Acceptance Speech Quotes

#1. Arnold Schwarzenegger is gonna be the new governor of California. During his acceptance speech Arnold said 'I will not let you down.' Unfortunately, at the time Arnold was holding a woman over his head and looking up her dress.

Conan O'Brien

#2. This sounds crazy, but my goal is to be nominated for an Oscar. I was the kid who was practicing my acceptance speech when I was ten.

Ashley Benson

#3. I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they're having a shower. It's fun.

Jared Harris

#4. Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)

Patti Smith

#5. During her Oscar acceptance speech, Patricia Arquette called for equal pay for women. Then Oprah stood up and said, 'She's right, I can't live like this. I can't take another second of this living hell.'

Conan O'Brien

#6. This Thursday, Barack Obama is gonna give his acceptance speech, and reportedly it's going to include performances by Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. Yeah. And they say Obama's not black enough!

Conan O'Brien

#7. I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.

Nora Ephron

#8. I said in my acceptance speech that I hope that readers remember this not as the year I won the Booker, but the year that there were six extraordinary books on the shortlist.

Richard Flanagan

#9. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
[Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech]

John Steinbeck

#10. People are falling all over themselves to send you free shoes and free cufflinks and colonic irrigations for two. Nobody ever offers you a free acceptance speech. There just seems to be a gap in the market. I would love to be able to pull out a speech by Dolce & Gabbana.

Hugh Laurie

#11. We know every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering....

- Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, 1986

Edward Iwata

#12. Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn't win.

William Shatner

#13. On many young actors that don't give their parents proper credit: I'm still waiting for some actor to win, say, an Oscar ... and deliver the following acceptance speech: I would like to thank my parents, first of all, for letting me live.

Bill Cosby

#14. I swear to God, Gabriel, if you don't stop, I will lose it. I will go to the bathroom and pull a Britney in the middle of your acceptance speech.

Claire Contreras

#15. I think everyone practices their Oscars acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle, and I've done my fair share of them. It's really surreal to be able to do it in real life.

Graham Moore

#16. Having been heavily involved in the planning of a couple of G.O.P. conventions, my view is, we should just scrap 'em. Cancel 'em. Just figure out an appropriate forum for the nominee to give an acceptance speech and be done with it.

Mark McKinnon

#17. Acceptance speeches can make or break presidential candidacies. It was Al Gore's 2000 acceptance speech that relaunched his candidacy and nearly saved him. John Kerry's speech and overall ineffective convention nearly sank him in 2004 (though he was almost saved by the debates).

Chuck Todd

#18. It's good for America when the rest of the world grows, because you can sell more to the rest of the world.

Jamie Dimon

#19. Did I really earn this, or did I just wear you all down?

Sandra Bullock

#20. Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

Rachel Cusk

#21. One can still say that quantum mechanics is the key to understanding magnetism. When one enters the first room with this key there are unexpected rooms beyond, but it is always the master key that unlocks each door.

John H. Van Vleck

#22. (The movie) is the story of my life, but it's not about me. It's about anybody who ever dreamed big and had someone tell them, 'No, you can't do it.' You can.

Chris Gardner

#23. Self-expression has to come out pure. It has to have an environment waiting for it. It has to have a garden it can plant itself in.

Melinda Gebbie

#24. Reading is important.
Books are important.
Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)

Neil Gaiman

#25. It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.

Neil Gaiman

#26. We would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave.

Blaise Pascal

#27. If the content is sufficiently engrossing, however, you don't need wraparound deep-immersion goggles to shut out the world. You grow your own. You are there. Watching the content you most want to see, you see nothing else.

William Gibson

#28. Rappers should be forced to rhyme in their acceptance speeches.

Doug Benson

#29. The literature [Nobel] laureate of this year has said that an author can do anything as long as his readers believe him.
A scientist cannot do anything that is not checked and rechecked by scientists of this network before it is accepted.

Sune Bergstrom

#30. There are some years in our lives that we would not want to live again. But even these years will pass away, and the lessons learned will be a future blessing.

Marjorie Pay Hinckley

#31. Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

Jose Saramago

#32. Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#33. He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!

Friedrich Nietzsche