Toughness Quotes

I've got a couple of things over [ Wladimir Klitschko]: He wouldn't spar with me when I went to the camp and I beat him in a mental toughness competition in the sauna. ~ Tyson Fury

To me, football is so much about mental toughness, it's digging deep, it's doing whatever you need to do to help a team win and that comes in a lot of shapes and forms. ~ Tom Brady

I'm not a wilting flower, unless that gets me extraspecial treats. ~ Rachel Caine

I didn't cry easily. It was a badge of honor, of toughness. I was a slip of a girl, a woman with little to offer and nothing to say, but I had my dignity, and tears were undignified. ~ Amy Harmon

My compass and guiding star:
MyDaddy, that's who you are.
Discipline I learned from you,
With patience in all I do.
Sang-froid you gifted to me,
Along with versatility.
You reveal the profound beauty
Found in Family Duty.
You've instilled me with toughness,
To overcome any roughness.
Thanks to you I conquer worlds;
I strive to be MyDaddy's girl. ~ Mariecor Ruediger

Success is a combination of effort, talent and hard work. There's got to be hard work and mental toughness. It's not just one thing that gets you there it's an accumulation of things ~ Brock Lesnar

I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar. ~ Herman Melville

President Reagan, of course, did more than any other person to entrench the Republican reputation for toughness on national security. ~ Samantha Power

Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit? ~ Lynn Margulis

I recommend the French beret, for it gives the impression of just the right soft toughness, a veritable wave of sophisticated brain matter. It is the kind of hat that inspires a person to grow into it, to become the person they never knew they could be. The space between the top of the head and the beginnings of hat is among the most intimate of areas: earlobe behinds, elbow insides, and anuses. One must pay heed to such spaces for they hold a potential not fully known (but generally agreed to be vast). ~ Meia Geddes

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be. ~ Horace Bushnell

I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me. ~ Boy George

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces. ~ Robert A. Caro

For Reagan,for his contemporaries, and many in the generations after them, the word Munich was understood as code for any nation's stepping back from necessary toughness ~ Chris Matthews

Women are tough, but sometimes women present toughness in different ways. ~ Katherine McNamara

For dash and gallantry the bloodthirsty Scots, Australians and Canadians led the way, with the impetuous Irish close behind. The Australian to my mind were the most aggressive, and managed to keep their form in spite of their questionable discipline. Out of the line they were undoubtedly difficult to handle, but once in it they loved a fight. They were a curious mixture of toughness and sentimentality ... ~ Adrian Carton De Wiart

A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I haven't always recruited for the best talent. I've taken a few guys who would fit for different reasons. Leadership. Toughness ~ Tom Izzo

Being a great fighter is having a perfect balance of having that toughness, skill, as well as that mental capability to be able to out-think you opponent. ~ Rashad Evans

My aim is to play Test matches. For me, there is a different feel of Test cricket as it tests your character. You come to know about your mental toughness, and most importantly, there is another level of satisfaction as a player. ~ Suresh Raina

It requires more toughness to resist the world than to join in the rat-race ~ Sir James Darling

The game was much like our season. This game tested our toughness, our resilience, our unselfishness. It's only fitting that it turned out this way. This is a great bunch of guys to play with. I feel very, very grateful. ~ Peyton Manning

We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Every quarterback can throw a ball; every running back can run; every receiver is fast; but that mental toughness that you talk about translates into competitiveness. ~ Tom Brady

As we were getting Mia's things ready for her discharge, her nurse started to excuse herself to get a wheelchair to transport Mia to the car. Instantly, Mia said, "I'm not riding in a wheelchair."
"Yes, you are, Mia. It's a hospital regulation," I said, believing that was true.
"Mom," she protested, "they said I'm supposed to walk as much as possible. I'm walking to the car."
I saw a certain look in Mia's eyes as she made this announcement, the look that says "I am going to push hard for this." I knew she was determined, and I would fight a losing battle to try to talk her out of it.
"I'm walking out of here," she said again.
I guess the medical staff noticed that look too because they allowed her to try to walk, with a nurse close beside her. Seeing that little girl limp her way down the hall, holding Reed's hand, was one of the proudest moments of my life. I was absolutely amazed by her spunk and determination. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and snapped a picture.
She is such a fighter, I thought as Jase and I followed her. Visually, she looked roughed up, as though she had been through about fifteen rounds in a boxing match. But in that moment, she showed a level of toughness and resilience I have never seen in a child.
Remembering the information we were told on that first visit to ICI when Mia was seventeen days old, that she would need physical therapy to help her walk again after this surgery, I thanked God as I watched our da ~ Missy Robertson

Compassion and toughness can go together. ~ Wayne Kelly

The most important attribute a player must have is mental toughness. ~ Mia Hamm

A Turk for toughness, for hands that never tire; An Indian for her rounded bosom bursting with milk; A Persian for her tight crotch and her coquetry; An Uzbeg to thrash as a lesson for the three. ~ Khushwant Singh

The charismatic portrait of the modern leadership looks nothing like Fidel Castro. It is a faceless portrait that epitomizes the toughness of Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela's charisma, and the most compassionate heart of Mother Theresa. ~ Anthony Obi Ogbo

decision-making. Far from placing the nation and the world at risk to protect his own reputation for toughness, he probably would have backed down, in public if necessary, whatever the domestic political damage might have been. There may be, in short, room here for a new profile in courage - but it would be courage of a different kind from what many people presumed that term to mean throughout much of the Cold War.7 ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Mental Toughness is doing the right thing for the team when it's not the best thing for you ~ Bill Belichick

The mythic American character is made up of the virtues of fairness, self-reliance, toughness, and honesty. Those virtues are generally stuffed into a six-foot-tall, dark-haired, can-do kind of guy who is at once a family man, attractive to strange women, carefree, stable, realistic, and whimsical. in the lore of America, that man lives on the Great Plains. he's from Texas, Dodge City, Cheyenne, the Dakotas, or somewhere in Montana. In fact, the seedbed of this American character, from the days of de Tocqueville through Andrew Jackson, Wyattt Earp, Pony Express riders, pioneers, and cowboys to modern caricatures played by actors such as Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne has aways been the frontier. It's a place with plenty of room to roam, great sunsets, clear lines between right and wrong, and lots of horses. It's also a place that does not exist and never has. The truth is that there has never been much fairness out here. ~ Dan O'Brien

You have to stick out the toughness of the business and form relationships with the people in it. ~ Rocco DiSpirito

Lust of ease and comfort absolutely destroys mental toughness and begins to slowly erode ones character. ~ William James Moore

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. ~ Susan Abulhawa

If you move furniture all day, if you're a construction worker, if you have a job that's real physical, this idea that there is a sport that involves the kind of conventional, traditional view of toughness, you see that still as a positive thing. ~ Chuck Klosterman

I think we've bounced back and really been resilient. Even after a bad period, we take over and we seem like we're on a mission. That comes with leadership and experience and a lot of things. A lot of it is mental toughness and resiliency in the situation you're at, just trusting in your teammates. ~ Mike Fisher

Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind-you could call it character in action. ~ Vince Lombardi

You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it that I want what you want? I've spent an eternity feeling powerless. Love did that to me - robbed me of all control. I never expected to feel this way again. I don't want to feel.'
'Neither did I,' Ryan rasps, 'because feeling anything at all was dangerous. If I let myself feel, then maybe I'd have to believe what everyone was saying - that Lauren was dead. But from the moment I laid eyes on "Carmen, you kept getting under my skin. At first, all you did was irritate the hell out of me, bailing me up that way outside my house, inviting yourself along for the ride when all I wanted was to be left alone. But that irritation turned into curiosity, which turned into something else, becoming this chain of, of … feeling that brought me here. I dropped everything for you. I veered left. And I'd do it again in a second. That's what "feeling" does. It tells you you're alive, it gives things … I don't know, proper meaning. You're still trying to maintain some veneer of independence? Toughness? Do words like that even apply to you? But I see through it, Mercy. I see through you. You're not that different from me after all, under your armour. Crumbs, Mercy, that's all I'm after. Just crumbs. It's not a lot to ask for. ~ Rebecca Lim

There's a confidence and a mental toughness that comes from the very highest level of competition, whatever the sport is. Whether it's boxing or wrestling, or whatever. ~ Joe Rogan

I've seen men who thought they were brave turn out to be shameful cowards. Other people, who thought they were capable of the utmost self-sacrifice, proved to be hardened egotists. And the opposite, too - cowards doing things which needed toughness and unusual courage ... What does it all boil down to in the end? One must judge a man by what he does, and not by what he thinks he would do. Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly. ~ Jerzy Andrzejewski

I am a sweet old softy, but it took toughness to get through what I went through. ~ Tony Parsons

If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Put character and mental toughness before execution and you will get consistent execution. ~ William James Moore

Emotional intelligence is the foundation of leadership. It balances flexibility with toughness, vision with passion, compassion with justice. ~ Amit Ray

Toughness is not being a bully, it's having a backbone. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Mia, what is the most important thing for a soccer player to have?" With no hesitation, she answered, "Mental toughness. ~ Carol S. Dweck

The game honors toughness ~ Brad Stevens

I've lived in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Turin. But New York is my favorite city. It has so much energy, so much toughness. ~ Lapo Elkann

I asked her where she got her toughness. She pretended she didn't understand. Maybe she didn't at first, or maybe she had forgotten that to do the things she was prepared to do, to have them done to her, took enormous toughness, more than most people had. She said you just had to keep working on yourself until you didn't feel what they wanted you to feel, or anything else. By seven o'clock she had fallen asleep in my arms having said that she loved me and that she knew I was going through hell. She breathed like a little girl. ~ Elliot Perlman

He's very competitive and knows what he wants. He has developed toughness in character and that is what is needed for Indian cricket. Ganguly has proved to be one of the best captains. He has now acquired great leadership qualities. ~ Steve Waugh

It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people then to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind. ~ Alex Karras

Mental Toughness: The ability to consistently perform toward the upper range of your talent and skill regardless of the competitive circumstances. ~ James E. Loehr

The NBA is a culture shock for college kids, and even more so for kids from another country. The NBA is a unique environment, so there is going to be transition for any young kid, but I think coming from another country and culture is even harder. It does take a special toughness and confidence to deal with that, especially since a lot of times you don't play a lot as a young player. ~ Austin Ainge

I felt like the dark hair added like a toughness to my face also, which was really important. ~ Jaime King

Mental toughness must be developed before you start fighting because you don't want to be that guy who quits in the ring. ~ Forrest Griffin

I started playing basketball when I was about three years old. After that, everything else just came naturally. I had older cousins that used to let me hang with them, so I got my toughness from them. ~ Brandon Jennings

Over the years, I have pushed myself mentally and I have pushed myself physically. A lot of people say, 'John Havlicek never gets tired.' Well, I get tired. It's just a matter of pushing myself. I say to myself, 'He's as tired as I am; who's going to win this mental battle?' It's just a matter of mental toughness. ~ John Havlicek

Toughness is a good thing, yet it is considered good only in men. When a woman is tough, men can't stand it. I like being tough and smart. ~ Lillian Vernon

One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description) ~ Jeannette Walls

Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Matt Espenshade confirmed that in spite of the deaths of so many of the kidnappers, many more are still at large, including their leaders. Those men might hope to be forgotten; they are not. The FBI has continued its investigative interest in those involved with the kidnapping. The leaders, especially, are of prime interest to the Bureau. And now the considerable unseen assets in that region are steadily feeding back information on these targeted individuals to learn their operational methods and their locations and hunt them down.
The surviving kidnappers and their colleagues are welcome to sneer at the danger. It may help them pass the time, just as it did for Bin Laden's henchmen to chuckle at the idea of payback. If the men nobody sees coming are dispatched to capture or kill them, the surviving kidnappers will find themselves dealing with a force of air, sea, and land fighters s obsessed with the work they do that they have trained themselves into the physical and mental toughness of world-class athletes. They will carry the latest in weapons, armor, visual systems, and communication devises. Whether they are Navy SEAL fighters, DEVGRU warriors, Army Delta Force soldiers, Green Berets, or any of the elite soldiers under United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), they will share the elite warriors' determination to achieve success in their mission assignment.
The news that they are coming for you is the worst you could receive. But nobody gets advance war ~ Anthony Flacco

She looked at me with gentle indignation. She was what we have after sixty million years of the Cenozoic. There were a lot of random starts and dead ends. Those big plated pea-brain lizards didn't make it. Sharks, scorpions and cockroaches, as living fossils, are lasting pretty well. Savagery, venom and guile are good survival quotients. This forked female mammal didn't seem to have enough tools. One night in the swamps would kill her. Yet behind all that fragility was a marvelous toughness. A Junior Allen was less evolved. He was a skull-cracker, two steps away from the cave. They were at the two ends of our bell curve, with all the rest of us lumped in the middle. If the trend is still supposed to be up, she was of the kind we should breed, accepting sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness. But there is too much Junior Allen seed around. ~ John D. MacDonald

Doug Christie, what skill, what strenght, what power, what quickness. The visionof Magic Johnson, the athletisicm of Michael Jordan, the toughness of larry Bird. Dough Christie has it all ~ Bill Walton

Toughness is a skill. I don't think we're all born tough. You learn about toughness through your experience. ~ Jay Bilas

The most vital weapons at the disposal of a special forces soldier are his intellect and his mental toughness. Sometimes it all comes down to 'who wants it most', i.e. whoever is more willing to keep fighting and trying to survive. Being able to keep your head and look for advantages or escape routes is a big plus too.
Getting into 'survival mode' requires shifting mental gears when you need to. Good training helps with this as well as giving you the skills you need, but ultimately the will that drives your bid to survive is yours.
If you give in to fear or go into denial, pretending that it is not happening, then you will fail. Instead you must accept that it IS really happening and deal with it. So if you find yourself thinking, "What's he going to do to me?', you have to force yourself to answer, 'Nothing. I'm not going to let him.'
If you have done all you can to avoid trouble and it finds you anyway, then it is down to you to make a way out of the situation with as little harm to yourself as possible. Yes, you will be scared. Yes, you might indeed get hurt. Yes, it is possible that you could fail to defend yourself... but not for lack of trying. If the bad guy will not let you withdraw or de-escalate the situation, if he insists on fighting then he has decided that someone is going to get hurt. But it is you, not him, that gets to decide who. ~ Martin J. Dougherty

I always give respect to and pay homage to New York, because I don't feel like I would be the player that I am today if it wasn't for New York City. It gives you a certain edge, a certain toughness just growing up in the city. ~ Joakim Noah

Tennis is all about mental toughness, and you have to keep your head in the game. I make time to relax away from competition pressures, travel and intense training schedules to make sure I'm looking after myself. Taking time out with family and friends helps to maintain the work-life balance everyone needs. ~ Samantha Stosur

We are only as sick as our secrets. ~ Rob Bell

Desire plus sacrifice plus discipline equals preparation. Preparation plus success equals confidence. Mental toughness plus pride equals perseverance. If you have confidence and persevere, you will always have the edge. If you have the edge, you will succeed. Eventually. ~ Steve Siebold

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

The fitting BoD is less about physical strength, more about mental toughness, with fitting minds and fresh eyes. ~ Pearl Zhu

I visit my assistant mistress. "Well, Azalea," I say, sitting in the best chair, "what has happened to you since my last visit?" Azalea tells me what happened to her. She has covered a sofa, and written a novel. Jack has behaved badly. Roger has lost his job (replaced by an electric eye). Gigi's children are in the hospital being detoxified, all three. Azalea herself is dying of love. I stroke her buttocks, which are perfection, if you can have perfection, under the capitalistic system. "It is better to marry that to burn," St. Paul says, but St. Paul is largely discredited now, for the toughness of his views does not accord with the experience of advanced industrial societies. ~ Donald Barthelme

Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror! ~ Walter Scott

To strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important - toughness, doggedness, and perseverance. ~ Brene Brown

She taps the Bronx. "This part of the city gets hit the hardest by everything. Gangs, real estate scams, whatever. Hard people, too, if they came through any of that . . . so in a lot of ways, this is the heart of New York. The part of itself that held on to all the attitude and creativity and toughness everybody thinks is the whole city. ~ N.K. Jemisin

I watched my parents battle, work night shift, work two jobs. That's toughness. That's toughness ... That's something; it all carries over from your parents, and I was fortunate to have both parents in my life. ~ Mo Williams

Because I don't look like I'm skating around as hard as Bobby Bassen doesn't mean my mind isn't working twice as hard as Bobby's mind. Just because I can't fight like Kelly Chase doesn't mean standing in front of the net getting cross-checked and slashed isn't toughness as well. ~ Brett Hull

To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price ~ Vince Lombardi

If you don't own the goal and it doesn't come from your dream, then you won't have the toughness to persevere when the going gets tough. And I will promise you that the going will get tough. There is never an exception - everyone who wins must push through obstacles, lots of them. You simply will not get up at dawn for your three-mile run because your wife wants you thinner. Big goals require big backbone - wimps need not apply. ~ Dave Ramsey

There'll be guys who were in wars hearing what we did and thinking, 'Whoa.' You and me, we can say, 'You got yourself some medals solider? Yeah, well, I lived through the FAYZ. ~ Michael Grant

I'll negotiate with toughness, and with great attention to detail to get the best possible deal for Britain. It's only when we are outside the European Union that we can at last bring those numbers [of migrants] under control in the way that the public want. ~ Michael Gove

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Creating success is tough. But keeping it is tougher. You have to keep producing, you can't ever stop. ~ Pete Rose

He hadn't shaved that morning, she noticed. Maybe not for a handful of mornings, and the scruff gave his square jaw a toughness that suggested the wild teenager had long ago become a man. ~ Jill Shalvis

New York is eating young geniuses [businessmen] up alive. It's eating them up alive, Stone. And it's showing the beauty of the city, but it's showing the toughness and the viciousness of the city. ~ Donald Trump

He had a toughness about him, and his five grand Savile Row suit did little to hide the fact that he worked out regularly. He looked like someone who could've gone either way, the mob or something legitimate, and somehow ended up in the middle as a lawyer. ~ Dave Zeltserman

My toughest fight was with my first wife. ~ Muhammad Ali

Ethan filled his gaze with her, so feminine and fine, with glimmers dancing across her dress and little crystal things sparkling in her hair.
Despite her outward delicacy, there was something remarkably sturdy about her, an unyielding toughness he admired more than she would have believed. The life she'd chosen had come with the never-ending obligation to demonstrate what a woman was and was not, and what a woman could be. People would allow her no room for mistakes or ordinary human frailty. God knew she endured it all far better than Ethan would have. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I told him that it was very fine for well-fed, over-paid actors flaunting toughness at these deprived people, who are gentle and nice and, if ever tough, only so because of environment. I asked him how tough he would be if he were living the life that some of these unfortunate families must live. How easy for him, with five meals a day beneath that thrust-out chest with his muscles trained and perfect, trying to start something with these people. Of course they were not tough, but when it comes to four years of War, when it comes to losing an arm or a leg, then they are tough. But they are not going around looking for fights unless there is a reason. ~ Charlie Chaplin

It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and of course, luck. But if a team doesn't have the most essential ingredient - love - none of those other factors matter. ~ Phil Jackson

Michelle wasn't butch enough to mess around with men. It would be simply heterosexual, and slutty. For Ziggy and Stitch it was something else, proof of their toughness. They could tumble around with this guy and emerge from the van as queer as ever, more queer, even, and the man might now in fact be a bit queer from his time spent cracked out in Ziggy's butch bosom. ~ Michelle Tea

I don't know if there's a proper way to define toughness in a runner, but I do know that there comes a sudden moment when the mindset shifts. The impossible becomes doable, or at least attemptable. The long run goes from two miles to four to ten to fifteen, until it becomes routine at some point deep in an intense training cycle to knock off a couple hours without giving it a thought. ~ Martin Dugard

Lirael didn't answer either question. She just looked at him, waiting for him to talk. He met her gaze at first, then faltered and looked away. There was something unnerving about her eyes. A toughness he had never seen in the young women he knew from the debutante parties in Corvere. It was partly this that made him talk, and partly a desire to impress her with his knowledge and intelligence. ~ Garth Nix

But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it. ~ Jacob Bronowski

That even though you look like a warrior and act like a warrior, underneath all that toughness is really a big mushy marshmallow. ~ Cambria Hebert

Scars show toughness: that you've been through it, and you're still standing. ~ Theo Rossi

I had no idea what I was signing up for. I auditioned for some random character. I knew the sides were fake, but what they were trying to capture was an emotional toughness and a woundedness. I knew I liked the character. I didn't know who the character was, but I liked the spirit of the character. ~ Caity Lotz

For three decades, Senator Arlen Specter served the people of Pennsylvania with independence, toughness, determination and an unflinching devotion to the best interests of his constituents and our country. From the committee room to the Senate chamber, Senator Specter offered a voice of reason and passion in every debate - always willing to reach across the aisle and work across party lines to get the job done, regardless of political gamesmanship or gain. ~ Nancy Pelosi