Pioneers Quotes

“True rebels hate their own rebellion. They know by experience that it is not a cool and glamorous lifestyle; it takes a courageous fool to say things that have not been said and to do things that have not been done.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit that serves as the life-blood of our own country – your opportunity and mine, to develop and market our talents.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“Though we have rightly applauded our ancestors for their spiritual achievements (and do not and must not discount them now), those of us who prevail today will have done no small thing. The special spirits who have been reserved to live in this time of challenges and who overcome will one day be praised for their stamina by those who pulled handcarts.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

“You mean that this is a matter of patriotism and traders aren't patriotic?"
"Notoriously not. Pioneers never are.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible thatGalileiascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; thatCopernicusascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; thatKeplerdiscovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; thatNewtongave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; thatEuclid,Cavalieri,Descartes,andLeibniz,almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions ofGalvani,Volta,FranklinandMorse,ofTrevithick,WattandFultonand of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible thatÆschylusandShakespeare,Burns,andBeranger,GoetheandSchiller,and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.

The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“You can stretch to your fullest in this land, Emma, and not touch any edges. There's no dream too big for the wilderness. I'd hate to see it tamed and carved up into little fiefdoms.”
― Alice Valdal, Her One and Only

“At times, the frontier seemed so precarious, pioneers felt like they would be better off standin’ bare-assed in a nest of rattlers!”
― Lee E. Hollingsworth

“Our human history is the history of ideas. Our human future is the future of ideas. Human desire. Human imagination. Human ingenuity. Creating and copying. Tool-makers and dream-chasers.”
― Max McKeown, Innovation Book, The: How to Manage Ideas and Execution for Outstanding Results

“Innovators make the previously impossible possible.”
― Max McKeown, The Innovator’s Book: Rules for Rebels, Mavericks and Innovators

“New ideas are like babies, beautiful, ugly and not finished yet.”
― Max McKeown, The Innovator’s Book: Rules for Rebels, Mavericks and Innovators

“The Great Plains were immense enough to inspire the grandest, most foolish of dreams - but they were also vast enough that no one could ever explore every corner.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Children's Blizzard

“A few early farmers conserved the soil - George Washington was one - but they were stray oddities. A few pioneers had naturalistic interests, but any revelation of such interests branded the holder of them as being peculiar or even undemocratic. The
mass rule then, as now, was: Conform and be dull.”
― J. Frank Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote

“The great men and women of ancient times were dreams in their own way. Pioneers, explorers and cowboys lived with hopeful tomorrows and starry-eyed imaginings. They were lovers of the wind and tide, the romance of the deserts, mountains, and seas.
The thrill of the great unknown.
Despite their denials and insistence that there was nothing romantic about the way they lived, their actions spoke just the opposite. Dreams of new land, a new life,ba better tomorrow. Dreams of a girl, somewhere beyond the hills, with a heart full of love she'd give to the wandering man.”
― LaKaysha Stenersen, Echoes of Mercy

“BECKONED to the square to listen to a representative of the Virginia Company of London. He seemed an unpretentious man, a clerk, if you will, who had some important points to make before the Jamestown colonists started mingling with the new members. The man stepped up on a makeshift wooden box and spoke to the good people gathered for the day’s celebration. As he looked out at the more delicate gender, he released a sigh of satisfaction. The bride ship had come through, and it was hoped these ninety women would secure the colony’s growth. The clerk waved a document in the air and the crowd hushed, anxious to hear what he would say. “Each woman,” he called out, to reach the hearing of those standing furthest away. “Each woman, upon entering into marriage with a man of Jamestown, will receive as promised, one new apron, two new pairs of shoes, six pairs of sheets…” He droned on, reciting the promises made by the Virginia Company of London. As each new item was listed, gasps of delight flickered in the air. The gifting lent the day even more enjoyment for these items were needed to set up a good home and many of the women were arriving with few possessions. The representative talked at length about marriage licenses and how each couple would be married, one after the other, until all were satisfied. When all was said, and done, there would be a lot of paperwork, but these contracts were the foundation of the colony, the building blocks that would ensure the birth of children on this new soil. It wasn’t just the Virginia Company of London who wanted the population to grow in the colony, it was also the wish of Scarlett. These people who would be her neighbours, these men who would make business deals with her husband, these children who would grow by her child’s side, were the herd. From these people, would she harvest, and as they prospered, so would she.”
― Cheryl R. Cowtan, Girl Desecrated: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders 1984

“Those who build their homes in impossible places are great pioneers who pave the way to other impossible places in this universe!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“It takes a community to raise a new idea - Pioneers, trendsetters, hipsters, hackers, hustlers, trailblazers, inventors, heretics, creators, problem-solvers, optimists, obsessives, firestarters, scientists, risktakers, disrupters, gamechangers, explorers, and garage heroes... People like you.”
― Max McKeown, E-Customer

“Before invention there is insight.”
― Max McKeown, The Innovator’s Book: Rules for Rebels, Mavericks and Innovators

“Many were the last resting-places of toilers of the wheat there on those hills. And surely in the long frontier days, and in the ages before, men innumerable had gone back to the earth from which they had sprung. The dwelling-places of men were beautiful; it was only life that was sad. In this poignant, revealing hour Kurt could not resist human longings and regrets, though he gained incalculable strength from these two graves on the windy slope. It was not for any man to understand to the uttermost the meaning of life.”
― Zane Grey, The Desert of Wheat

“I should prefer to deal with the Mormon pioneers, if I can, as human beings of their time and place, the earlier ones westward-moving Americans, the later ones European converts gripped by the double promise of economic betterment and eternal life. Suffering, endurance, disciple, faith, brotherly and sisterly charity the qualities so thoroughly celebrated by Mormon writers, were surely well distributed among them, but theirs also was a normal amount of human cussedness, vengefulness, masochism, backbiting, violence, ignorance, selfishness, and gullibility…I shall try to present them in their terms and judge them in mine. That I do not accept the faith that possessed them does not mean I doubt their frequent devotion and heroism in its service. Especially their women. Their women were incredible.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail

“Texas is heaven for men and dogs, but hell for women and oxen. Men and dogs were able, within limits, to roam freely; women and oxen were obliged, within reason, to live under the yoke.”
― Bonnie Angelo, First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents

“Pioneers take all the arrows.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“The object of all who came to Oregon in early times was to avail themselves of the privilege of a donation claim, and my opinion to-day is that every man and woman fully earned and merited all they got, but we have a small class of very small people here now who have no good word for the old settler that so bravely met every danger and privation, and by hard toil acquired, and careful economy, saved the means to make them comfortable during the decline of life. These, however are degenerate scrubs, too cowardly to face the same dangers that our pioneer men and women did, and too lazy to perform an honest day’s work if it would procure them a homestead in paradise. They would want the day reduced to eight hours and board thrown in.”
― Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on Puget Sound

“The man who had the best stock of health and the most faith and pluck, was the most wealthy, for we were all capitalists in those days. Each one expected to help himself, and as a rule all went to work with energy to open up the country and make homes for themselves, and at the same time they were ever ready to help each other in case of need or misfortune, and I will presume to say that if the people now possessed more of the spirit that then actuated the “old moss backs,” as some reproachfully style the old settlers, we would hear less about a conflict between labor and capital, which in truth is largely a conflict between labor and laziness. We had no eight hour, nor even ten hour days then, and I never heard of any one striking, not even an Indian”
― Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on Puget Sound

“The attitude of Oregon pioneers toward the Indians was recorded by Father John Beeson, one of the early settlers. Of his fellows, most of whom were from Missouri, he wrote: ‘Among them it was customary to speak of the Indian man as a buck, the woman as a squaw, until at length, in the general acceptance of the terms, they ceased to recognize the rights of humanity in those to whom they were so applied. By a natural and easy transition, from being spoken of as brutes, they came to be thought of as game to be shot or vermin to be destroyed.’

Any white man found dead was assumed to have been murdered by Indians, and often his death was made an excuse for raiding the nearest Indian village and killing all the men, women, and children found there. In one instance an elderly white miner who had refused to participate in such raids was called on by a score of men and forced to join them. Father Beeson related, ‘After resting on the mountains, they shot him, cut off his head, leaving it on the limb of a tree, and divided his property among themselves.”
― Wayne Gard, Frontier Justice

“She collapsed on the floor in a fit of tears
and sobbed until no more came.
This is the end, then, she calculated.
She would sell and go back home where she belonged. Life
in Wisconsin had beaten them, and she surrendered with nothing but scars to show for it.”
― Jenny Knipfer, In a Grove of Maples

“I want to touch the places others can’t see
Defining the future and setting ideas on fire
When they question, I show them the golden key
Of a pioneer who walks on a revolutionary wire”
― Aida Mandic, A Relic From A Time of Heroes

“Quantum theory had the strangest genesis,” Ball says. “Its pioneers made it up as they went along. What else could they do?”
― Philip Ball, Beyond Weird

“Often the girls would be unhappy with the police uniform. ‘why should we wear the men’s uniform, Maam,? Why can’t we have something more comfortable, more suitable for us?”
It is true that the uniform is designed for a man. Yet, I feel that there should not be any difference in uniform because to me the uniform is the big equaliser. “the moment we start wearing a different uniform, others will perceive us differently,’ I would tell the girls. When you are breaking into a male bastion, you must first blend in, before standing out. I hope that one day there will be so many women IPS officers that they will stop being an aberration.”
― Manjari Jaruhar, Madam Sir: The Story of Bihar’s First Woman IPS Officer

“The great men and women of ancient times were dreamers in their own way. Pioneers, explorers, and cowboys lived with hopeful tomorrows and starry-eyed imaginings. They were lovers of the wind and tide, the romance of the deserts, mountains, and seas.
The thrill of the great unknown.
Despite their denials and insistence that there was nothing romantic about the way they lived, their actions spoke just the opposite. Dreams of new land, a new life, a better tomorrow. Dreams of a girl, somewhere beyond the hills, with a heart full of love she’d give to the wandering man.”
― LaKaysha Stenersen, Echoes of Mercy