Top 11 Bootstraps Quotes

Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps.

America always pivots between collective responsibility and the idea that the individual can pull himself up by his bootstraps.

I don’t want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it’s for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.

I don’t believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that’s the case, you ain’t self-made.

If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?

I’m actually loving the soundtrack to ‘The Secret Circle’ that our music supervisor Liza Richardson puts together, like Washed Out and Cults, but my favorite band is Bootstraps.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

People say, ‘Well, why don’t they get another job, why don’t they pick themselves up by their bootstraps?’ Well, the people that say that probably have the kind of jobs where they don’t work that hard, so maybe they could have another job.

Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.