James H. Douglas Jr. Quotes

No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage. It was their fathers' task to make homes; it is their task to keep those homes; it is our task to help them with their fight.

Even when I was modelling, I never had a mom sitting on my head and a bunch of people waiting on me. I've always been independent. I'll do my thing and go.

I always knew that I would have to make it on my own somehow.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

And yes, the Homesteaders, including my grandparents who left behind almost nothing, and arrived in Montana with nothing but the clothes on their back, high hopes, faith in God and dreaming of the future.

Money won't create success, the freedom to make it will.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

When you go back and look at American history, it's not terribly different from Canadian history. If you weren't self-reliant on the prairie, you wouldn't survive.

I never took a grant or borrowed a penny from anybody. It was partially because I didn't really know how to do that, but secondly, my pride never would have allowed me to. In the beginning it was about doing it the right way, on the merits of the music.

My grandfather, as I said, was industrious. He'd had a variety of jobs and decided sometime in the 1940s that he would never work for anyone. He was also a very independent man.

The same independence that got me into trouble in high school got me praise in college.

The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

I've always been a workhorse, and I've been supporting myself since I was 15.

If you are going to have to play defense all the time, you cannot have the kind of ingenuity, assertiveness, independence, and intelligence which is what has made our country strong.

I always had to have a job in the summer when I was at school. It was about teaching me, and my brother and sisters, a good work ethic and making sure we knew there were no handouts. We had to find our own way in this world.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

I wanted to express myself. I wanted to be creative and I didn't want to worry about someone bossing me around in the process. You have to struggle no matter where you are to get to where you're going, so I'm like, working it honey!

My father felt that children should make their own way.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

When America's early pioneers first turned their eyes toward the West, they did not demand that somebody take care of them if they got ill or got old. They did not demand maximum pay for minimum work, and even pay for no work at all.

I come from a simple background, so I couldn't call my father and say, 'Come pay my bills,' so I had to get out there and work.

Pioneer women were very tough - they had to be, because the men go off for long periods of time, and the women would have to be able to protect themselves and their homes.

The more tools I have, the more freedom I have.

Being self-made means doing things your own way - and doing it without any handouts.