Start Your Engine Quotes & Sayings

The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth-right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. — William Tecumseh Sherman

If start-up activity is the true engine of job creation in America, one thing is clear: our current educational system is acting as the brakes. Simply put, from kindergarten through undergraduate and grad school, you learn very few skills or attitudes that would ever help you start a business. — Michael Ellsberg

We need to enact fundamental tax reform. The weight and complexity of our 73,000-page tax code are crushing everyday Americans. We need to radically simplify the tax code so that we can re-start the real engine of growth in our economy. That means our tax code needs to go from 73,000 pages down to about three pages. — Carly Fiorina

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine. — Edmund Wilson

I start the engine and shoot a glance through the tinted window, figuring if anyone is still watching, they can no longer see past my silhouette. Gray seems to have been waiting for a movement like this. He's waving like a dork and swinging my long forgotten pink hoodie high in the air so I can see it.
He's yelling, "Bye Jess!" He flips my hoodie onto his shoulders and ties it around his neck until it looks like a ridiculous scarf - as though he means to wear it like that for a long time. — Anne Eliot

As growth-minded leaders, they start with a belief in human potential and development - both their own and other people's. Instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness, they use it as an engine of growth - for themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole. — Carol S. Dweck

Over time, one of this engine's most potent impacts is in prioritizing investments for customer-driven growth by shifting the annual planning process. Instead of starting with the silos, leaders start with the customers' lives, identify priorities, and then determine collectively the investments to improve them to earn the right to growth. Without alignment among your executive team to regularly review the customer journey that this engine affords, investments are not fully optimized. Tactical actions are budgeted and implemented by silo, but complete customer experiences that drive growth are not improved. Rinse and repeat. — Jeanne Bliss

Do you know what an inciting incident is?' Noah says as he turns off the engine.
I shake my head.
'It's the point at the start of a movie where something happens to the hero that changes their live forever. You've seen Harry Potter, right?'
I nod.
'Well, the inciting incident in that movie is when Hagrid tells Harry Potter he'll be a great wizard someday and gives him the invite to Hogwarts.'
'Oh right.'
Noah looks down in his lap, like he's embarassed. 'I think that's what you might be to me.'
'What? A wizard?'
'No! My inciting incident.'
I glance at him. In half-light of the car park, his cheekbones look even more chiselled than ever. 'What do you mean?' I ask, hardly daring to believe what I think he means.
'I mean, Ithink this might be the start of something.'
We sat in silence.
'I think you might be my inciting incident too,' I say with a small smile. — Zoe Sugg

The snow was still drifting from the sky when we stepped out into the parking lot. The Hellcat was covered with a fine layer of the white stuff because it'd been parked there for so long. Beside me, Rimmel shivered, and I felt like an ass because she'd been out in this cold half the day and then stood in the drafty tunnel and had to wait on me.
The engine was already purring; I'd hit the electronic start as soon as it came into sight. I pulled off my varsity jacket as we walked around to the passenger side, and I draped it around her shoulders.
"Pretty soon I'm gonna have your entire wardrobe." She smiled and pulled my coat farther around her.
"You can have whatever you want, baby. — Cambria Hebert

That was a frustrating race for me. I pushed as hard as possible at the start on the medium tyres whilst everyone around me was on the grippier soft compound rubber. Once I moved to the soft tyres I was able to set the race's then fastest lap so things looked good with our strategy. Unfortunately the engine anti-kill triggered when I came in to make my final pit stop which cost me a lot of time. It's frustrating as we should have finished strongly. My focus is now Barcelona where I've delivered very strongly in the past. — Pastor Maldonado

Yes, I am one of those people who feels that most of my work is adaptation of one sort or another. For me, it's a way to jump-start the engine. For example, some people use the technique of basing a character on a friend. They start writing with his or her voice, then at a certain point, the character takes off on his or her own. It probably no longer resembles the model, but it helped the author to get going. I find that's true of form, too. For every play I've written, I know what play I was trying to imitate. That helps me get going. — David Henry Hwang

The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them. — Peter Thiel

Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships - the one-day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of "school" to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 - we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. — John Taylor Gatto

It had never gotten old for him, flying. Never gone boring. Every engine start was a new adventure, guiding the spirit of a lovely machine back into life; every takeoff blending his spirit with its own to do what's never been done in history, to lift away from the ground and fly. — Richard Bach

My mind sort of works like a search engine. You ask me something, and I start seeing pictures. — Temple Grandin

Splutter, splutter. Yes - we're off - we're rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring - sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it! — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

That's why it's best not to start the engine on an open throttle from cold (unless the handbook recommends it): immediate revs from cold cause a lot of wear to oil-starved bearings. Starting with a closed throttle allows the oil time to circulate and warm, while the engine is idling, for those crucial first few seconds. — Peter Henshaw

Power is the engine of the world,and sex and money its oil and lubricants.God is at best the invocation before you start the engine-meaningless if you have no engine to start!God is a goli,a multi-flavoured pill,invented by those who have power,money and sex, to give to those who have none! Love is another great goli.Some days we too swallow these golis.They feel good,like a joint,a temporary high!But they are not the reality.The reality is power,money,sex! And yes,there's another goli-morality! — Tarun J. Tejpal

The only thing that preoccupies me is that France has broken down, and we need to start up the engine again - all the way. But not so as to run into a wall. — Jean-Marc Ayrault

When the road ahead seems impossible, start the engine — Benny Bellamacina

When Alex leaves a little later, Carlos steps forward. "Need help?"
I shake my head.
"Are you ever gonna talk to me again? Dammit, Kiara, enough with the silent treatment. I'd rather have you say your little two-word sentences than stop talkin' altogether. Hell, just flip
me off again."
I toss my backpack in the backseat and start the engine.
"Where are you goin'?" Carlos asks, stepping in front of my car.
I beep.
"I'm not movin'," he says.
My response is another beep. It's not an intimidating, deep beep like most cars, but it's the best my car can give.
He places both hands on the hood.
"Move," I say.
He moves all right. With pantherlike quickness, Carlos jumps through the open passenger window, feet first.
"You should get the door fixed," he says. — Simone Elkeles

Loving someone is easy. It's your car and all you have to do is start the engine, give her a little gas and point the thing wherever you want to go. But being loved is like being taken for a ride in someone else's car. Even if you think they'll be a good driver, you always have the innate fear they might do something wrong: in an instant you'll both be flying through the windshield toward imminent disaster. Being loved can be the most frightening thing of all. Because love means good-bye to control; and what happens if halfway or three-quarters of the way through the trip you decide you want to go back, or in a different direction, and you're only the codriver? — Jonathan Carroll

I do everything myself, from engine start to engine shutdown. In a war, I will face alone the missiles and the flak and the small-arms fire over the front lines. If I die, I will die alone. — Richard Bach

The real challenge is getting into the damned thing, and I believe that's why so many would-be writers with great ideas never actually pick-up the pen or start tapping away at the keys. All too often, it's like trying to start a car on a cold day. At first the motor doesn't even crank, it only groans. But if you keep at it (and the battery doesn't die), the engine starts...runs rough...and then smooths out. — Stephen King

A rowboat, without oars. An outboard motor. As you can sit there for years, forever, with that outboard motor, pulling again, and yet again, that rope, or cord, or wire, or whatever it is, and winding yet again, and each time, every single time, the motor, though it may give a cough or two, will fail to start, though if it starts, and when it starts, you are, at whatever speed you choose, within the engine's limits and the hazards of the course, well on your way, until it starts you are no nearer where you were going on the fifteenth try than on the first; the enterprise may last forever, and never yet quite begin. The fact seems to be, however, that unless some apparently unrelated event should intervene
a bullet, a heart attack, a cry from shore that dinner's ready, or company has come, or junior's run away
the engine will eventually start. In the meantime, though, while you have been intensely busy, it is difficult to account for how the time is spent. — Renata Adler

In order to run, an engine must have spark, fuel, and at least 60 psi of compression. One or more of these prerequisites is lacking if a cold engine refuses to start after three or four pulls on the starter cord. — Paul K. Dempsey

I made arrangements with Bitaki, a teammate on the soccer team I played with, to go fishing with his brothers, who typically worked the waters off Maiana, the nearest island south of Tarawa. When I mentioned to Sylvia that I was going, she said: "No, you're not." "And what do you mean by 'No, you're not'?" I determined right then that I would go out fishing every week. No, every day. I would become a professional fisherman. I would become sun-browned and sea-weathered. I would smell like fish. I would be a Salty Dog. "I mean," Sylvia said, "that when the engine dies and you start drifting, which will happen, because things like that do seem to happen to you, you will not survive two days. Your skin will fry, you will collapse from dehydration, and because you will be the most useless person on the boat, you will be regarded by the others as a potential food source." I didn't like the imagery here. — J. Maarten Troost

RHAPAW ran not on gasoline, but on the inexhaustible fuel of human hope. You would sit on the blisteringly hot vinyl seat and hope she would start, and then Ben would turn the key and the engine would turn over a couple times, like a fish on land making its last, meager, dying flops. And then you would hope harder, and the engine would turn over a couple more times. You hoped some more, and it would finally catch. — John Green

The Universe is a quantum computer, and over time, it is simply more likely that structure comes out of it than noise. That means rules, patterns. That means a game. But spend long enough poking at it, and you start to see the game engine, the labyrinth of the quantum circuit, wires looping around each other, forwards and backwards. — Hannu Rajaniemi

A steady recognition that the evils which prevent the fullness of moral development are precisely the elements which are also the source of the power that gives existence to whatever moral accomplishments we see about us may eventually lead us to a tolerance we grant to the internal-combustion engine: it is noisy and smelly, and occasionally, it refuses to start, but it is what gets us to wherever we get.
We must somehow learn to understand and so to tolerate- not destroy- the free society. — Michael Polanyi

In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box. — Adam Savage

The Jeep was parked at the beginning of the causeway when Denny got off the bus. She ignored it and started toward the island.
"Denise . . ."
Denny ignored Mr. Jones's call and kept on walking.
She heard the engine start, and soon the Jeep was rolling along beside her.
"Picked up your mail," said Mr. Jones. He handed some envelopes out the window. Denny grabbed them without a word.
"There's a letter there from some old coot named Jones," Mr. Jones said. "Looks like an apology."
Denny looked down and ruffled through the envelopes. "There is not," she said.
"No?" said Mr. Jones sheepishly. "Well, there should be. Guess he didn't get around to writing it. He feels real bad though. I know that for a fact."
Denny stopped and put her hand on her hip and stared at Mr. Jones. — Jackie French Koller

I was happy in the dream; but when I woke up it was with a feeling that I was falling apart, that I was cracking up from the inside and slowly falling to pieces. My heart was jumping and grating like a cold engine that doesn't want to start. My skin was crawling, and I couldn't manage a single clear thought. It was as if all my thoughts were crushed to bits just as they began to take shape. I didn't get much done that day. — Ninni Holmqvist

In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and observe what the counterculture is into and have it on the shelves in the mall stores right as it becomes popular. The counterculture, the indie fans, and the underground stars - they are the driving force behind capitalism. They are the engine. This brings us to the point: Competition among consumers is the turbine of capitalism. — David McRaney