. ~ Michael Lewis

It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length. ~ Andrew Mitchell

A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the boot strap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel up climb. ~ Betty Smith

Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. ~ Joycelyn Elders

We live in a world where not everyone has the urge to help others ... It is OK to encourage others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but if you do, just remember that some people have no boots. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Faith for Jesus is the opposite of anxiety. If you are anxious, if you are trying to control everything, if you are worried about many things, you don't have faith, according to Jesus. You do not trust that God is good and on your side. You're trying to do it all yourself, lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. ~ Richard Rohr

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up
by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody -
a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns -
bent down and helped us pick up our boots. ~ Thurgood Marshall

It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of interference. ~ Upton Sinclair

But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps. ~ Idries Shah

I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically," Ernest went on. "Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness. ~ Jack London

But what does that say about aspirational living? Hey, you moved into a big house and you made it...except you didn't. There's this idea that you will be safe if you just get famous enough, successful enough, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move into the right neighborhood, do all these things to fully assimilate into the America people have been sold on. We all bought in, and we keep thinking if we just get over this mountain of assimilation, on the other side is a pot of gold. Or maybe a unicorn, perhaps a leprechaun. Any of those is as plausible as the acceptance of the wholeness of me. But there's just another mountain on the other side. And someone will be ready to tell you, "Don't be breathing hard. You need to make this look easy. ~ Gabrielle Union

I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them. ~ Penn Jillette

Everybody's entitled to that forty acres and a mule. You're going to do the work, but you have to have something to work with. If you don't have a job, where do you go from there? You hear people say Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you don't even have shoes. You're barefooted. What are you going to pull yourself up by? Our country owes every citizen of the United States of America a means of livelihood. Not a handout, but a way to make it. ~ Studs Terkel

Don't you dare ever hope for more. There's no such thing as living happily ever after or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The world is how it is and there always has to be bottom-feeders. People like you and me, we're it, and the world might want us to believe we can have more, but the moment we try to break out of the water they'll shove us down into the mud. It's better to know the truth. It hurts less if you accept society's crappy rules. ~ Katie McGarry

The first step off this downward spiral is to acknowledge these bad feelings as natural. When women feel this way, our society has sympathy, and Oprah gives them cars. But when men feel this way, our society demonizes these feelings as signs of weakness, amplifying the shame and self-judgment, repeating the macho advice to "suck it up" and "get over it." This bullshit makes the problem worse. It's impossible to pull yourself out of depression by your bootstraps when all you want to do is hang yourself with them. Bad advice can't fix bad feelings, and neither can ignoring those feelings. Don't try to push them away or pretend they're not there. These feelings evolved to protect us from harm, like our fight-or-flight responses. ~ Tucker Max

Depression might have chosen you, but you don't have to choose it back. Sometimes happiness comes with bootstraps, but so what? Pull 'em up. Choose joy. ~ Marianne Williamson

How can I pull myself up by my bootstraps if I'm living on a shoestring? ~ Jayseth Guberman

We at the Bureau have the most exciting and satisfying jobs in the world. In a society that stresses individual achievement - where you pull yourself up by your bootstraps - the Legal Aid Bureau helps those without boots. By providing access to justice to tens of thousands of Marylanders each year, Legal Aid attorneys and support staff bring equity and stability to society. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

The average Negro is born into want and deprivation. His struggle to escape his circumstances is hindered by color discrimination. He is deprived of normal education and normal social and economic opportunities. When he seeks opportunity, he is told, in effect, to lift himself by his own bootstraps, advice which does not take into account the fact that he is barefoot. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

This is why I am not overly enthusiastic about the various "spiritual exercises" in meditation or yoga which some consider essential for release from the ego. For when practiced in order to "get" some kind of spiritual illumination or awakening, they strengthen the fallacy that the ego can toss itself away by a tug at its own bootstraps. But there is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost. ~ Alan W. Watts

Let us be thankful for the fools,' Mark Twain wrote with typically dark humor in 1897. 'But for them the rest of us could not succeed.' Of all the paradoxes of failure in America, surely this is the darkest. Long ago, we saw through old fables of rags to riches; it is still fun to dream, but we know that we are partaking of a cultural myth. But if we do not quite believe in that kind of success, our faith in the myths of failure is unshaken. We are merrily cynical about whether the average tycoon really tugged on those bootstraps, but we still believe with deadly seriousness that the reasons for failure are usually individual-- "in the man." Failure is not the dark side of the American Dream; it is the foundation of it. The American Dream gives each of us the chance to be a born loser. ~ Scott A. Sandage

You will fall in love with someone who you will have to walk away from, because they don't love you. You must accept the fact that they don't have your best interests in mind. That's a tough pill to swallow, but you must swallow it for you own the sake. You have nothing further to prove to them love yourself enough to grab your bootstraps pick yourself up and keep moving ~ Charles Elwood Hudson

Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, 'Screw you. I'll take the destruction please.' God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, 'that's adorable,' and then plunked me down on an entirely different path. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they're not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. ~ Ron Fournier

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another? ~ Ron Fournier

Pull your boots up by the bootstrap and know that everything is temporary. All good moments are temporary and all bad moments are temporary. Nothing lasts forever. ~ Jim Rohn

It's a very colonizing impulse to look at something - a land, a city, a culture - and instead of seeing what is there, see a barren landscape that needs your new ideas. It's an American impulse to see a problem and think you can solve it with a little hard work and some bootstraps. It's a deeply human impulse to look all around you and see a problem but never consider that you might be the actual problem. ~ Lyz Lenz

In such a therapeutic, pragmatic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society as ours, the message of God having to do all the work in saving us comes as an offensive shot at our egos. ~ Michael Horton

Myth 7: Everyone Can Pull Himself or Herself Up by the Bootstraps. ~ George Lakoff

What I believe in, in terms of getting our economy going again, is that we need to invest in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow. ~ Ann McLane Kuster

In the twenty-seven years since the killing of President Kennedy, there has been a good deal of disturbance in the American dream. The cult of individualism, of a man's (nos so often a woman's ) ability and right to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and wit, which lies at the heart of that dream, has produced more Oswalds, more Sirhans, more Mansons and Jim Joneses, than Lincolns, of late. The representative figure of American individualism is no longer that log-cabin-to-White-House President, but rather a lone man with a gun, seeking vengeance against a world that will not conform to his own sense of what has worth. ~ Salman Rushdie

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. ~ Upton Sinclair

If we consider men and women generally, and apart from their professions or occupations, there is only one situation I can think of in which they almost pull themselves up by their bootstraps, making an effort to read better than they usually do. When they are in love and are reading a love letter, they read for all they are worth. ~ Mortimer Adler

Listening to Pastor Bob talk about mercy and redemption, I am filled with hope. Not the kind of expectation that comes from knowing you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but the trust that comes from utter failure, from knowing you are pathetic and small and you've got no place to look but up. ~ Carolee Dean

I think everyone has some sort of connection to Gatsby as a character ... he's created himself according to his own emotions and dreams and lifted himself by his bootstraps from a poor kid in the Midwest and created this image that is The Great Gatsby and it's a truly American story in that regard. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible - I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. ~ Stephen Colbert

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices - the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered - the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation. ~ Clifford D. Simak

SJ: Ah, okay... so you're saying people just need to pull themselves up by their boostraps?
Jared: Exactly.
SJ: In order to do that, they have to be able to afford boots. ~ Nic Stone

Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps. ~ Peter Abrahams

Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. ~ Vladimir Lenin

You are not obligated to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and find a way to conquer the odds, to be stronger or transform yourself into some better version of yourself. The pain you are feeling (whatever the degree) may be a reminder that things are not as they should be. ~ Tullian Tchividjian