Could Have Been Great Quotes

#1. The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.

George Carlin

#2. tragic Powell, the Company Man Who Could Have Been Great, who was offered the mantle by all the polls but deferred to the Boss's Callow Son and vouched for him,

Garrison Keillor

#3. Look at Christ on the cross. Think of the challenge that must have been for Him. The agony of betrayal by people He had trusted, and death. And afterward came the resurrection. He proved that no challenge, no matter how great, could end His love for us.

Danielle Steel

#4. I've always been after the trappings of great luxury. But all I've got hold of are the trappings of great poverty. I've got hold of the wrong load of trappings, and a rotten load they are too, ones I could have very well done without.

Peter Cook

#5. Could the one whom Christians worship be merely a mythological creation, or is he real? These questions have exercised many great minds and have been the dominant issue in New Testament studies during this century.

John Clayton

#6. But if one could go back in time, I'd love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who's one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in 'Rio Bravo'.

Stephen Fry

#7. Winning the Outstanding Contribution award is great, because you know you have won in advance. Previously, I have been really nervous during the ceremony because you have no idea if you are going to get called up on stage. This time I could relax and enjoy myself.

Tom Jones

#8. I always thought that Elvis could have been a great actor, and that he was put in a lot of unimportant movies when he could have done a lot of great ones.

Patti Page

#9. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

Various

#10. I've been an employee all my life. Would I wish, if I could rewind it, to have gone down a different route? Possibly, but I've had a great time. Anyway I'm not ruling it out; I could still buy a business.

Stuart Rose

#11. The reason that Americans have not been able to see the great strategic benefit that could accrue from a closer relationship with Iran is emotion.

Stephen Kinzer

#12. I pulled out the manuscript [from the envelope] and a great big stiff cardboard finger sprung up. This is someone that was so certain they would be rejected, they would be getting their revenge in advance. I was lucky - it could have been a pipe bomb.

Gardner Dozois

#13. There are great people in life who give you inspiration to keep going and get through the hard times. I have been blessed to have such role models in my life. It would be a privilege if achieving my dream could inspire the next generation.

Michelle Payne

#14. Personally, I had a great education. My mum was a trained teacher, a Montessori teacher, and I know that I could not have written 'Eragon' if I had gone into a public school system because I would have just been too busy attending classes and doing homework - I wouldn't have had the time to write.

Christopher Paolini

#15. 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

#16. Science and technology have been embarrassed by two world wars, many smaller ones, and the spread of weapons that could destroy humanity. As a result, there is some loss of confidence in the great achievements of technology.

Thomas Keating

#17. 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

#18. I'm really happy in Liverpool and the club feels such a family. I feel great, I have a nice house and my family have been here from the beginning so they could help me.

Royston Drenthe

#19. 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

#20. The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

#21. There may have been great scripts, and perfect actors to fill the roles, but those pilot projects could be stopped at an earlier point. Now, damn near anything can get on the air, but who can get people to watch? There are a lot more choices, even if you get on the air.

Harry Lennix

#22. The great vice of democracy is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

Robert Menzies

#23. And did not Spinoza's refusing to flee from excommunication by his church and community mean the same inner battle of integrity, the same struggle for the power not to be afraid of aloneness, without which the noble Ethics, certainly one of the great works of all time, could not have been written?

Rollo May

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. Be great at what you do, and don't ever settle for mediocrity or else you will always wonder how great you could have been.

Debbi Fields

#27. I still don't understand anything- exept that somehow I know that You are love. And that in my heart has been so great a love for Christy as I did not know could exist on this earth. You, God, must be responsible. You must have put it there. So what do I do with it now?

Catherine Marshall

#28. The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

Theodore Roosevelt

#29. Even in that short time he had seen that Anne had great power. She did not care if she quarreled with her uncle, or with any of the men at court that could have been her allies. She did not care who hated her, as long as the king was at her beck and call. And she could ruin any man she chose. George

Philippa Gregory

#30. Simplicity could only have been bought at a great price in accuracy.

Ramsay MacMullen

#31. When a thin person announces, "Here's a great taco place," I kind of shut down a little. How do they know it's so great? From smelling the tacos? If they only ate one taco, the taco could not have been that great.

Jim Gaffigan

#32. Is it not evident that the Canadas, as well as the other colonies, have been left in a great measure to grope their way as they could through the darkness which surrounds them, almost totally unaided by the parent state?

John Strachan

#33. My father was a great innovator in public life, but when it came to raising his daughters, no one could have been more conservative.

Rose Kennedy

#34. I've definitely, you know, been with women. And I've had great relationships with them where I was definitely in love. It's just I grew to a point where deep inside I knew that I could never truly have a relationship with a woman. I don't know if they ever suspected. It was never brought up.

Lance Bass

#35. Were I more conversant with literature and its great names, I could go on quoting them ad infinitum and acknowledge my debt for the merit you have been generous enough to find in my work.

Knut Hamsun

#36. I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.

Oliver Goldsmith

#37. There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.

Ernest Bevin

#38. I've never had help from anyone, ever. I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.

Julie Delpy

#39. It's been constant grinding and trying to secure work that I care about, tireless auditions and meetings. I've been fortunate that a lot of cool doors have opened to me, chiefly meeting great people who were inspired by what I've done and what they feel I could bring to their projects.

Keith Stanfield

#40. The things I could have done had Hollywood been more open? I don't dwell on coulda-woulda-shoulda. Because, hey, I've had a great career.

Pepe Serna

#41. The number of people who could deliver a kick to the balls with Aomame's mastery must have been few indeed. She had studied kick patterns with great diligence and never missed her daily practice.

Haruki Murakami

#42. The great need of the world has always been for leaders. With more leaders we could have more industry. More industry, more employment and comfort for all.

Henry Ford

#43. Could I - could I say good-bye to him, sir? asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.

J.K. Rowling

#44. For some reason I think I could have been capable of great evil. Maybe that's the guilt.

Anonymous

#45. We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Rod Steiger

#47. The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.

Michael Denton

#48. All of the great achievers of the past have been visionary figures; they were men and women who projected into the future. They thought of what could be, rather than what already was, and then they moved themselves into action, to bring these things into fruition.

Bob Proctor

#49. The imagination is a healthy thing, and a great many scientific discoveries could not have been made without it, but it need to be harnessed to some serious object if it is to come to anything.

Diane Setterfield

#50. I have a collection of vintage sundresses, and I've never worn them because for some reason I always opt for shorts and a t-shirt. I wish I could commit to them. I will. I have a few really great pieces I've been holding onto for years.

Tatiana Maslany

#51. My life is great. It's just not exceptional. And there was a time when it could have been." "You killed your ambition, didn't you?" "It died of natural causes. Of neglect.

Blake Crouch

#52. As I get older, I realize a lot of the things I could have done - things that I didn't think were so great at the time - actually would have been enjoyable.

Kevin Shields

#53. Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.

Laurie Halse Anderson

#54. One of the great regrets of my life is that I smoked. If I could say anything to anybody starting out in life it would be, 'Whatever you do, don't smoke'. I have had to recover from that and been lucky that I have been able to stop.

Bill Nighy

#55. 'War and Peas' by Michael Foreman, one of the great British children's illustrators. His watercolours are so lovely you could almost eat them, just as members of the target audience have been trying to do for decades.

Tobias Hill

#56. ABOUT: KAHLIL GIBRAN
"His power came from some great reservoir of spiritual life else it could not have been so universal and so potent, but the majesty and beauty of the language with which he clothed it were all his own."
Claude Bragdon

Claude Bragdon

#57. I played piano for a lot of my childhood and stupidly quit. I wish I hadn't - I could have been a great classical pianist!

Frankie Cosmos

#58. I could have been a great many things.

Louisa May Alcott

#59. The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains, and advises them. Their slogan - 'God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel' - could have been written in Persian.

Charles Krauthammer

#60. Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm.

P.D. James

#61. Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn't been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege.

Hisham Matar

#62. Anytime you've got an opportunity to play for your country and win a gold medal, I think that takes it all. That's the greatest thing you could ever achieve in your sport. So, I have been very fortunate to play on great teams, but the gold medal was probably the best.

Larry Bird

#63. I have followed holiness, I have taught truth, and I have been most in the main things; not that I thought the things concerning our times little, but that I thought none could do anything to purpose in God's great and public matters, till they were right in their conditions.

Donald Cargill

#64. Nothing could have been more imprudent or more natural than this reply. It reflected the ecstasy inspired by great crises.

Machado De Assis

#65. Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible.

Eric Butterworth

#66. He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men
it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.

Boris Pasternak

#67. 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