First Prize Quotes

#1. Even when I took first prize, topped the class, won the race, I never really won anything. I was merely avoiding the embarrassment of losing.

Portia De Rossi

#2. But Aiden sprang from the pool jacked on adrenaline. He screamed and pumped his fists as if he were trying to win first prize at the "Fuck Yeah Festival.

Matt K. Turner

#3. Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.

Cecil Rhodes

#4. She was so ugly that I took her to a dog show and she won first prize.

Rodney Dangerfield

#5. No idea how you figured out the riddle, but you scooped the first prize. Congratulations. You've just won a vacation to a big, relaxing place called a grave.

Jayde Scott

#6. And yet, on balance, affirmative action has, I think, been a qualified success." A 13-word sentence with five hedging words. I give it first prize as the most wishy-washy sentence in modern public discourse,

William Zinsser

#7. We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.

Tommy Chong

#8. First prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks.

W.C. Fields

#9. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

David Mamet

#10. As an example of wealth, good taste, and subtle intimidation, it took first prize.

Nalini Singh

#11. I remember my first moment onstage was at a 4-H contest at the Pratville Junior High School cafeteria auditorium around 1965. I had my first electric, a Silvertone with the amp built into the case, and I won first prize.

Tommy Shaw

#12. I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids!

Eddie Van Halen

#13. She wore a loose bathrobe that covered up a body that would have won first prize in a beauty contest for cement blocks ... She had a voice that made pearl harbour sound like a lullaby.

Richard Brautigan

#14. Presenting statues of honor to reporters for covering an earthquake is like presenting a first prize to a doctor for performing surgery.

Phil Donahue

#15. Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

Edith Wharton

#16. When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book.

Vladislav Tamarov

#17. In racing, there is no question who is best - the first one to cross the finish line wins first prize. But with wine, even if you make the best wine in the world, someone isn't going to like it, because it isn't their style. Judging wine is very subjective.

Mario Andretti

#18. To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.

Cecil Rhodes

#19. The Macedonian Endeavour Channel was screening live coverage of the world series of the Who's Got the Stupidest Name (WGSN) competition. First prize had already gone to Brian Burdock, a French Algerian with a penchant for Longchamp.

St John Morris

#20. The first prize for any production is, if you can find a location that means you don't have to build sets, that will serve, and is not excessively expensive to hire, then it can save you a lot of money.

Gavid Hood

#21. I think Hemingway's [book] titles should be awarded first prize in any contest. Each of them is a poem, and their mysterious power over readers contributes to Hemingway's success. His titles have a life of their own, and they have enriched the American vocabulary.

Sylvia Beach

#22. I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio.

Ian Rankin

#23. One day I gave Clifford a bath. And I combed his hair and took hom to the dog show. I'd like to say Clifford won first prize ... but he didn't. I don't care. You can keep all your small dogs. You can keep all your black, white, brown, and spotted dogs. I'll keep Clifford ... Wouldn't you?

Norman Bridwell

#24. In the first place, the preparation of the Nobel lecture which I am to give has shown me, even more clearly than I knew before, how many others share with me, often, indeed, have anticipated me, in the discoveries for which you have awarded me the prize.

Frederick Soddy

#25. With gamblers, it's never enough. You keep thinking on a conscious level that the prize is whatever the pot is. In poker, you may have a certain goal for the day. But the truth is, as soon as you win, more often than not the first thing that comes to mind is: If I'd bet more, I would have won more.

Jason Gedrick

#26. The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.

Naguib Mahfouz

#27. Back in 2007, I had the opportunity to meet Professor Stephen Hawking through the X PRIZE Foundation. In my first conversation with him I learned that he was passionate about flying into space someday.

Peter Diamandis

#28. My first reaction on being awarded the Nobel Prize was, actually, I thought of Fischer Black, my colleague. He unfortunately had passed away. And there was no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive, he would have been a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize.

Myron Scholes

#29. I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

Molly Antopol

#30. 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

#31. There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

Joseph Stiglitz

#32. I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

Haruki Murakami

#33. When, over fifty years ago, I first became interested in economics - as a discipline that provided the key to social structure and social problems - it never crossed my mind that one day I might be the honored recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize.

Simon Kuznets

#34. If at first you don't succeed, see if there is a prize for the losers.

Jerry Lawler

#35. But if you are to die, live first! Come forth With me into the glory of God's earth! Soon, soon the gilded cage will claim its prize. The Lady thrives there, but the Woman dies, And I love nothing but the Woman in you.

Henrik Ibsen

#36. What is it? A prize or something?
No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.

Melina Marchetta

#37. She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.

John Green

#38. When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

#39. The first season of 'Community' stumbled a bit because the plotlines too often veered into realism, but that is not a problem anymore. Not when prize episodes concern a campuswide blanket fort, or a secret garden with a magic trampoline.

Rob Sheffield

#40. According to a new book coming out by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, apparently when he was in high school, President Obama smoked large amounts of marijuana. You know what that means? He could be our first green president.

Jay Leno

#41. I learned that attention is a prize, in love. The first thing you give. And the first thing to go, when the 'new' wears off.

Todd Johnson

#42. The prize money for first place was $2,800, but I didn't take it because I was still an amateur.

Tracy Austin

#43. Thomas loved me. He needed me. Maybe I wasn't the first woman he'd loved, and maybe the kind of love a Maddox man felt lasted forever, but I needed him, too. I wasn't the first, but I would be the last. That didn't make me the second prize. It made me his forever.

Jamie McGuire

#44. As I took a step toward him your eyes met mine and I saw the silent pleading for forgiveness or acceptance. I wasn't sure which. All I knew was you were Sawyer's now. My best friend was gone. I envied him and hated him for the first time that day. He'd finaly won the one prize I thought was mine.

Abbi Glines

#45. In 1970, at the age of 14, I entered a short story contest offering a grand prize of one dollar. I won. This was my first foray into writing fiction. I loved reading and thought that it shouldn't be so hard to write a story.

David Bergen

#46. Two Americans have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. They are the first to figure out all the charges on their telephone bill.

Jay Leno

#47. First, I'm going to teach you how to Irish Whip someone."
"Oh, that sounds kinky. I want my safeword to be peaches," I said, grinning.

Kyle Adams

#48. I'm offering a special prize for the first Buick on the moon.

George Carlin

#49. The first thing I did with the prize money was to buy a paddy field for Apa. He would no longer be a landless farmer in an agricultural society.

M.C. Mary Kom

#50. I saw Mercury Prize-winners Alt-J for the first time recently, touring their debut album 'An Awesome Wave,' and I'm still riding the high: they're the most musically dynamic and exciting band to have poured tune into my lug holes live since Bellowhead.

Dan Stevens

#51. As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

Terry Pratchett

#52. It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my early teens when 'The Magic Barrel' was published and I first read it.

Deborah Eisenberg

#53. I think it is true to say that I am not the first Nobel Prize winner in economics to have little formal training in economics.

Clive Granger

#54. The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.

Rutherford B. Hayes

#55. In 1952, I recited aloud for the first time, booming in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre from a bad poem that had won a prize. I was twenty-three.

Donald Hall

#56. To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician) ... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries.

Randy Sandke