Quotes & Sayings About Making Excuses

As long as there are people in education making excuses for failure, cursing future generations with a culture of low expectations, denying children access to the best that has been thought and written, because Nemo and the Mister Men are more relevant, the battle needs to be joined. — Michael Gove

Make time, not excuses. — Grant Cardone

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

Usually, making excuses is just something we can get away with, rather than challenging or changing ourselves. If you want to change and you want your life to work at a level you've never had before, then take responsibility for it. — Wayne Dyer

Quitting is not giving up, it's choosing to focus your attention on something more important. Quitting is not losing confidence, it's realizing that there are more valuable ways you can spend your time. Quitting is not making excuses, it's learning to be more productive, efficient and effective instead. Quitting is letting go of things (or people) that are sucking the life out of you so you can do more things that will bring you strength. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

When you're good at making excuses, it's hard to excel at anything else. — John Landis Mason

Here we go again, a government which is making yet more excuses for yet more failure when it comes to getting our budgetary situation right. — Tony Abbott

We will never accomplish what God wants for our lives unless we stop making excuses for ourselves and pampering our flesh. When we get into seemingly impossible situations, we have to remember - it's not about us. — Monica Johnson

It is because the critics are not detached that they do not see this detachment; it is because they are not looking at things in a dry light that they cannot see the difference between black and white. It is because they are in a particular mood of reaction and revolt that they have a motive for making out that all the white is dirty grey and the black not so black as it is painted. I do not say there are not human excuses for their revolt; I do not say it is not in some ways sympathetic; what I say is that it is not in any way scientific. An iconoclast may be indignant; an iconoclast may be justly indignant; but an iconoclast is not impartial. And it is stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope? — G.K. Chesterton

I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else. — Benjamin Franklin

If you're making too many excuses for someone, agonising over them in a way which takes up all your waking thoughts and feel so nervous around them you could be sick, then they are probably the wrong person. — Marina And The Diamonds

There is a difference between admitting and confessing. Admitting involves softening, making excuses for things that cannot be excused; confessing just names the crimes at its full severity. — Veronica Roth

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. — George Washington Carver

Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses. — George Washington Carver

We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder ... as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us
the recognition of something we never knew was there ... — Alberto Manguel

Don't succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible. — Vince Lombardi

How to make choices that work for you: 1) You are no longer a victim; you are a choice maker! Start seeing yourself that way and take responsibility for the choices you are making from here on out. If you want to lose weight, stop eating unhealthy food. If you are unhappy, figure out what choices you are making that are contributing to your unhappiness. There are no excuses here; if you don't like what's happening, fix it. If you don't want to fix it, then don't complain about it! 2) Make — Jennifer O'Neill

You know, they say when someone keeps making excuses to say your name it means they like you. — Kiersten White

Making excuses and not trying because I was scared were my go-to reactions. Nothing was going to change in my life unless I did something about it. — Erin Willett

Not managing your time and making excuses are two bad habits. Don't put them both together by claiming you 'don't have the time'. — Bo Bennett

Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque ... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this. — Jerry Saltz

Although consciousness is a patchwork of competing and often contradictory tendencies, the left brain ignores inconsistencies and papers over obvious gaps in order to give us a smooth sense of a single "I." In other words, the left brain is constantly making excuses, some of them harebrained and preposterous, to make sense of the world. It is constantly asking "Why?" and dreaming up excuses even if the question has no answer. — Michio Kaku

It is time to stop making excuses. We need an enriched approach to doing economic research, one that acknowledges the existence and relevance of Humans. — Richard H. Thaler

If I'd known things would end this way, we could have gone and done all that stuff instead of making excuses about my job, about how your mother couldn't spare the time, — Banana Yoshimoto

Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it. — Ann Brashares

Leadership - leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses. — Mitt Romney

People keep making excuses, that's why everthing happens for a reason. — Roy Saputra

One moment you see that you aren't so Original... people leave you... people start ignoring you... people start making excuses. — Deyth Banger

[Adulthood:] It's when you stop doing the stuff you have to make excuses for and when you stop making excuses for the stuff you have to do. — Marilyn Vos Savant

99% of failures comes from those who have a habit of making up excuses. — George Washington Carver

I don't think I really accepted my power as a woman until I realized that no was a complete sentence. When I stopped making excuses for saying it and began creating boundaries in my life, I knew real power. — Leeza Gibbons

When you work for somebody who is very technical, and understands and has creative solutions to your problems, it spurs you along and stops you making excuses for things. And I found that very useful. — David Perry

Commit to stop making excuses. When we make excuses, we lie to ourselves and continue bad habits. — Joyce Meyer

Quit making excuses. What we're really talking about here is commitment. Until you make a commitment to your dream, it's not a commitment at all. It's just another fantasy. And fantasies don't come true because they're not real, we're not committed to them. When we make commitments, they become dreams. And dreams are very real. — Rudy Ruettiger

For my entire life, I had oscillated between fear at my worst moments and a sense of safety and stability at my best. I was either being chased by the bad terminator or protected by the good one. But I had never felt empowered - never believed that I had the ability and the responsibility to care for those I loved. Mamaw could preach about responsibility and hard work, about making something of myself and not making excuses. No pep talk or speech could show me how it felt to transition from seeking shelter to providing it. I had to learn that for myself, and once I did, there was no going back. Mamaw's — J.D. Vance

I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a 'blue chip' Irish banking sector. — Sean Quinn

Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses. — Carol S. Dweck

Excuses sound best to the person that's making 'em up! — Tyrese Gibson

Making excuses instead of putting yourself and your dreams first only leads to a life of mediocrity and regret. And you don't deserve that, nobody does. But to stop the excuses it's going to take getting hard-core and figuring out exactly what you want. So push yourself to ignore all those excuses that pop into your head, and accept the truth that you are the master of your ship, the author of your life, and that your adventure is only as awesome as you can imagine it. Once you stop talking yourself out of doing what you really want, you'll find the shiniest version of you and experience a sense of accomplishment that rivals any accolades. — Alexis Jones

It's not the circumstances of your life that are preventing you from being happy; it's the excuses you're making not to be happy! Like attracts like, happiness attracts happiness, so just drop the excuses - drop every one of them - and be happy now! — Rhonda Byrne

When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses. — Wayne W. Dyer

We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of "The African Americans." — Henry Louis Gates

The fact is that I'm interested in getting on with my job of holding the Government to account and I think that the Government should get on with the job of effectively running the country and not making excuses for poor performance, not lowering expectations. Their job is to deliver on their election commitments. — Tony Abbott

Stop messin' around. Be the person you are meant to be. Remember that somewhere someone is rooting for you to succeed! Don't worry about the others. They're too busy riding coattails, being unhappy and making excuses as to why they gave up on their own dreams. You've got this. And if today you were wondering if you could do it? Consider this your pep talk. — Dawn Garcia

Please, put aside all excuses and ask yourself, "What should I be doing?" Yes, you alone can make a difference. The question is, will you? — Charles R. Swindoll

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill. — Condoleezza Rice

Most come up with New Year Resolutions...
Others are busy making Excuses...
A few are following through with Execution...
Design your New Year Intentionally. — Farshad Asl

They meet in the girls' bathroom. The last time they were forced to meet in a place like this, they took separate, isolated stalls. Now they share one. They hold each other in the tight space, making no excuses for it. There's no time left in their lives for games, or for awkwardness, or for pretending they don't care about each others, and so they kiss as if they've done it forever. As if it is as crucial as the need for oxygen. — Neal Shusterman

Martha Quest, who thought of herself as so adventurous, so free and unbounded - the fact was, even the idea of picking up a telephone and making herself known to a new person troubled her: she made excuses, she could not do it. — Doris Lessing

People only see what they want to see, and they only do whatever they want to do. You can make excuses for them all you like, but you'll always be making excuses for them, — Jade West

Until YOU get enough of what you're going through, no matter what advice a person gives you, you'll continue to go through the same thing. When you get the courage to stop making excuses for them, and stop excusing their behavior, then you'll be able to break free from that unhealthy situation. You've got to be willing to face YOUR truth in order to move on and be at peace. You matter! — Stephanie Lahart

We are about getting things done. We are not about the blame game. We are not about making excuses. — Tony Abbott

When your life is nearly over, you will regret it if you look back and recall too many nights when you made excuses instead of making love. — Barbara "Cutie" Cooper

First, we parents have to back up school authority and quit making excuses for our kids when they misbehave. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Maybe it's my own fault. Maybe I led you to believe it was easy when it wasn't. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think that every shot I took was a game winner. That my game was built on flash, and not fire. Maybe it's my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe you're just making excuses. — Michael Jordan

You have more potential in you than you can possibly use up in an entire lifetime or even in several lifetimes. Stop making up excuses and believing in limits. — David Cameron Gikandi

I shook my head. "Don't bother making excuses," I said. "Don't waste your time because, the fact is, I am the Duff. But so is everyone else in the world. We're all fucking Duffs."
"I'm not the Duff," Wesley said confidently.
"That's because you don't have friends."
"Oh. Right. — Kody Keplinger

I'm not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished. — Hillary Clinton

A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent. — Jonathan Safran Foer

You'll never learn anything or impress anyone by making excuses and diverting blame. — Frank Sonnenberg

You need to stop making excuses for your mistakes, as long as you are complaining about what you did wrong you will never get started on doing it right — Carlton Young

I think it's time for the Prime Minister to stop making excuses and to start governing. — Tony Abbott

Put your energies into creativity. Forget about anger as a problem, ignore it. Channelise your energy towards more creativity. Pour yourself into something that you love. Rather than making anger your problem, let creativity be your object of meditation. Shift from anger to creativity and immediately you will see a great change arising in you. And tomorrow the same things will not feel like excuses for being angry because now energy is moving, is channelised, is being sublimated, is enjoying itself, its dance. Who cares about small things? — Rajneesh

Him aloof or cold, only shy and on occasion melancholy. Some felt that perhaps in his past lay a tragedy with which he had never been able to make his peace, that the only companion with which he felt comfortable was sorrow. Amalia was somewhat distressed. "Somebody should have cleaned up these dishes and emptied the refrigerator before things in it spoiled. Leaving it like this ... it's just wrong." I shrugged. "Maybe no one cared about him." My sister seemed to care about everyone, even making excuses for our parents at their — Dean Koontz

When the fear of failure triumphs over the repugnance of mediocrity, we must resign ourselves to the status quo. Every change, every opportunity to do something different will send us running to hide beneath a cover of excuses and complacency. Those few courageous souls who delve into the lands where they risk failure, will be soundly ridiculed. They will be condemned not because they dream, but rather for making their dreams real and destroying the illusion that all that can be thought has been thought, all that can be done has been done, and all that can be felt has been felt. In their enthusiastic insolence, they see life filled with infinite possibilities and they know they must chart their own course, even if they must go alone. — D.A. Blankinship

You can make money or you can make excuses. Your choice. — John Addison

Your past doesn't define you. Only your present and your future. If your life is screwed up, stop making excuses. What are you going to do about it today? — Ingrid Weir

He who is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else. — Benjamin Franklin

I think that it's high time that the Prime Minister stopped making excuses for bad policy and started listening to the forgotten families of Australia. — Tony Abbott

Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses and start making changes. — Roy Bennett

We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress. — David Frum

Leadership is taking responsibility while others are making excuses. — John C. Maxwell

Success involves avoiding the lure of making excuses. — Jeffrey Fry

He is convinced that the people who might mean something to him will always misjudge him and pass him by. He is not so much afraid of loneliness as he is of accepting cheap substitutes; of making excuses to himself for a teacher who flatters him, of waking up some morning to find himself admiring a girl merely because she is accessible. He has a dread of easy compromises, and he is terribly afraid of being fooled. — Willa Cather

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

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

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

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

My breasts are small," I said in a whisper, but immediately despised myself because it sounded as if I were making excuses, excuse me if I can't offer you big tits, I hope you enjoy yourself anyway, idiot that I was, if he liked little tits, good; if not, the worse for him, it was all free, a stroke of luck had fallen to this shit, the best birthday present he could hope for, at his age. — Elena Ferrante

Do you find yourself making excuses when you do not perform? Shed the excuses and face reality. Excuses are the loser's way out. They will mar your credibility and stunt your personal growth. — Alexander Pope

The alternative to this truce-marriage is to determine to see your own selfishness as a fundamental problem and to treat it more seriously than you do your spouse's. Why? Only you have complete access to your own selfishness, and only you have complete responsibility for it. So each spouse should take the Bible seriously, should make a commitment to "give yourself up." You should stop making excuses for selfishness, you should begin to root it out as it's revealed to you, and you should do so regardless of what your spouse is doing. If two spouses each say, "I'm going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in the marriage," you have the prospect of a truly great marriage. — Timothy J. Keller

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful. — Ben Horowitz

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

With all due respect, Ms. Embers," Mr. Bradshaw started, and I couldn't help but notice how he emphasized the word due, "I'm quite disappointed. One of the very first things I taught you was not to overdo it. Try the obvious before using the complex techniques one might expect a spy to use. When lying or making excuses, make it simple. Ms. Embers: do not make up an elaborate tale involving a porcupine, hairspray, and/or a treasure chest. Say, 'I tripped and cut it on a nail on the sidewalk.' Don't make yourself suspicious. — Embee

Stop making excuses and just do it! — Robin S. Sharma

When you stop making excuses and you work hard and go hard you will be very successful. — DJ Khaled

You see, during my pilgrimage it became increasingly apparent that I wasn't happy and I had to do something about it - stop making excuses. I realized that you don't have to jump through a series of complicated hoops to achieve a goal. You can just look at a mountain and get a connection with God; you don't have to understand the mountain to feel that. — Paulo Coelho

Making excuses as to why you cannot do something based on what you don't have, or what hasn't happened yet, only serves to hold you back even further. WAIT FOR NOTHING & NO-ONE. — Miya Yamanouchi

What if i fail?" ... the more profound question is, "what if i never fail?" "Stop making excuses and start managing your fear. — David Meerman Scott

Don't make excuses; accept responsibility.
You must take responsibility for how you respond to everything that happens in your life; whether you cause it or not. Making excuses is a weak response! — Michelle Word Hollis

If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner, to call you when they land, you can't afford to be with them. It's not worth the price, even though, just like the Tiffany catalog, no one tells you what the price is. You set it yourself, and if you're lucky it's reasonable. You have a sense of when you're about to go bankrupt. Your own sense of self-worth takes the wheel and says, Enough of this shit. Stop making excuses. No one's that busy at work. No one's allergic to whipped cream. There are too cell phones in Sweden. But most people don't get lucky. They get human. They get crushes. This means you irrationally mortgage what little logic you own to pay for this one thing. This relationship is an impulse buy, and you'll figure out if it's worth it later. — Sloane Crosley

Stop making excuses and start making history. — A.D. Posey

You can make money and you can make excuses, but you can never make money out of excuses — Bill Gates

Don't make excuses! Make changes! — Tony Gaskins

(The Song Remains The Same) is not a great film, but there's no point in making excuses. It's just a reasonably honest statement of where we were at that particular time. It's very difficult for me to watch it now, but I'd like to see it in a year's time just to see how it stands up. — Jimmy Page

The best meetings get real work done. When your people learn that your meetings actually accomplish something, they will stop making excuses to be elsewhere. — Larry Constantine

People who achieve great things are people who make choices. Far too many people today let life dictate their future instead of the other way around. Choices are hard - that's why so few actually make them. But as the saying goes - not to make a choice is to make a choice. When it comes to choices, The question is - what choices will you make today? The world doesn't care about your problems, or what's holding you back. They don't care about your past failures, or any other obstacles you face. Stop making excuses and start making choices. — Phil Cooke

The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy. — Michael Bloomberg

Never reduce a target. Instead, increase actions. When you start rethinking your targets, making up excuses, and letting yourself off the hook, you are giving up on your dreams! — Grant Cardone

Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. — Rolf Potts