Top 81 Bethune Quotes
#1. Bethune was a communist and an atheist with a healthy contempt for his evangelical father.
Larry Hannant
#2. My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.
Langston Hughes
#3. Pete Bethune is a hero in New Zealand. He's a hero worldwide to people who want to see the end of whaling.
Paul Watson
#4. He who would rise like Thee, like Thee must owe His glory only to his stooping low. - Bethune.
Lillian G. Harvey
#5. There is no economy without airlines. Airfreight runs the world. There is no Honolulu without an airplane. This is a very complex system. If you take it down, you can't build it back up overnight.
Gordon Bethune
#6. Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#7. Education is the great American adventure, the world's most colossal democratic experiment.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#9. Studying goes deeper than mere reading. There are surface nuggets to be gathered but the best of the gold is underneath, and it takes time and labor to secure it.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#10. I do feel, in my dreamings and yearnings, so undiscovered by those who are able to help me.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#12. The point is ... you'd better figure out what your Customers - the Customers you want - value. Because that's what they'll buy. Anything else is a waste of their money, and they'll figure that out in a hurry.
Gordon Bethune
#13. Do you know how much faster I can fix an airplane when I want to fix it than when I don't want to fix it?
Gordon Bethune
#14. Grounding airplanes to cover your butt would never have let Orville or Wilbur change the world. We would still be spending weeks to cross the Atlantic to do business in London.
Gordon Bethune
#17. The progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#19. The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#20. I've spent my life as an airplane mechanic, pilot, aircraft manufacturer and airline CEO who never lost a life or an airplane. I am considerate of the risk we take every time we fly. I also know we need to fly and always to improve safety.
Gordon Bethune
#21. If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#22. Believe in yourself, learn, and never stop wanting to build a better world.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#24. I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow, too, but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris, a lark, a bluebird, or a dewy morning glory.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#25. The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you're all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day.
Gordon Bethune
#26. Whether I'm at the hangar or at the airport or on an airplane, I get respect. And that's the best part of my day.
Gordon Bethune
#27. We tax air passengers like cigarettes and alcohol - we impose sin taxes on travellers.
Gordon Bethune
#28. If you say three things in a row that make sense, people will vote for you.
Gordon Bethune
#29. We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#30. Charity should be abolished; and be replaced by justice.
Norman Bethune
#31. [To the patronizing train conductor who had twice said, 'Auntie, give me your ticket':] Which of my sister's sons are you?
Mary McLeod Bethune
#32. In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don't attach any relevance to which one.
Gordon Bethune
#33. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds
Mary McLeod Bethune
#34. I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing ... Though I hadn't a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#36. You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#39. For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#40. We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#41. Greatness is largely a social accident, and almost always socially supported.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#42. From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#44. A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny, if she prizes her individuality and puts no boundaries on her hopes for tomorrow.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#46. I was a mechanic in the Navy. And mechanics in the Navy are like mechanics in airlines. You may have more stripes than I do, but you don't know how to fix the airplane.
Gordon Bethune
#47. No one is going to stick their head out of the trenches for someone they don't respect or trust. You can get shot doing that.
Gordon Bethune
#48. Every pilot thinks they're the best pilot in the world. I think I'm the best pilot.
Gordon Bethune
#49. Never forget: Businesses are run by people; businesses are made up of people. So at the root of whatever problems you have in your business, you'll find people.
Gordon Bethune
#51. There is a place in God's sun for the youth "farthest down" who has the vision, the determination, and the courage to reach it.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#52. Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#54. The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#56. I learned that you can be successful if you get people to help you become successful.
Gordon Bethune
#57. To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!
Mary McLeod Bethune
#58. The guy in the airplane goes with you. So he has self-interest to do the good things, too, and I don't know of any pilots that don't have a self-interest in staying alive.
Gordon Bethune
#59. What you measure and reward is what you're going to get.
Gordon Bethune
#60. If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#62. It's difficult to have everybody like everything you do. I don't know anybody that's perfect and doesn't have a zit somewhere.
Gordon Bethune
#63. Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#64. Since 1978 the record pretty well shows that no start-up airline ... has really been successful, so the odds of JetBlue having long-term success are remote. I'm not going to say it can't happen because stranger things have happened, but I personally believe P.T. Barnum was, in that respect, correct.
Gordon Bethune
#65. It all sounds almost silly, but the fact is that the only way to change a corporate culture is to just change it.
Gordon Bethune
#66. A bankruptcy judge can fix your balance sheet, but he cannot fix your company.
Gordon Bethune
#68. There is no name so sweet on earth,
no name so sweet in heaven,
The name, before His wondrous birth,
to Christ the Savior given.
George Washington Bethune
#69. It's like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out?
Gordon Bethune
#70. You have to begin to put the infrastructure in place to put in high-speed trains ... It should be a national priority. If the French can do it, why cant we?
Gordon Bethune
#71. Watches are the only jewelry men can wear, unless you're Mr. T.
Gordon Bethune
#72. Most businesses fail because they want the right things but measure the wrong things, and they get the wrong results.
Gordon Bethune
#73. I don't think JetBlue has a better chance of being profitable than 100 other predecessors with new airplanes, new employees, low fares, all touchy-feely ... all of them are losers. Most of these guys are smoking ragweed.
Gordon Bethune
#74. It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline.
Gordon Bethune
#75. I just want to be able to get on an airplane and enjoy myself in Disneyland, not sit there worrying about all these assassins.
Gordon Bethune
#76. Somebody who knows what they're doing, who has a good track record, they come across as very articulate, bright and looking for a challenge - that's absolutely my kind of hire.
Gordon Bethune
#77. It's the old adage: You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it.
Gordon Bethune
#78. I thought, maybe the difference between white folks and colored is just this matter of reading and writing. I made up my mind I would know my letters.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#79. You don't lie to your own doctor. You don't lie to your own attorney, and you don't lie to your employees.
Gordon Bethune
#81. It's not about market share. If you have a successful company, you will get your market share. But to get a successful company, what do you have to have? The same metrics of success that your customer does.
Gordon Bethune
