Quotes & Sayings About Excuses

Try more strategy and less force. Passion never wins any game, never mind what they say." He said something similar now: "Excuses don't win a game. You should try strategy. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The more you stop giving power to your excuses, the more you'll send power to your dreams. — Robin Sharma

To my way of thinking, the slavery issue is just an excuse to allow some people to do hateful things and feel righteous about it. — Joan Lowery Nixon

Whether I get adequate attention or not, people here do know the work I have been doing systematically and without compromise for over 40 years. I get tired of people making excuses for guys who don't continue the art because they can't make a living. — Bill Dixon

Deception wasn't Tricia's strongpoint. Not when she'd been seven and blamed Angelica for a vase she'd broken, nor when coming up with excuses to avoid dating high school jocks who couldn't spell, let alone comprehend, Sherlock Holmes. — Lorna Barrett

In middle school, my friends decided I was weird, and they didn't like my hair. They ditched me and talked behind my back, which is cool - I'm over it. [laughs] One time I called them and said, "Hey, do you want to go to the Berkshire Mall?" They all gave me excuses and said no. So I go to the mall with my mom, and don't you know, we run into all of them. Together. Shopping. My mom could see I was about to cry, so she said, "You know what? We're going to the King of Prussia mall," which was the mecca. — Taylor Swift

I overlooked some obvious problems, made excuses for others. — Nicholas Sparks

If fear is holding you back in life, you must attack it, Kate. Not make excuses about why you cannot attempt what you wish to do. That you can't because you're a woman. Especially you, given that your parents educated you as a son. — Gaelen Foley

It is impossible to need excuses when the focus of your life shifts from 'What's in it for me?' to 'How can I serve?' — Wayne Dyer

Rule #76: No excuses. Play like a champion! — Vince Vaughn

Do not make excuses, whether it's your fault or not. — George S. Patton Jr.

We'd both been stripped of all the evasiveness, all the lies, everything we'd ever kept from each other. Layer by layer, we had given up our defenses and our excuses and our demands for whys and hows, and what was left were two broken beings. Clinging to one last shred of hope. Tethered to each other. — Brodi Ashton

Together we can remind them there are no excuses to sit back and watch the cycle of extreme poverty continue. — Auliq Ice

Well people are just one species too, aren't they. And it's never stopped them fighting with each other; all the same species and think of all the excuses for war they've used! It hasn't had to be about space to live in, it's been about power, prestige, influence, fame, resources and I don't know what else! — Karel Capek

Live with no excuses and love with no regrets. — Montel Williams

Excuses are used to justify leaving the scene of truth without changing. — Orrin Woodward

We clearly see in God's Word that anything He tells us to do, He will give us the ability to do it. But do we really believe it? Do we want to believe it? It's easier to come up with excuses for why we can't do things that are hard or that we really don't want to do. — Joyce Meyer

When Jesus was born, he was already the son of God. I was the daughter of someone who ran away, a big disgrace. And when Jesus suffered, everyone worshipped him. Nobody worshipped me for living with Wen Fu. I was like that wife of Kitchen God. Nobody worshipped me either. He got all the excuses. He got all the credit. She was forgotten. — Amy Tan

Possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question
simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose — Oscar Wilde

Core passions and aspirations should be consistent and in sync. — Lorii Myers

The thing is that I am a member of that sad, ever-dwindling minority ... the child of an unbroken home. I have carried this albatross since the age of eleven, when I started at grammar school. Not a day would pass without somebody I knew turning out to be adopted or illegitimate, or to have mothers who were about to hare off with some bloke, or to have dead fathers and shabby stepfathers. What busy lives they led. How I envied their excuses for introspection, their ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty. — Martin Amis

Everyone isn't logical. Everything doesn't make sense in the end. Sometimes you have to forget about explanations or excuses and leave people and places behind, because otherwise they will drag you straight down. — Tammara Webber

Excuses are like backsides. Everybody's got one, and they all stink. — Becky Monson

However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance - so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature. — Graham Greene

When your reasons to move forward outweigh your excuses for staying put, you will move forward. — Ralph Marston

Tackling the environment should not be a licence to lecture people, because they have no excuse not to exercise, or eat their fruit and vegetables. Nannying - at least among adults - is likely to be counterproductive. Providing information is empowering; lecturing people is not. So, no excuses, no nannying. — Andrew Lansley

That was magic for you, right? The thing about magic, the real kind: it didn't make excuses, and it was never funny. — Lev Grossman

Excuses are the cradle ... that Satan rocks men off to sleep in. — Dwight L. Moody

Don't let yourself make excuses for not doing the things you want to do. — Sam Altman

The hypocrite looks for faults; the believer looks for excuses. — Al-Ghazali

Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it. — Gary Cox

But listen to me
there are times in life when those kinds of excuses don't cut it anymore. Situations when nobody cares whether you're suited for the task at hand or not. — Haruki Murakami

Work hard and never make excuses. — Master P

It is easier to make excuses about our circumstances than actually do anything about them. — Jeffrey Fry

Peacefully ensconced in a small house on the outskirts of somewhere or other, enjoying a tranquillity in which I won't write the works I don't write now, and to keep on not writing them I'll come up with even better excuses than the ones I use today to elude myself. — Fernando Pessoa

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. — Erica Jong

It is easier to move from failure to success in from excuses to success. — John C. Maxwell

The only dating advice I have to offer is: Expect the guys in your life to be kind and respectful. Don't make excuses for garbagey behavior-'Oh, that's just what guys are like.' It isn't true. Expect them to be good, treat them like they're good. And if they're garbagey, move on. Don't let your world get cluttered up with people who think they have some gender-based right to be awful. — Rainbow Rowell

Like most of us, Joe Biden has had moments when he's led the league in mistakes or verbal gaffes. The difference is his were on a public stage where explanations are almost always made out by pundits to be excuses. — Mike Barnicle

Becoming limitless involves mental agility; the ability to quickly grasp and incorporate new ideas and concepts with confidence. — Lorii Myers

What's happened now, in this new era of settlements and nonprosecutions, is that the state has formally surrendered to its own excuses. It has decided just to punt from the start and take the money, which doesn't become really wrong until it turns around the next day and decides to double down on the less-defended, flooring it all the way to trial against a welfare mom or some joker who sold a brick of dope in the projects. Repeat the same process a few million times, and that's how the jails in America get the population they have. Even if every single person they sent to jail were guilty, the system would still be an epic fail - it's the jurisprudential version of Pravda, where the facts in the paper might have all been true on any given day, but the lie was all in what was not said. — Matt Taibbi

One compensation of old age is that it excuses you from picnics. — William Feather

Excuses fall silent behind self-control, focus, and direction. — Lorii Myers

Nothing is a violent as football and I bet you like. Just say you don't like it, or can't identify, don't come up with excuses like "It's too violent" while you wear some team's NFL jersey. — Michael Wilbon

When your purpose and passion are in alignment, your work becomes your calling, your life becomes your dream, and your mindset becomes 20/20 in clarity. — Farshad Asl

It was easier to make excuses, to look for reasons and flaws, than to just admit the simple truth. — Romina Russell

I suggest that you become obsessed about the things you want; otherwise, you are going to spend a lifetime being obsessed with making up excuses as to why you didn't get the life you wanted. — Grant Cardone

excuses are just fears. Handle the fears, and you'll handle the excuses. — Mona Patel

When the rains make your feathers wet, don't sit and cry and don't wait for your wet feathers to get dry before you start to fly; start flying and your wet feathers will start drying! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

An excuse will not wake up early — Johnnie Dent Jr.

That is a list of the Territories that yielded to Ebon Askavi. They now stand within the shadow of the Keep. They are mine. Anyone who tries to settle in my Territory without my consent will be dealt with. Anyone who harms any of my people will be executed. There will be no excuses and no exceptions. I will say it simply so that the members of this Council and the intruders who thought to take land they had no right to claim can never say they misunderstood." Jaenelle's lips curled into a snarl. "STAY OUT OF MY TERRITORY! — Anne Bishop

You can give in to the failure messages and be a bitter deadbeat of excuses. Or you can choose to be happy and positive and excited about life. — Arthur L. Williams Jr.

Everyone has the ability to accomplish unique feats, everyone. You choose this. Become someone great in one other life. Forget about failing to many. Who cares? Doesn't matter when you start or finish, just start, no deviations, no excuses. — Tom Platz

The value of taking risks through all stages of life is constant ... it's the excuses that change. — Rik Leaf

People aspire, learn, and grow when they are ready to commit to the process. — Lorii Myers

This is certainly one of the best ways to ensure failure. Make excuses, don't take action! — Abhishek Ratna

You can think up a million excuses to quit, and still not have an actual reason! Why waste all that brain power? — A.M. Sawyer

As you grow into a fine young woman, try not to make excuses. If you know the bottom's safe - jump. If you know it's returned - love. If you really want it - fairly take it. If you run, do it 'til your lungs burn. Laugh until your cheeks ache. And forgive, as you'll always want to be forgiven. I didn't say forget, and certainly your spirit won't allow you to be a doormat, but forgive. Ask yourself always, if they die tonight.. was I really that mad? The answer will almost always be no. So act accordingly. — S.E. Hall

It's no fun to lose, ... We haven't lost in a while and now we get to remember what it feels like. Everybody wants to be undefeated and that's what we wanted. There are no excuses. — Mark Richt

Only stupidity excuses ignorance. That — Nalini Singh

Their dark skin, their gender, their economic status--none of those were acceptable excuses for not giving the fullest rein to their imaginations and ambitions. — Margot Lee Shetterly

There is no excuse for falling into delusion, which is so contrary to the Word of God. — Dave Hunt

August is a gentle reminder for not doing a single thing from your new year resolution for seven months and not doing it for next five. — Crestless Wave

It's really, really easy to make excuses as to why we can't go to the gym. If you can find time to sit in front of the TV for 45 minutes, you can find time to work out. — Jill Wagner

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian. — John Updike

Because if you don't accept excuses, pretty soon people stop giving them, and they start looking for solutions. And that is a critical issue when it comes to success. — Ben Carson

The last thing we can afford right now is to make excuses. We're inexperienced at some spots, that's the way it is. We have injuries, so does everyone, that's the way it is. — Dave Pietramala

The sleepy like to make excuses. — Benedict Of Nursia

What if you let go of your excuses? — Paula Heller Garland

That Dr. Morrissey had always said that we found excuses to put off doing something that would take our minds off our worries. It was as if we didn't want to lose the luxury of worrying. — Maeve Binchy

Writers write. Everyone else makes excuses. — Jack M. Bickham

I don't accept excuses, only solutions. — Jon Taffer

If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am, He would have given me better excuses. — Robert Breault

When people say they're too busy, ask them If they'll have time to die, and see If dead's gonna give a damn. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The stark racial differences in crime rates undoubtedly impact black-white relations in America. So long as they persist, young black men will make people nervous. Discussions about the problem can be useful if they are honest, which is rare. Liberals don't help matters by making excuses for counterproductive behavior. Nor does the media by shying away from reporting the truth. — Jason L. Riley

When people violate your values, they have excuses for doing so. For instance, they may misconceive your quest for responsiveness as being annoying... — Assegid Habtewold

Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights.
But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora.
To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn't complain.
What's your excuse? — Vera Nazarian

I'm not making any excuses. I got my butt kicked in certain games. — David Wells

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

It never ceases to amaze me how hard kneeling is - the joints complaining and my rational mind telling me that I'm too old and that God can hear my prayers from the comfort of my chair. Someday my knees may not let me up. Or I'll catch my death from the draft along the floor. The excuses are valid.
Yet there is something amazing about kneeling, the humility and greatness of need that well up within me as I find my place there. It is my way to pray. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

Excuses are a list of self imposed obstacles that prevent you from having a better life. — Tony Horton

It's easy to give God a list of excuses for not feeling worthy or as capable as someone else, in our service to him. The problem is that God doesn't call those who are unprepared or incapable. He calls those who have the talent and ability to serve. He has it all planned out for us. Our challenge is to accept his calling and move out in faith believing in his promises of help and support. — Diane Goold

What a pity it is that by such superfluous unrealities he should furnish the public with excuses to evade the overwhelming realism of his moral theology! — Jocelyn Gibb

Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on to the oppressed. — Lundy Bancroft

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie - no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states. Use your body as a tool to snap yourself into a place of sheer will, determination, and commitment. Face your challenges head on with the core belief that problems are just speed bumps on the road to your dreams. And from that place, when you take massive action - with an effective and proven strategy - you will rewrite your history. — Anthony Robbins

The American people, Neil, are sick and tired of excuses. They are sick and tired of the blame game. And they're sick and tired of the deception coming from this president and this administration. This is why I believe that I am doing so well in the polls. — Herman Cain

no excuses, no blame, and no explanations. — Henry Cloud

It takes a lot to look at things the way they are, the mind warns of something while the heart still makes the excuses. — Mansi Soni

Start making excuses and there's no end to it. I can't live that kind of life. — Haruki Murakami

Everyone who is taken by death asks for more time, while everyone who still has time makes excuses for procrastination. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

A great man always knows better than to explain unless an explanation is demanded. To rush into explanations and excuses is always a sign of weakness. — Agatha Christie

When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward.
When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is
smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind. — Veronica Roth

Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers. Self-organization — Donella H. Meadows

I don't know if anybody thinks of themselves as bad. We all have excuses. — Carol Plum-Ucci

The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime. — Richard Rohr

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. — Julia Child

I learned that good leaders don't make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win. — Jocko Willink

If you're holding on to an offense, then you haven't forgiven the person who hurt you. Unforgiveness finds excuses to talk about what people have done to us, and we'll tell anyone who will listen. There's a difference between sharing your testimony to help someone and talking about what's been done to you because you are angry about it. — Joyce Meyer