Pick Your Battles Quotes & Sayings

His hard stare told me to pick my battles carefully. What he didn't realize was that maybe I'd been storing up past battles in my head for too long and soon all the battles were going to break through the surface and turn me into a maniac. — R.S. Grey

You have to pick your battles on set. — Claire Danes

There are certain battles that you pick. When they're not worth picking, they're laughable stories. — David Beckham

Know that there is nothing you can't aspire to do. Take offense. Bide your time. Pick your battles. Take revenge when you can - and never pull the ladder up after you. — Linda Hirshman

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. — Jonathan Kozol

I've been reading and researching various aspects of history - Dickens' London, Nelson's sea battles, Magellan's nautical explorations, the weapons and battles and key figures of the American Civil War - for most of my life. I pick up a book here or there or see a documentary or talk with an expert in the subject, and my curiosity about the one area of study and discovery always leads to another. — Gary Paulsen

Pick your friends like you pick your battles; wisely. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I tend to not have to handle things that are probably gonna end up being irrelevant, that aren't gonna have much to do with the film. I have probably a better understanding of really what does matter, when to pick my battles and when to kind of let them go. — Peter Berg

The thing that I do is that when I fail, I just keep quiet about it. I just let it go. It's done. I just go to the next thing. I don't complain, I don't go to - I pick my battles very, very judiciously, and I just assume that there's good in the heart of everybody. — James McBride

You've got to pick your battles, Pen, but then fight to the death for the ones that matter. — Tiffany Schmidt

You know, you pick and choose your battles. — Ryan Lochte

How to be Like RBG:
Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don't burn your bridges. Don't be afraid to take charge, think about what you want, then do the work, but then enjoy what makes you happy, bring along your crew, have a sense of humor.
-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Notorious RBG by
Irin Carmon — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

This isn't a courtroom, pal," I said to Nelson, "this is the gutter. No fancy robes, no platitudes engraved in marble, no brass railing dividing the sides. This is the streets and the alleys. this is the Chicago we really live in. Here justice isn't dispensed with a wooden gavel, it's taken with your bare hands. It may be Tubby's world, a part of it, but it's also August Jansen's world, and my world, and yours. Darrow's a great man but this work comes after the fact, after the real battles of life are fought. Lawyers and judges pick up the pieces after the dust settles. Their job is to make sense of what's happened, not make it happen. That occurs in the gutter where blood and bone and horse manure and coal dust and sweat and fear blend and roil. In the end you either have hope or sewage. It can go either way, but it goes on. — James Conroy

Truth be told, most of us are faking our way through life. We pick only those battles we are sure to win, only those adventures we are sure to handle, only those beauties we are sure to rescue. — John Eldredge

I think to be successful at anything you have to put in a hell of a lot of effort. Pick your battles. I picked music, put in a lot of effort, and it's worked. — Ed Sheeran

You've gotta pick your battles in this world... — John Green

I'm not a fighter. If there's something going on that I really feel strongly about, I'll certainly stand up but I pick my battles. — Analeigh Tipton

As a novelist, you have to pick your battles. You are tired. You have begun to experience the first ominous tinglings of carpal tunnel syndrome. You wake up in the middle of the night with both hands lying across your chest like a couple of plucked bird carcasses, dead of all sensation. — Lynn Coady

We all have to pick our battles. You've got to draw a line in the sand and stand firm. And it's this squishiness that's really the enemy, like, "Well, I don't know, it's kind of OK but I kind of feel guilty, and I kind of want a bran muffin, I don't know, and I'm wearing a vest; it's crocheted." Shut up. Just pick your battle and just stand there, and whatever you are going to do, own it. — Chicken John

When you're just writing, you can do anything with it. But with TV, you've gotta work within certain budget constraints, so you've got to pick and choose your battles. — Austin Butler

The woman thought a moment; her voice came up through her bandaged face afflicted with subterranean melodies: "I'm sharing the fate of the women of my time who challenged men to battle." "To your vast surprise it was just like all battles," he answered, adopting her formal diction. "Just like all battles." She thought this over. "You pick a set-up, or else win a Pyrrhic victory, or you're wrecked and ruined - you're a ghostly echo from a broken wall. — Anonymous

Heroines did not pick their own battles - the ones they knew they could win. On the contrary, they managed what they had to manage, and they did not lie to themselves about relying on others for help instead of accomplishing the thing alone. — Gordon Dahlquist

I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that a scrambled egg-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime."
"You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel," my mom said. "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we will stand behind you. — John Green

Pick your battles, and accept yourself for who you are. — Chrissie Wellington

As the knight of the quill never ventured into the fight, and only snuffed the battle afar, he knew nothing accurately of battles, but managed to pick up a few real or supposed incidents from the wounded and from stragglers. — Daniel H. Hill

I pick my feature film battles very carefully. They're going to be personal and they're going to take a lot of my energy. I'm not going to be some big production company and be Jerry Bruckheimer or something like that. It doesn't interest me. — James Cameron

I'm polite. I guess that's the dichotomy within me. I don't like to piss people off just for the sake of pissing them off. I pick my battles. — Lucinda Williams

I can't understand how people can have grown up in the eighties, amidst all this competitive spirit, gangster battles, hiphop - and still pretend that artists are 'colleagues' that should be bloody nice to each other. I mean that's like the 60's, not the 80's. I grew up with the idea of putting a cap in the ass of bad rhyming niggers. So that's what i did. And they all started frontin me, copycats and dinosaurs, but they have nothing on me. To me, the house generation of the 90's is excused - I never pick fights with these ecstasy heads. I just wanna bury all the dinosaurs that don't get ill. — Martijn Benders

I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing. — David Foster

I'll tell you something: my dad was a nuclear engineer and he was really bright, and I've always said that because of negotiating at such a young age with my dad, it was really such a gift because I could then negotiate with very difficult personalities - and not end up being the scapegoat. I learned to really pick and choose my battles. — Faith Prince

It's very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I'm like asking for money for a music video for every song - it's so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want - and I've always worked to make it all connect - for all of it to feel cohesive. — Melanie Martinez

Any issue and any problem, no matter what height you look at it from, no matter how much you extend past the first fractal, it's still a fractal of something that emanates from within your consciousness - from within the human consciousness. And it'll move on and manifest itself externally, and then those are what we pick up as societal ills. But all these battles we're fighting are internal. For me, it's reconciling hope with dread and trying to cut out some place in my mind where my heart can be protected a little bit. — El-P

Pick your battles. You don't have to show up to every arguement you're invited to. — Mandy Hale

We've all got to remember to pick our battles carefully, to be prepared to lose small ones, and to hold out for big ones. — Margaret Kennedy

You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box! — Fredrik Backman

Delarosa was trying to save the human race," said Mkele. "Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn't want to go along with her, but look at us: We're hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering lettering her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't."
"Yes," said Tovar, "but I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it. — Dan Wells

I pick and choose my battles, but I overthink everything because I have to think about everything. — Action Bronson