Bootstraps Quotes

My mother lived through the Great Depression. Her family of 11 children pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and moved to wherever there was work at the time. And in rural Oklahoma, that wasn't easy to find.

Capitalists are no more capable of self sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself by his own bootstraps.

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.

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.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Neoliberalism is vulnerable. When it comes to talking about social provisions, the only argument they have is the argument of barbarians: that social provisions make people dependent, and dependency is an evil, and people have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. And that is such bullshit that it boggles my mind.

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.

If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up.

We are told, over and over: "Get off welfare. Cut the umbilical cord to the Government." But when we try and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we're slapped back down.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

‎It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

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.

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.

I'm actually loving the soundtrack to 'The Secret Circle' that our music supervisor Liza Richardson puts together, like Washed Out and Cults, but my favorite band is Bootstraps.

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.

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