Could Have Been Better Quotes

#1. Many African people are smarter than me - kids who could have been better. I have no claim for genius.

Mo Ibrahim

#2. Jo claimed that the reason people survived breakups was that within days of the amputation, Mother Nature started reminding you of what you had been doing without, what could have been better, all the samll discontents you had been filing away.

Emma Donoghue

#3. It was not perfect but I'm very happy. It could have been better, but I'm now looking forward to my second race of the season.

Usain Bolt

#4. No man is hurt but by himself ... Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too.

Diogenes

#5. Honestly, the only way Garden State could have been better was if I played every character. I'm awesome.

Zach Braff

#6. Every letter was a love letter. Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better. It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half-century.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#7. The two things that could have been better is number one, to get major military force into the community almost immediately to make sure that there was law and order. Number two, we had enough helicopters to airlift food into the centers of population and those places.

Warren Rudman

#8. If someone gave me the chance to create something, I put myself into it. I just want to try to do something that will last forever and that won't leave people saying, 'Gee, it could have been better, it could've been this, it could've been that.'

Billy West

#9. He was a great poet" They lamented.
No, he was not a great poet," said Theo, "He was a good poet, he could have been better. That's the real loss don't you see?

Lloyd Alexander

#10. When a product is made, everyone hopes for the best. Whether it could have been better or not is more of an afterthought.

Sakshi Tanwar

#11. I could have been better. That's my goal now, to be better.

Jayson Williams

#12. I'm never a person who likes anything I've done. It's just the way it is. Twenty years later, I can look at something I did, and I'm still thinking, 'You know, that could have been better if you had done it this way or that way.

Robert Guillaume

#13. He had been a mere man railing at a condition, but now he was out of it and could see that it had been very proper and just. It had been necessary for him to swallow swords that he might have a better throat for grapes.

Stephen Crane

#14. Somebody better be dead or dying."
He froze mid-step when he saw her. It might have been wishful thinking but she could've sworn his face lit up.
"Or just sitting there looking pretty," he finished with a heart-stopping grin.

Cherrie Lynn

#15. I'm starting with the man in the mirror,
I'm asking him to change his ways;
And no message could have been any clearer,
If you wanna make the world a better place,
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change!

Michael Jackson

#16. The thousands of clips on internet are better to us than any DVD that could have been released.

Thomas Bangalter

#17. Everybody knows how complicated this country's relationship with France has been, in war and in peace. Certainly there have been times when the leaders of France could have done better by us. We should have done better by them on Sunday. Only you couldn't find us.

Kimberley Strassel

#18. Flying the Feathered Edge captures my life story in an authentic and accurate way. I don't know how it could have been done any better.

Bob Hoover

#19. If it weren't for my breast cancer, I wouldn't be a 'Today' host. After I got better, I talked to my boss about working on the show. Six months before, I'd have been terrified to go in there and ask for what I wanted. But after what I'd been through, how could I be scared of being told no?

Hoda Kotb

#20. I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil.

Charles Mayo

#21. You have been good for me. What more could anyone ask for? I'm a better person than I was before we got together. That's your doing.

Kent Haruf

#22. No one could have been nicer, classier nor better looking than Dick Clark. I've had a crush on him since I was a teenager.

Dolly Parton

#23. I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better.

John Breaux

#24. Still much better off Sid, things could have been much worse.
The 'Sky' is only the 'lower' limit, to thee is the Universe.

Rajat Mishra

#25. Have you been drinking this morning? How did you miss me? I swear I've fought old women with better reflexes. (Takeshi)
The fact you fight old women tells me just how rusty you've become. What? Your ego needed the boost and they were the only ones you could find you could beat? (Savitar)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#26. I realize now that I've hoped to be great - as an actress, as a mother - because I want to embody the greatness of women who didn't get to be all they could have been. Their dignity, their courage, and their brilliance make me strive to be better. They're a part of me.

Salma Hayek

#27. We have that feeling that life could have been other, different, better in a way impossible to articulate, yet we sense there was another road we missed.

Chloe Thurlow

#28. Law enforcement officials have been candid in identifying ways officers could have handled the situation in Ferguson better, and I trust those recommendations will be helpful as we continue to count on them to protect us.

Roy Blunt

#29. I needed to channel the darkness that ran through my veins and embrace it. To play this game better than this man ever could have predicted. After all, I'd only been with him twice, and already I could see his weakness.
His weakness was me.

A. Zavarelli

#30. The value of a novel is not limited to its depiction of emotions and people akin to those in our own life; it stretches to an ability to describe these far better than we would have been able, to put a finger on perceptions that we recognize as our own, but could not have formulated on our own.

Alain De Botton

#31. Sometimes I wonder if he were raised a Red and I a Gold if he wouldn't have ended up a better man than I am now, and I a worse man than he ever could be.
For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil.

Pierce Brown

#32. It felt nice to be spooned. It would have been better to have been forked, but at this point, I would take whatever I could get.

M.L. Ryan

#33. Film is the only art form where every single patron has an opinion on how it could have been done better.

Anupama Chopra

#34. You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, 'It could have been much better.'

Jamie Dimon

#35. Whenever one feels like saying "the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the "public sector"", one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons.

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

#36. If you drive the same car as me, and have been in a fender bender, I'll think, "Boy, that's what my car could look like." Same with clones. If one of my clones got beat up, I'll think, "Boy, that could have been me. Better me squared than me.

Jarod Kintz

#37. A better ending could not have been scripted. Of course, if we had won, that would have been better.

Bobby Bowden

#38. I could have played another year, but I would have been playing for the money, and baseball deserves better than that.

George Brett

#39. I perhaps could have been somewhat better. One of the interesting things about playing competitive sports as a child is that you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point.

David Foster Wallace

#40. The World Bank has not invariably been my favorite organization. The power to do good goes almost always with the possibility to do the opposite, and as a professional economist, I have had occasions in the past to wonder whther the Bank could not have done very much better.

Amartya Sen

#41. Its powers?' Dallben answered with a sad smile. 'My dear boy, this is a bit of metal hammered into a rather unattractive shape; it could better have been a pruning hook or a plow iron. Its powers? Like all weapons, only those held by him who wields it. What yours may be, I can in no wise say.

Lloyd Alexander

#42. We always need to have someone help with videos, I think all of our DVDs could've been better but our music video, I love all the music videos, but the actual behind-the-scenes and stuff of our music video DVD, it was rushed and didn't turn out great.

Jess Margera

#43. I've often been accused of being too emotional and sentimental, but I believe in honest sentiment, and the need to purge ourselves at certain times, which is ancient. Men would live at least five or six more years and not have ulcers if they could cry better.

Ray Bradbury

#44. My professional apprenticeship at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943 could not have been better; the Great Depression made it so, and the talented younger economists at Ames during that period made it an exciting and profitable intellectual experience.

Theodore Schultz

#45. God ... sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it ... and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#46. I never knew much about business. But I've been made happy. The TV and commercials have been very fortunate for me and my career. And Atlantic Records has always been wonderful to me. I don't think I could have chosen a better record company.

Percy Sledge

#47. Colin was certain he would feel better once he had gotten some sleep. At one o-clock in the morning he was wishing he could close his eyes and die. By 3 oclock, he thought he had. Colin sprawled out on the bed, face down, with his arms spread wide. Oh yes, death would have been a treat.

Julie Garwood

#48. Even when life turns out different than what you've planned, it's always better to try and fail than to wonder what could have been.

Kirsten Hubbard

#49. Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.

Susan B. Anthony

#50. Think what a contribution selfish people of great talent could have made if their commitments had been made to Jesus Christ instead of to themselves! We will do better in every aspect of our lives if we commit to a God in whose life we see miracles, power over disease and death ...

Vaughn J. Featherstone

#51. I have walked around the same streets so many times, and then seen a place that had been hidden to me. I now know the sites in a way that makes me think I could have made better use of the connections between place and snowball.

Andy Goldsworthy

#52. At the beginning of my TV and movie stuff, I would be really critical of myself, but I've gotten better and better. There's always little things that I think, "Oh, that could have been whatever," but most of the time I'm able to let go and watch like an audience member.

Mireille Enos

#53. Being British, we tend to think of ourselves as America's best friend. And as your best friend, that gives us a little bit of license to point out things that could have been handled better.

Philip Kerr

#54. Well, it was stupid ... you could have been seriously hurt, Kellan."
"Better me than you, Kiera," he whispered.

S.C. Stephens

#55. Just think! Garden, garden, garden, garden, garden, two happy people, and it could have gone on forever! They knew, they'd been told, but they ate it anyway, and from there on out, 'family!' Shame, fear, jobs, mortality, envy, murder ... "
"Well," William said brightly, "and sex.

Deborah Eisenberg

#56. God. I haven't been very good.
The metal whined in protest.
I could have tried harder. I could've been a better person. I stand before you now as I am. I make no excuses.
The beams gave, bending.
Please, have mercy on me,

Ilona Andrews

#57. My father was a progressive farmer, and was always ready to lay aside an old plough if he could replace it with one better constructed for its work. All through life, I have ever been ready to buy a better plough.

Andrew Taylor Still

#58. If we were to suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could have been created on earth at all.

Immanuel Kant

#59. Both children and adults acquire knowledge from active participation in holistic, complex, meaningful environments organized around long-term goals. Today's school programs could hardly have been better designed to prevent a child's natural learning system from operating.

Sylvia Farnham-Diggory

#60. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's bad. I think the film could have been a lot better.

Rod Steiger

#61. You could have been one of us." "Death would've been a better option.

Lisa McMann

#62. Whatever happens in a government could have happened differently, and it usually would have been better if it had.

Charles Frankel

#63. Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith.

Flannery O'Connor

#64. We who are so lucky as to be born into the light - who see it every day and never think about it, we're blessed. We could have been born shadow souls who live and die in crimson darkness, never even knowing that somewhere there is something better.

L.J.Smith

#65. Each of them was better together than either of them could have been apart.

Louis De Bernieres

#66. The chance you passed up or missed could have had any number of different outcomes, and it's easy to fantasize about how much better every one of those outcomes would have been.

Robin Marantz Henig

#67. When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.

Joe Mantegna

#68. For myself, losing is not coming second. It's getting out of the water knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I've been in.

Ian Thorpe

#69. No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par.

Bobby Jones

#70. All my life Ive known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?

John F. Kennedy

#71. We took off our clothes, and we were basically in a sphere of love and light and warmth, and the rest of the world disappeared. It was better than I ever could have dreamed, it was that thing I had been looking for, that love mixed with the rapture of sex.

Anthony Kiedis

#72. All of the years I spent trying to be someone you could be proud of would have been better spent being proud of myself for who I already was.

Paula Heller Garland

#73. Has anything bad ever happened in YOUR life? Anything bad that could have been stopped, if only someone had been paying better attention?"..."And you, Kanan? Is there something bad that could have been prevented, if someone had been watching over you?"..."EVERYBODY'S got something like that.

John Jackson Miller

#74. I should have been a much better artist if I could have studied more and amused myself less.

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

#75. Anther spasm ripped through me and all I could wonder was why in the world had women been doing this for thousands of years? This was barbaric. This was torture. Never again. Never again as long as I lived would I have another baby, so Beep had better be pretty awesome.

Darynda Jones

#76. Still, I could have been kinder." She frowned, her eyes wandering. "Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself.

Ransom Riggs

#77. There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.

Hector Hugh Munro

#78. A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.

Jennifer Egan

#79. I have no reason to go, except that I have never been, and knowledge is better than ignorance. What better reason could there be for travelling?

Freya Stark

#80. Such is life and life is such and after all it isn't much. First a cradle. Then a hearse. It might have been better, but it could have been worse.

Norman Wisdom

#81. Each one of us are hardworking, gifted and helpful. Perhaps no one told us! Otherwise I could have been lot better than yesterday. Can this make my tomorrow a better?

Santosh Avvannavar

#82. I would like to sound like James Mason. I reckon if I'd had a better voice I could have been prime minister. It is the most irritating voice in public life.

Ken Livingstone

#83. I was very lucky with the parents I was blessed with. I don't think it could have worked out any better. They've always been so understanding of me and understanding of what I want to do.

Emma Stone

#84. Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Haile Selassie

#85. There have been times when the Federal Reserve has restricted the money supply and raised interest rates to gain an end, which had much better been left to another Government agency or the Congress to attain. The country could have had lower interest rates without sacrificing anything else.

Wright Patman

#86. One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing
being a data bank
and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book.

Peter Greenaway

#87. I would have been better than Adolf Hitler. I could have delivered his speeches a lot better ... that's for certain.

Klaus Kinski

#88. I am never happy with what I do, so I try not to watch stuff that is filmed with me in it because I am always like, 'Oh, I could have done that a little bit better,' or, 'I could have done that differently - that riff could have been a little better.'

Josh Young

#89. The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend - and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn't learn for years yet, and approved of them all.

Robert A. Heinlein

#90. There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I've always been too confrontational, especially when I know I'm right.

Bobby Knight

#91. Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand.

Mitch Daniels

#92. I felt like an extraordinary hero. I was only five or six and I had the whole of life in my hands. Even if I had been driving the carriage of the sun I could not have felt any better.

Dario Fo

#93. He bent down so I could hear him over the music. "What are you doing here?" he asked with a hard tone.

Okay. Not the best first line. Something like, you look beautiful, have my babies would have been a little bit better.

R.S. Grey

#94. It must have been perfectly dreadful to see a woman every day for five years, and not give her a pie, when you felt sure yours were better than she could make.

Gene Stratton-Porter

#95. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#96. I still lie awake at night thinking about everything that could have been, that wasn't done to stop 9/11. To the 9/11 families, I said, you deserve better from your entire government. All of us.

George Tenet