Tidbits & Quotes

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

Melody. When you hear a Beatles melody or Marvin Gaye, it changes everything around you. You ever see those commercials where somebody's someplace and then the whole room changes? Melody does that.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

You don't want to have organizations in what some people think of as a liquid state. I'm an engineer by training so my physics comes back. An organization is something very solid and when you apply a lot of heat to change it, it becomes fluid. You want to make sure that you don't keep it fluid too long, because liquids move in many directions that you might not have intended.

In God we trust; all others bring data.

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.

Lucius Washington: You're not gonna live forever.
Ricky Bobby: No one lives forever, no one. But with advances in modern science and my high level income, it's not crazy to think I can live to be 245, maybe 300. Heck, I just read in the newspaper that they put a pig heart in some guy from Russia. Do you know what that means?
Lucius Washington: No, I don't know what that means. I guess longer life.
Ricky Bobby: No, he didn't live. It's just exciting that we're trying things like that.

Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

It's because it's what you love, Ricky. It is who you were born to be. And here you sit. Thinking. Well, Ricky Bobby is not a thinker. Ricky Bobby is a driver. He is a doer, and that's what you need to do. You don't need to think. You need to drive. You need speed. You need to go out there, and you need to rev your engine. You need to fire it up. You need to grab ahold of that line between speed and chaos, and you need to wrestle it to the ground like a demon cobra. And then, when the fear rises up in your belly, you use it. And you know that fear is powerful, because it has been there for billions of years. And it is good. And you use it. And you ride it; you ride it like a skeleton horse through the gates of hell, and then you win, Ricky. You WIN! And you don't win for anybody else. You win for you, you know why? Because a man takes what he wants. He takes it all. And you're a man, aren't you? Aren't you?

Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a new track record. As it stands now, Jean Girard is sitting on the pole, which is a statement of fact, and is in no way a comment on the driver's sexual orientation.

Ricky Bobby is not a thinker! Ricky Bobby is a driver!

We inevitably doom our children to failure and frustration when we try to set their goals for them.

A man must be master of his hours and days, not their servant.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

A woman never knows what she really wants until she finds out what her husband cannot afford.

I decide who offends me.

You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.

Caution is a most valuable asset in fishing, especially if you are the fish.