Self Made Quotes

Solitude that throws the honest rays of perfect euphoria;
Solitude that makes me breathe in the real me;
Solitude I call it - my abode, my self made haven;
Solitude I call it - the sanguine face of Loneliness. ~ Debatrayee Banerjee

We have big, big problems - flooding, earthquake, and many foolish things which now people are doing - I mean, these self-made catastrophes. We are able to give to every man on the street the possibilities to help himself. And to fight for this was one of my duties. ~ Frei Otto

... he is a self-made man who has come to worship his creator. ~ Ross Benson

When you fail to be your own boss,
You are giving somebody else the contract. ~ Richard Marcel I.

I'm self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person, because I was not educated. But that was my dream - to have class. ~ Tina Turner

John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less ... but I've always thought of him as if he had come into the world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from Jupiter's head, fully grown and fully armed. ~ Ayn Rand

And when Tolstoy found God his lines went limp, and Turgenev on his deathbed grieved for him because although Tolstoy had given up his land and his coppers for God, he had also given up something else. And although Dostoevski ended up on believing in Christ, he took the long road to get there, a most interesting and perhaps unwholesome road over roulette tables, raping a small child, standing before a wall waiting for the rifles to fire, he found that "adversity is the main-spring of self-realism," he found his Christ, but what a most interesting Christ, a self-made Christ, and I bow to him. ~ Charles Bukowski

Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made. ~ Val Kilmer

The best people are those who made themselves exclusively with their efforts and reached the top without any connections around. ~ Alexander Zalan

I don't believe in that term 'self-made' - not to be offensive, but I believe everything happens for a reason, every single person you meet. Even if it's one single person giving you advice, that person helped you get to where you're at today. ~ Michelle Phan

Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons. ~ Anais Nin

You often hear people say 'Luck is self made.' I think it is, to a certain extent; if you work hard on something, you are more likely to be lucky than if you don't. That having been said, I do believe during in my career I have been at the right place at the right time with the right people. ~ Greg Lake

Yet after all there is nothing so deceptive as one's outward appearance. The reason of this is that as soon as childhood is past, we are always pretending to be what we are not
and thus, with constant practice from our youth up, we manage to make our physical frames complete disguises for our actual selves. It is really wise and clever of us
for hence each individual is so much flesh-wall through which neither friend nor enemy can spy. Every man is a solitary soul imprisoned in a self-made den
when he is quite alone he knows and frequently hates himself
sometimes he even gets afraid of the gaunt and murderous monster he keeps hidden behind his outwardly pleasant body-mask, and hastens to forget its frightful existence in drink and debauchery. ~ Marie Corelli

We are made up of nothing. There is no self. We are whatever we decide we are. ~ Frederick Lenz

yet still I crave the sight of my own hypnotic gaze reflecting out at me from the shared mirror of anorexia and bulimia, number to life and reality, existing only in my self-made tortured state ~ Carol Lee

I've always loved Houdini, not just because of what he did, but also because of what he stood for. He was a self-made man in a time when the idea of celebrity was still new, and he used his celebrity for good. ~ Michael Redhill

We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it. ~ Earl Nightingale

My parents were self-made people, and they were a team. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.

Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honesty with merely being rude. I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes. ~ Terry Pratchett

My friends tell me that I've calmed down, that I seem more centered. I don't know, I think my inner self was more hollow before, which made me more scattered, and more needy to get laughs. ~ Chris Kattan

The trumpet player, Ronnie Hughes, has still got his chops today but for some strange reason the culture doesn't call him because he's 83-years-old. And these people are in their 70s and 80s and 90s and came with such verve every day and would still be shooting these 10 and 12 hour days. So, that in itself made this an extraordinarily special occasion for all of us. It wasn't a job for the crew after a few days, it took on another tone. ~ Dustin Hoffman

Life is actually a self made web of fate. ~ Steven Redhead

As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul. ~ Ayn Rand

This disappearance, this annihilation is all a matter of appearances as seen through the eyes of the false self. The annihilation is only apparent, for the self being annihilated is itself only apparent. It is a self without God, that is, a self that can never exist. What is annihilated is our false self, our external self made absolute, the imposter, the mask (persona), the liar we think we are but are not. The annihilation therefore is not annihilation at all, for nothing real or genuine is annihilated. Rather, what is genuine is affirmed as our psychological, historical, social self and placed in its true relationship to God. All that is annihilated is the illusion of the self that cannot bear God's presence, save as an idol fabricated for the ego's own glorification. It is this "self" that is "annihilated" through God's merciful love. The annihilation is merciful for it, in fact, is the antithesis of annihilation. It is rather an obscure, inexplicable foretaste in faith of our final consummation as created persons. It is the mystery of the cross creatively at work in the foundations of consciousness, recreating our awareness that we might know God as he knows himself. ~ James Finley

The age of the self-made man was also the age of the broken man... This 'American sense' looked upon failure as a 'moral sieve' that trapped the loafer and passed the true man through. Such ideologies fixed blame squarely on individual faults, not extenuating circumstances. ~ Scott A. Sandage

Human existence may be simpler than we thought. There is no predestination, no unfathomed mystery of life. Demons and gods do not vie for our allegiance. Instead, we are self-made, independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological world. What counts for long-term survival is intelligent self-understanding, based upon a greater independence of thought than that tolerated today even in our most advanced democratic societies. ~ E. O. Wilson

I feel so many things growing - my individuality, my confidence; I feel lines of my character growing stronger. I'm really sprouting, springing up, with mixed feelings of tenderness and bitterness, faith and disillusion, hardness and softness. I have never felt so clearly that my Self is - obscurely and stubbornly self-made. ~ Anais Nin

There are no self made heroes or leaders. No matter how rugged or self assured, everyone requires a cast of players - friends, mentors, lovers, critics, villains and supporters - who call, invite, seduce, goad and encourage them to finally step into their true power.
We are all heroes and leaders in some way, and we all need each other. ~ Jacob Nordby

I always thought Christians were the weak people. When you can't make it in life then you have to ask God. I really prided myself on being a self-made man. ~ Paul Henderson

Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us
through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

Immense self-made wealth is the evidence of a grandly rich mind ~ Julian Pencilliah

The discovery of various phenomena has led to a recognition of the fact that the chemical atom is an individual which again is itself made up of several units into a selfcontained whole. ~ Johannes Stark

Codfish aristocracy' is what they call us. Men who've made a fortune in business, but are common-born."
"Why codfish?"
"It used to refer to the rich merchants who settled the American colonies and made their money in the cod trade. Now it means any successful businessman."
"Nouveau riche is another term," Helen added. "It's never used as a compliment, of course. But it should be. Being self-made is something to be admired." As she felt his soundless chuckle, she insisted, "It is."
Rhys turned his head to kiss her. "You've no need to flatter my vanity."
"I'm not flattering you. I think you're remarkable. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I now realize there are millions of self-made millionaires who started with nothing. They dug inside themselves to find the answers and they succeeded. There is nothing anyone else can do that I can't do. ~ Dean Graziosi

Some men are self-made, but most are the revised work of a wife and children. ~ Joyce Brothers

Not that long ago I wrote in a poem that 'life is so filled with meaning, there is no reason to try to reduce it'. That is how I feel and have felt like for years. Some sense of meaninglessness can come from an attack from others, at times subconscious, slowly but surely eroding one's self-respect and therefore sense of self, on all the meanings, infinite as they are, that are already right there. You can even be "raised" to do this self-destructive work yourself. The so called absurdity of life is a construction that creates a template for meaninglessness in itself. Humans revolting in this way against self-made systems. Perhaps to remove some responsibility of being human, because it is, wrongly, seen as a burden. What is truly a burden is to feel as if nothing in life is important. It is also the easiest thing to do. If you don't find meaning in for instance seeing a black squirrel running up the trunk of a tree, you probably won't find any meaning in travelling to the end of the world. It is a kind of explanatory greed this "search for meaning" that can literally destroy a world, and it is the equivalent of replacing the deepest of life's mysteries with a nice looking garage. To numb before being looked at and experienced as a kind of totally lost "translation" is how the written language can be used at its worst. Meaning is already everywhere, expressing, unfolding itself, living and dying, changing and breathing. The noise distracting from that is what is meaningless bu ~ Rune Kjær Rasmussen

The humanist, who read too much, ate too much. He quoted and burped, and these two complaints were equally repugnant to his neighbor, a self-made aristocrat, Madame Lenoir. ~ Marcel Proust

Don't anticipate for a promise, let it be an unexpected favour, this will increase your power of independence. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Modern women had their own self-made guilt to make them miserable, but the sixteenth-century people had diseases, their fear of the unknown, their ignorance of medicine, and constant and ever-present death to haunt them. ~ Jude Deveraux

If I think about it, I am truly a 'self-made' man. For in fact I've 'made' a real mess out of what God 'made,' and I 'made' that mess all by myself. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I'm a self-made woman. I've never compromised myself. ~ Nia Long

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Yes, we worship the idea of the "self-made man" - otherwise we'd go on strike against Bill Gates having all that money! We worship that idea. ~ James Hillman

Let the blacksmith wear the chains he has himself made. ~ Decimius Magnus Ausonius

By sheer dumb luck, my father was born in the right place at the right moment in time - when the whole region was going through enormous, unprecedented growth. And oh yeah, he also inherited an empire that had already been set up four generations before him. I think he looks down on people like your father - people who are self-made - because at the heart of it he is a deeply insecure individual. He knows he did absolutely nothing to deserve his fortune, and so the only thing he can do is disparage others who have the audacity to make their own money. His friends are all the same - they are frightened of the new money that's rolling in, and that's why they cluster in their little enclaves. ~ Kevin Kwan

Albert Einstein had Max Talmud, his first mentor. It was Max who introduced a ten-year-old Einstein to key texts in math, science, and philosophy. Max took one meal a week with the Einstein family for six years while guiding young Albert. No one is self-made. ~ Gary Keller

Jesus says to Nicodemus, "though the light has come into the world, people have preferred darkness to the light" (John 3:19). In me I can feel this strange preference for the darkness. It seems as if I resist coming into the light and enjoy staying in my self-made darkness. Jesus offers the light, the truth, the life coming from above. He makes it clear that God wants to pull me away from the darkness; he wants to offer me a solid love to dwell in, a firm ground to stand on, a faithful presence to trust in. But I have to look upward instead of inward, and embrace the gifts that are given. Yet ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness ... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well. ~ Edmund White

We often speak of a man who's done this successfully as a "self-made man." The appellation is usually spoken with a sense of admiration, but really it should be said in the same tones we might use of the dearly departed, or of a man who recently lost an arm - with sadness and regret. What the term really means is "an orphaned man who figured how to master some part of life on his own. ~ John Eldredge

The self-made man that some people believe is a myth? It could be, because you do it on the backs of other people. ~ Oscar Isaac

My father started with nothing and is a self-made man. No matter what I do with my life, I can never match his accomplishments. ~ Tamara Ecclestone

A self made man is a rarity and hated by the parasites that floated to fame thought their parents, relatives and contacts. ~ Al Goldstein

No one is self-made ~ Gary Keller

I have a theory that self-made, first-generation actresses don't feel entitled to success. ~ Natasha Lyonne

I had a nightmare about being
Trapped in an elevator with a self-made man--
He was born with a silver bootstrap in his mouth;
He pulled himself up by his spoons.

But when he lived in the fraternity,
Before he could roll his sleeves up and get anything done,
He would pack his laundry into boxes
And mail it off to his mother and his grandmother--
They would wash and iron his clothes,
And then mail them back to him. ~ Matt Cook

Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother. ~ Russell Baker

Every father knows the disconcerting when you see your child as a weird, distorted double of yourself. It is as if for a moment your identities overlap. You see an idea, a conception of your boyish inner self ... made real and flesh.
He is you restarted, rewound; at the same time he is as foreign and unknowable as any other person. ~ William Landay

When you're a self-made man, you start very early in life. In my case it was at 9 years old when I started bringing income into the family. You get a drive that's a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited. ~ Kirk Kerkorian

Everyone is a self-made man. Only the successful admit it. ~ Will Rogers

Your inner Belly Dancer ... is your inner sensuality, your highest feminity, your great esteemed self made more apparent. ~ Leandra J. Kalsy

It must be wonderful to be you, Dominic, and know that you alone have shaped yourself. It must be even more wonderful for other people, your mother and even God Himself for all I know, to know that. It absolves them of a terrible responsibility. ~ Jayne Bauling

We pray because our life comes from God and we yield it back in prayer. Prayer is a great antidote to the illusion that we are self-made. ~ Walter Brueggemann

In addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, and partly out of them, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their human origins notwithstanding, possess the same conditioning power as natural things. whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human existence. this is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings. whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition. ~ Hannah Arendt

Be yourself. That's it. I got about 45 [billionaires] . They are all different, all unique, and they are all self-made. ~ Tony Robbins

The better part of friendship might be holding one's tongue over the prospect of self-made wreckage. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In Naples, Fla., I met a self-made man, a multimillionaire, whose round penthouse apartment is home to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Henry Moore, and Mickey Mantle. He had purchased the most coveted items auctioned by the Mantle family at Madison Square Garden in December 2003. ~ Jane Leavy

Hard labor jobs are a poor strategy for acquiring money, but they do garner respect. Self-made millionaires know getting rich has little to do with intelligence and everything to do with focus and persistence. ~ Steve Siebold

It is better to be a self-made man,
filled up according to God's original pattern,
than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern. ~ J.G. Holland

Even if you're an observer of a story that you yourself made up, you're still very much connected to it. You love it and feel it, no less than somebody's who's writing from their direct 'I' or 'me.' I'm just so much more interesting in stories than confessions. ~ Regina Spektor

Some of the biggest bores I've ever known are men who have been highly successful in business, particularly self-made heads of big companies. Before the first olive has settled into the first martini, they pour the stories of their lives into the nearest and sometimes the remotest ears capturable ... These men have indeed paid the price of success. To rise to the top of a big company often takes a totality of effort, concentration and dedication. Others, too, have to pay part of the price. Wife and children are out of mind even when in sight ... ~ Malcolm Forbes

A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life ... he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul. ~ Alvin R. Dyer

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Over time we are able to undermine habitual modes of thinking formed by our self-made self in early childhood, which tries to squeeze happiness from the gratification of our desires for the symbols in our culture of survival and security, power and control, and affection and esteem. ~ Thomas Keating

Opportunity is latent in the very foundation of human society. Opportunity is everywhere about us. But the preparation to seize upon the opportunity, and to make the most of it, is to be made by every one for himself ... he will be self-made or never made. ~ Orison Swett Marden

My soul is not contained within the limits of my body; my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul. ~ Jim Carrey

A self-made man? Yes, and one who worships his creator. ~ William Cowper

Before he went away, he had heard all about the self-made girl, and there was something in the picture that strongly impressed him. She was possible doutbless only in America; American life had smoothed the way for her. She was not fast, nor emancipated, nor crude, nor loud, and there wasn't in her, of necessity at least, a grain of the stuff of which the adventuress is made.
She was simply very successful, and her success was entirely personal. She hadn't been born with the silver spoon of social opportunity, she had grasped it by honest exertion. You knew her by many different signs, but chiefly, infallibly, by the appearance of her parents. It was her parents who told her story; you always saw how little her parents could have made her. Her attitude with regard to them might vary in different ways. As the great fact on her own side was that she had lifted herself from a lower social plane, done it all herself, and done it by the simple lever of her personality, it was naturally to be expected that she would leave the authors of her mere material being in the shade.
(…)
But the general characteristic of the self-made girl was that, though it was frequently understood that she was privately devoted to her kindred, she never attempted to impose them on society, and it was striking that, though in some of her manifestations a bore, she was at her worst less of a bore than they. They were almost always solemn and portentous, and they were for the most part of a d ~ Henry James

But since Catt was more realist than fabulist, she understood her actual death at the hands of her killer would be something much slower. It would be a classical feminine death, like a marriage…Raised by meek working-class parents, she despised petty groveling and had no talent for making shit up. She wanted to be a "real" intellectual moving with dizzying freedom between high and low points in the culture. And to a certain extent, she'd succeeded. Catt's semi-name attracted a following among Asberger's boys, girls who'd been hospitalized for mental illness, sex workers, Ivy alumnae on meth, and always, the cutters. With her small self-made fortune, Catt saw herself as Moll Flanders, out-sourcing her visiting professorships and writing commissions to younger artists whose work she believed in. But she'd reached a point lately where the same young people she'd helped were blogging against her, exposing the 'cottage industry' she ran out of her Los Angeles compound facing the Hollywood sign … the same compound these bloggers had lived in rent-free after arriving from Iowa City, Alberta, New Zealand. Loathing all institutions, Catt had become one herself. Even her dentist asked her for money. ~ Chris Kraus

I need to break down these self-made walls. ~ Tahereh Mafi

There's no such thing as a self-made man. I've had much help and have found that if you are willing to work, many people are willing to help you. ~ B.C. Forbes

I'm no expert, no natural-born talent, definitely no guru. As you'll soon learn, only through a colossal experiment in trial and error did I reach the sexual summit. Although I own up to having worn a cape in a few intimate scenarios, I don't possess supernatural powers of any kind. Perhaps my IQ is slightly above average, but Mensa isn't busting down my door. If pressed to define myself, I'd say I'm Horatio Alger between the sheets: a self-made swinging single male. . . with a hefty dose of Buster Keaton mixed in. ~ Daniel Stern

She was Anna Madrigal, a self-made woman, and there was no one else in the world exactly like her. ~ Armistead Maupin

A self-made martyr is a poor thing. ~ Ellen Glasgow

I felt much better shut up inside my self-made pity cocoon instead of faking happiness in front of the world. ~ Courtney King Walker

The Law shatters the self-made delusions about the goodness we offer and leaves us broken with nowhere to turn but the cross. ~ R.J. Grunewald

There is no such thing in the world as a "self-made man" or a "self-made woman". We've received so much from so many for so long that we can't even keep count. But, simply because we can't keep count, doesn't mean we discount. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him. ~ August Wilson

I don't profess to be a healer, a minister, a priest. I feel as an entertainer I can do more good for the world than I would if I were a soapbox orator or a self-made politician. ~ Liberace

There is no such thing as a self made spiritual leader. He is able to influence others spiritually only because the Spirit is able to work in and through him to a greater degree than in those he leads. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

I am a self-made brat. ~ Steve Wynn

I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it. ~ David Brooks

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

Leaders are not born or made - they are self made ~ Stephen Covey

When did it something of shame or ridicule to be a self-made man in America? ~ Glenn Beck

Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Winners are not born, they are self-made. ~ Pat Summitt

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

There's no 'Self made' we're all dependent. ~ Nick