Trying To Make It Better Quotes & Sayings

I always love when everybody else is really bringing their game, because it's only going to make the movie better; it just makes you work harder and they work harder and everybody is trying to get their little bit in. It's competitive in a constructive way. — Jennifer Lopez

They wanted a list of symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, palpitations. You could not say, it is a different life trying to nudge this one aside. I am meant to be living that different life. Who would understand that, if she could make no better sense of understanding it herself? — Jean Thompson

Make excellent mistakes.
Too many people spend their time avoiding mistakes. They're so concerned about being wrong, about messing up, that they never try anything
which means they never do anything. Their focus is avoiding failure. But that's actually a crummy way to achieve success. The most successful people spectacular mistakes
huge, honking screwups! why? They're trying to do something big, but each time they make a mistake, they get a little better and move a little closer to excellence.
Making mistakes seems risky. It is/ But it's more risky not to.
I'm not talking about random, stupid, thoughtless blunders, though. I'm talking about good mistakes.
Mistakes come from having high aspirations, from trying to do something nobody else has done. — Daniel H. Pink

I have a problem with writer/directors, personal. I can't work well with both of them on the set, if both of them are giving instructions. Writers tend to be in love with what they wrote. You can't always translate the words into the meaning, sometimes the meaning is better served without the words, difficult to make a writer to try to understand that. It gets, sometimes, tense. — Morgan Freeman

No, there are no long stages of preparation through which you must pass; all things are now ready; there is nothing to hinder you from becoming a Christian this very hour. And, if any of you have been trying to make yourself better until you are weary and discouraged in the work, all you have to do is to put it into stronger hands. — Washington Gladden

Why, with all this good intention, does it still feel so muddy when we talk about culture, what it is, and how to make it better? It's because we're trying to bring personal growth and spiritual ideas into the workplace without first changing the underlying agreement that governs it. The — Jonathan Raymond

Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself. — Gail Carson Levine

And if I have anything else to say to you it is this: do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. His life is full of troubles and sadness and falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Because that's what it is, boy, it's a fight, or it'd better be. Because if there's something in me that's trying to kill me, maybe I can't get rid of it, but I don't have to make it welcome, and I'm sure not going to pretend it ain't there. — Cruce Stark

The hardest thing on 'Palo Alto' was letting go because I kept working on it, trying to make it better. — Gia Coppola

There's no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It's better than just accepting the broken. — Sarah Dessen

We weren't trying to strike it rich with Firefox. It's open source and it's free. We weren't trying to take over the world; we had kind of modest goals, and it was OK if it failed. We were a lot freer to make risky decisions. If you can afford to do things that way, it's just so much better. You're not thinking about venture capitalists or marketing or sales. Just product and users, all day every day. — Blake Ross

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes. — Charles Stross

I don't think anybody's had the confidence that we'd ever be able to make a dent in homelessness. We've just come to accept that we manage homelessness, that we try to make it less bad, but we never make it better. — John Carlos Frey

We educated people make a great display of humility when we meet, trying to get the better of each other in unimportance. It is usually only a formality, of course, a polite mask for our feelings of superiority. — John Spurling

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better. — Robert Rodriguez

Everybody who plays top-level sport, whether it's golf or football, or whatever, needs to get into 'The Zone' ... For me personally, on the morning of a round, preparation is always about getting into the zone. The less I communicate with other people, the better. I'm trying to rehearse in my mind what I am working on in my game: going through my swing keys, going through my putting keys. When I get to the course I get the pin positions for the day and I'll analyze those. I'll make a strategy for the golf course and look how I'm going to play it — Paul McGinley

Stop trying to make me feel better," Sophia ordered. "It won't work. I'm determined to be angry and guilty about this for at least another two days, and then again when I'm punching your corpse. — Alexandra Bracken

The bottom line, in the professional level, no matter where you go, there's going to be competition. That's what it is. At the end of the day, you're trying to put team first and make each other better. — Scott Tolzien

A good writer should be able to communicate to the reader, 'I know your life. I know what you have truly experienced. It's not right or wrong. It's survival. It's making mistakes, and trying to redeem yourself. It's imperfections, and trying to make yourself better. It's outrages, and crimes, and insults, which often are not righted, which you have to fix yourself, in your own mind, in your own heart, so that you are not poisoned'. — Sergio Troncoso

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt. — Jim Butcher

Whatever our dreams are, we can make them happen. Some dreams may seem impossible, but they are not, in my belief. How can we know that it cannot and will not happen without even trying? It is always better to have tried than not to have tried at all. — Kcat Yarza

Responding to bereavement by trying to make a difference is certainly both understandable and admirable, but it doesn't give you good reason to raise money for one specific cause of death rather than any other. If that person had died in different circumstances it would have been no less tragic. What we care about when we lose someone close to us is that they suffered or died, not that they died from a specific cause. By all means, the sadness we feel at the loss of a loved one should be harnessed in order to make the world a better place. But we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives per se, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair on those we could have helped more. — William MacAskill

Maybe it's wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people.
[as quoted in "Brain Gain" by Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 4/27/09 issue] — Paul McHugh

Were only trying to help, but you need to punish them. In a strange way, it will make them feel better. That's the way of society, you make a mistake, make restitution, learn from it, and move on. If there's no restitution, there's no learning. No consequences equals spoiled brats. — Katie Graykowski

The reason they outperformed her was that they accepted each new "product" without trying to understand it. They got behind the new pitch wholeheartedly, even when it was risible and/or made no sense, and then, if a prospective customer had trouble understanding the "product," they didn't vocally agree that it sure was difficult to understand, didn't make a good-faith effort to explain the complicated reasoning behind it, but simply kept hammering on the written pitch. And clearly this was the path to success, and it was all a double disillusionment to Pip, who not only felt actively punished for using her brain but was presented every month with fresh evidence that Bay Area consumers on average responded better to a rote and semi-nonsensical pitch than to a well-meaning saleswoman trying to help them understand the offer. — Jonathan Franzen

MOST CITIES ARE designed on grids that fill them with hard angles. Not Amsterdam, which has a softness about it imparted by the watery curves of the 16th-century canals that fan out through the city. Though its gabled canal houses and narrow medieval streets give it an undeniable old-world charm, Amsterdam's thoroughly contemporary takes on arts, architecture and design show that it has modernity in a firm embrace. It's a city that invites wandering, with a tram system and a plenitude of bicycles (about as many as there are residents) that make navigating as fun as it is easy. Thanks to the locals, most of whom speak English, you'll feel instantly welcome and will be spared the indignity of trying to pronounce Dutch (don't even try). Spend as much time as possible on foot, the better to enjoy the city's theatrical quality: The huge, unshaded windows of the canal homes allow you to peer right in, testimony to the Dutch ethos of having nothing to hide. — Anonymous

With a defeat, when you lose, you get up, you make it better, you try again. That's what I do in life, when I get down, when I get sick, I don't want to just stop. I keep going and I try to do more. Everyone always says never give up but you really have to take that to heart and really do never definitely give up. Keep trying. — Serena Williams

Sometimes the way comes later, when I'm not working or thinking about it at all. When stories don't work, you try to convince yourself that all of that time and energy wasn't wasted, that it will make you a better writer, if nothing else. — Mary J. Miller

You're trying to make the language work, and your subconscious is being allowed to make the deeper, more profound connections. It's much better than going at it all frontally. But you can't conjure it in an intellectual way; it has to come out of another engagement, a more intuitive engagement. Revision is where the intellectual, analytical work happens. At least for me. — Dana Spiotta

Unscripted, unedited, and wholly authentic people are almost universally admired, especially if they have flaws, are not afraid to make live, red-blooded mistakes, and rather than trying are busy simply being. Which is something you should consider hiring a tattoo artist to script across the palm of your hand: Be, Don't Try. "Oh my God, I can't do that. I would totally mess up." You better pray to the corn god that you do. Messing up is how you tell other people, "It's okay to like me, because I'm just like you." Everybody feels a bit like a dented can inside. Even the slickest, most polished person you can think of is more aware of their shortcomings and flaws than their talents and gifts. — Augusten Burroughs

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The important things in life always happened by accident. At fifteen she didn't know much, in fact, with each passing year she was a lot less clear about most things. But this much she did know. You could worry yourself sick trying to be a better person, spend a thousand sleepless nights figuring out how to live clean and decent and honest, you could make a plan and bolt it in place, kneel by your bed every night and swear to God you'd stick to it, hell, you could go to church and promise properly. You could cross your heart seven times with your eyes tight shut, cut your thumb and squeeze it and pen solemn vows on a rock with your own blood then throw it in the river at the stroke of midnight. And then, out of the black beyond, like a hawk on a rat, some nameless catastrophe would swoop into your life and turn everything upside down and inside out forever. — Nicholas Evans

Having cancer does make you try to be better at everything you do and enjoy every moment. It changes you forever. But it can be a positive change. — Jaclyn Smith

Like, I'm trying to make a statement that clean comedy is somehow better or loftier than dirty comedy, and I don't feel that way at all. I just think it's different. It's different. There's rock music, there's jazz music, there's reggae music: All of those forms are different. — Brian Regan

If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line; try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it ... better. — David Auburn

A cockroach appeared just as I was about to get into the bath. It was just the right time for a cockroach to make an appearance in my life; couldn't have been better. It scuttled quickly across the porcelain, the little bugger; I looked around for a slipper, but actually I knew my chances of squashing him were small. What was the point in trying? And what good was Oon, in spite of her marvellously elastic vagina? We were already doomed. Cockroaches copulate gracelessly, with no apparent pleasure; but they also do it repeatedly and their genetic mutations are rapid and efficient. There is absolutely nothing we can do about cockroaches. — Michel Houellebecq

I think it's a relatable concept - when you have a long-term relationship or marriage, and you want to try to be friends with that person, because you kind of grew up with that person and they know you better than anyone, and how it's just impossible to make that transition seamlessly. — Rashida Jones

We're trying to do something so that when the average person uses Pinterest, it has to make the service better. — Ben Silbermann

He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered. — Ken Kesey

Sometimes, there just isn't the opportunity or willingness to make things better. Sometime you can't simply have another go. You make a choice, and its a bad one, and you're left with it. No amount of trying again will fix it. Don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you, to cut you slack; you made a mistake and you'll have to live with it. — Dan Abnett

Well, now I need you to kiss me. Make out with me. Otherwise she'll know I was full of shit and start hittin' on me again."

"You want me to slut it up with you so you don't look like an asshole to some little ho-bag you're trying not to nail? You know, Ronin, you could just tell her you're not interested."

"I like my way better," he grinned. — Sibylla Matilde

All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake. Not that it's wrong to try to improve the world if you know how but simply because struggling and striving are the worst possible ways to go about doing anything! — George Bernard Shaw

Sometimes I have to act crazy to handle the crazies. Trying to be normal near the crazies makes me as crazy as them. The more I push reason and logic on them, the more they pervert it and use it against me, the angrier they make me feel. It's much easier to pretend they're ghosts talking to the wind, and ignore them as if they weren't really human. My mood improves, my self-esteem is better and I feel happier. On another hand, maybe I'm just being realistic here, because you can't really talk to the dead. That's what people without respect or empathy are; dead in the brain; just walking bodies without a soul. — Robin Sacredfire

And yet these Americans, with their helicopters and laser-guided weapons and shock-troop Rangers were going to somehow sort it out in a few weeks? Arrest Aidid and make it all better? They were trying to take down a clan, the most ancient and efficient social organization known to man. Didn't the Americans realize that for every leader they arrested there were dozens of brothers, cousins, sons, and nephews to take his place? Setbacks just strengthened the clan's resolve. Even if the Habr Gidr were somehow crippled or destroyed, wouldn't that just elevate the next most powerful clan? Or did the Americans expect Somalia to suddenly sprout full-fledged Jeffersonian democracy? — Mark Bowden

Nothing is worth the damage of self-abuse. It solves no problem, accomplishes no goal, and helps no one. It has no benefit or productive value. It serves only one purpose: to make you feel bad, which doesn't help you or anyone else. We are more likely to emotionally resign, mentally disengage, or stop trying when we feel bad about ourselves. It does not motivate or inspire us to do better; instead, it disempowers us from moving forward because we stop trusting ourselves to make the right choices. If it can be changed, fixed, or forgiven, then mentally abusing yourself is unnecessary. If it can't be changed, fixed, or forgiven, then mentally abusing yourself is pointless. Offer yourself some compassion as you move through life. Of course you're not going to have all the right answers. That's how we learn. Don't beat yourself up for a very human and very normal process. — Emily Maroutian

It's all about trying to make the world and the universe a better place. I'm proud to be connected with it. I think we need that in our lives. We need ethical, heroic people trying to do the right thing to help others and to improve life on this planet and in the universe. — Leonard Nimoy

Oh, Daniel," his mother exclaimed, catching him before he could make his escape, "do come join us. We're trying to decide if Honoria should be married in lavender-blue or blue-lavender."
He opened his mouth to ask the difference, then decided against it. "Blue-lavender," he said firmly, not having a clue as to what he was talking about.
"Do you think so?" his mother responded, frowning. "I really think lavender-blue would be better."
The obvious question would have been why she'd asked his opinion in the first place, but once again, he decided that the wise man did not make such queries. — Julia Quinn

Honestly, on so many levels, I feel like motherhood has prepared me even better for directing than film school because all it is is troubleshooting and dealing with different personalities and emotions and trying to make everybody happy and at the end of the day reaching your own personal goals and agendas. — Christine Swanson

We're human. We all occasionally wet ourselves. No one is really better than anyone else. We're just all trying to make it through the year as best we can. We screw up sometimes. We succeed sometimes. We laugh. We cry. We go on.
Those are the things we should really share with each other this holiday season, right, if we dare send a letter? We should share the truth. We should share the insanity. — Wade Rouse

Now, ideals, conventions, even truth itself, are continually changing things so that the milk of one generation may be the poison of the next. The young Americans of my time have seen one of these transformations with their own eyes, and for this reason they will not make the initial mistake of trying to teach their children too much. Before a man is thirty he has already accumulated, along with a little wisdom, a great quantity of dust and rubbish in his mind, and the difficulty is to let the children profit by what is wise without unloading the dust and rubbish on them too. We can only try to do better at it than the last generation did - when a generation succeeds in doing it completely, in handing down all its discoveries and none of its delusions, its children shall inherit the earth. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Lance told me his father didn't think much of him. "He wishes I was better. More better. At everything. I don't do anything right, you know, Stevie. Nothing." He said this matter-of-factly. He believed it as truth. Polly told me her father never said anything nice to her, but she kept trying as hard as she could to make him pay her some attention. "He always says, 'Don't get fat as your mother has,' but I don't think Mom's fat at all, but I try not to eat much, but he keeps saying it to me. Do you think I'm fat, Stevie? When my hair is messy do you think I look like a stray... — Cathy Lamb

Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn't stand to se her kids go hungry, or grow up in slumbs and end up mugging people in dar corners. I guess the system didn't want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to be sure Momma wasn't trying to make things better. — Dick Gregory

I never want to do nudity that's gratuitous. Girls look so much better in lingerie or a t-shirt and leave the rest up to the imagination. I make it clear that I have a line. Everyone tries to push you, and it's easy to get talked into doing those things. I'll just walk off-set. But not everyone realizes they can do that. — Ashley Benson

Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11] ... We're trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us. — Andy Rooney

I'm trying to show by my actions that you can make a far better world if you just care enough. That's all you have to do. It's no big deal. One act of kindness a day can do it. — Betty Williams

She paused, realising that she was trying to make an AI feel better. It was a silly concept, but something about Lovey's demeanour made any other response feel a bit rude. Could AIs even take offence? Rosemary wasn't sure. — Becky Chambers

If you're going to be an investor, you're going to make some investments where you don't have all the experience you need. But if you keep trying to get a little better over time, you'll start to make investments that are virtually certain to have a good outcome. The keys are discipline, hard work, and practice. It's like playing golf - you have to work on it. — Charlie Munger

So when you approach any individual, make sure you realize that he will do what he wants to do. Don't laugh at his choices; investigate them to better understand what he's trying to accomplish.
If you wish to trade, you will have to offer the person something he wants more than what he has already. It's his resources you are seeking. He will control their use. You will have to be in tune with his desires or there will be no exchange.
The consumer is the object of the whole process. And he chooses in terms that are meaningful to him (not to you). You will succeed only as you find ways to satisfy him. — Harry Browne

There's nothing like having a sympathetic reader who asks the right questions, who understands what you're trying to achieve and only wants to make it better. — Donna Tartt

When you set out to create a new product, you usually do not start by trying to think of something completely new. You think of a product or concept that is already 'normal' to the world and then try to make it better. You make it Super Normal. — Dave Morin

I only believe in the easy things, like red lipstick
and coffee before noon and writing essays in pen.
I make my mind up about boys and then I unmake it,
compare us to continental drift, two ships passing.
I hit the snooze button too often. Write disposable
poems on napkins and old homework, try to discipline
myself when it comes to removing my makeup
before bed. I am trying to understand men better,
cut them some slack, write about them less. I dream
about oceans and mountains and wolves. I do not
always love myself. I do not always forgive myself.
I write apology letters and do not send them. Usually,
I do not mean it when I tell someone goodbye. — Kristina Haynes

The reason Ataturk, Kemal Ataturk was and is so highly reputed, is he was attempting to modernize ... That's not the right word. Well, it is. For lack of a better way of saying it, he was trying to make Islam compatible with the modern twentieth century world. — Rush Limbaugh

The coining of their new catch-phrase 'homophiliac' displayed in contrast to 'homophobic' was rather amusing, though to think that they believe it means anything different to 'homophobic' is just facetious. It's like someone trying to create a difference in definition between 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' - or to make the one look better or less reprehensible than the other. — Christina Engela

Here's the real secret: you can fulfill the commands of the Bible better by falling in love with God than by trying to obey him. It's not that your obedience isn't significant or relevant; it's simply not the center of the wheel. No, the hub of your life is your relationship with God. Your behavior and obedience radiate like spokes from the center of your life and allow you to roll forward. When you try to make your eternal behavior the hub on which you turn, you get stuck. Forward motion must be fueled by love. — Chris Hodges

And so sometimes when you feel strange, when a pang tugs at your heart or it seems like the moment has already happened- or when you look up in the sky and are surprised at the sight of bright Jupiter between clouds, and everything suddenly seems stuffed with a vast significance-consider that some other person somewhere is entangled with you in time, and is trying to give some push to the situation, some little help to make things better. Then put your shoulder to whatever wheel you have at hand, whatever moment you're in, and push too! Push like Galileo pushed! And together we may crab sideways toward the good. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true. — Mona Simpson

Zoey: Holy crap, Aphrodite! Could you not sneak up and scare me?
Aphrodite: No one was sneaking and holy crap is that a curse? Cause if it is i'm afraid i'm going to have to wake up the potty mouth police and have them make an arrest. So Stark's not dead yet.
Zoey:Gosh, thanks for the update. You just made me feel so much better.
Aphrodite:Don't be a pain in my ass while i'm trying to be nice. — P.C. Cast

Why had I been so afraid? I had not loved enough. I'd been busy, busy, so busy, preparing for life, while life floated by me, quiet and swift as a regatta ... I had had all my time, all my chances. I could never do it again, never make it right. I had not loved enough ... I had not passed up all my chances to give love or receive it, and I had the future, at least, to try to do better. — Lorene Cary

Peabody, with me."
She waited until they were back in her office. "Don't hover over McNab like that."
"Sir?"
"You hover over him, you're going to make him think you're worried."
"I am worried. The twenty-four-"
"Worry all you want, dump on me if you need to. But don't let him see it. He's starting to fray, and he's trying hard not to show it. You try just as hard not to show it. If you need to vent, go out there on the kitchen terrace. Scream your lungs out."
"Is that what you do?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes I kick inanimate objects. Sometimes I jump Roarke and have jungle sex. The last," she said after a beat, "is not an option for you."
"But I think it would really make me feel better, and be a more productive member of the investigative team."
"Good, humor is good. Get me coffee. — J.D. Robb

Some guys make their careers off one horse; kind of a trick horse, a wonder horse. I'm not knocking that, but for me I'm trying to get better and study. That means taking out new horses. It's a life study. When I've finished a horse, I turn him out and basically stop riding him, except taking him to the occasional branding so I can enjoy him. — Buck Brannaman

35 "Everyone has a dream, a vision, a goal and a desire. Just because we have bigger dreams than others doesn't mean they don't have one. Sometimes we just too lazy to make it happen or are scared of failing."

But trying is better than not doing anything at all. — Kcat Yarza

A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different. And there's room in the garden for every flower. You didn't have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else's on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They're all different without trying to be. As long as they're unselfconsciously being themselves, they can't help but shine. It's only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted. — Marianne Williamson

We always correct people who say, 'You're trying to make this look better.' Well yes, we want it to look better, but that's easy. The look and the function are one and the same. They are not separate. It looks good because it functions beautifully. That message is very hard. — Michael Graves

I'm always tweaking, always trying to make it better, constantly moving the levers and dials. — Steve Ells

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, the Free-Market ... What good are these approaches for? These attempts are made by men who are cerebral insufficient. I'm trying to give you back your brain, which they took away from you in schools and in your upbringing. I'm trying to show you how the world works. So if you want a better world, you have to get up off your ass and make it better — Jacque Fresco

I think you set up certain standards. I've always kind of believed in the Neil Pert way of making records where I'm trying to step it up every time I do something. You're trying to better yourself. You're also trying to make your audience or your listeners more interested. So, if you can up it, I think that's important. — Charlie Benante

Everything's not black and white. We choose to make bad decisions or not. I wanted to explore that and shine a light on it. Chip is trying to be a better person and lead a better life. His methods are just super flawed. — Will Arnett

I make a lot of mistakes, too, and I'm constantly re-evaluating how I'm doing things and trying to be better every day, whether it's as a mom or taking care of myself. — Mia Hamm

In business, you're trying to make a buck. God was good to me and blessed me. I made some money and started this foundation years ago, and it has grown in size. With the foundation it's a lot different, because the bottom line isn't how you can make more money or get a better return, it's helping the projects that you feel strongly about move forward. — Lee Iacocca

I love getting consumer reports. I think it's one of my favourite things, studying what people have to say about the product and then trying to make it better. — Maria Sharapova

I think in any industry, it is competitive. There are a certain number of slots out there and opportunities out there. So you need to make sure that you're always on the top of your toes, trying to get better. — Dominique Dawes

The degree of complications and unhappiness in a person's life corresponds to the degree to which he dwells on the way he thinks the world ought to be rather than the way it really is. and being grateful it isn't worse, while trying to make it better. — Robert Ringer

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day
I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing
it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.)
But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and
the catch-22
I craved Andie to make me feel better,
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. — Gillian Flynn

I love people. When you're engaged with society and trying to make it a better society, you're an optimist. — George Takei

It takes a lot more courage to let something go than it does to hang on to it, trying to make it better. Letting go doesn't mean ignoring a situation. Letting go means accepting what is, exactly as it is, without fear, resistance, or a struggle for control. — Iyanla Vanzant

I've always claimed that success in writing - provided of course one had what it takes to make a writer - is like success in marriage, largely a question of good sportsmanship, of keeping on keeping on, of giving one's best and trying, everlastingly trying to make that best, better. — Emilie Loring

We might not return from this voyage. None of us. We might all lay down our lives when we reach the end, and not ever know whether our sacrifice changed anything for the better."
"It will be for the better," Magiano replies. "We cannot just die, not without trying. Not without fighting."
"Do you really believe that?" I ask. "Why are we doing this, anyway? To preserve my own life, and yours - but what has the world ever done for us in order to deserve our sacrifice?"
Magiano's brows furrow for a moment, then he leans in closer. "We exist because this world exists. It's a responsibility of ours, whether or not anyone will remember it." He nods at me. "And they will. Because we will return and make sure of it. — Marie Lu

You won't be expecting forever, Annwyl. And once the twins are
here, you'll be as violently cruel and madly bloodthirsty as you always
were."
"Now you're just trying to make me feel better."
"Is it working?"
"A little. — G.A. Aiken

I'm trying to make it a little bit more personal this time. All my shows are hodge-podges, and this one is no exception but this one delves a little more deeper into my life and my world. Hopefully it's funny. I did a version of this at Birdland last January and it's similar-ish to what I've done before. But I've been working on it all year; I did it out here in Los Angeles in a theatre and kept developing it. Hopefully it'll be better. — Jason Graae

John Ziegler is not a journalist-he is an entertainer. Or maybe it's better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved. It is a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give. — David Foster Wallace

I got a washed out version of Mom's curls and a better copy of Dad's blue eyes, The rest of me, I guess, is up for grabs. Except maybe Gran's nose, but she could have been trying to make me feel better. I'm no prize. Most girls go through a gawky stage, but I'm beginning to think mine will be a lifelong thing. It doesn't bother me too much. Better to be strong than pretty and useless. I'll take a plain girl with her head screwed on right over a cheerleader any day. — Lilith Saintcrow

My ideal world is, we're there, we're in the EU, trying to make it better. — Boris Johnson

The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he encounters behaves as though it were final and complete. He suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted. What better can he do than hold himself apart from the world, in the good sense exemplified by the scientist's guarded attitude toward facts that might be tempting him to premature conclusions? Hence he hesitates in trying to make something of himself; a character, a profession, a fixed mode of being, are for him concepts that already shadow forth the outlines of the skeleton, which is all that will be left of him in the end. — Robert Musil

Right away when I got to college, I realized that being a politician sucks. It's really hard! It wasn't for me. B.J. Novak is convinced that I will run for mayor of Chicago at some point. He begs me to do it. It'd be a tough gig, but I was always very attracted to the idea of helping people and trying to make the city a better place. — Ike Barinholtz

Look - you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her." "Is that what she was doing?" said Harry as Ron dropped onto the bench opposite them and pulled every dish within reach toward himself. "Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?" "Girls don't often ask questions like that," said Hermione. — J.K. Rowling

Why do I keep losing, Harvey? Don't tell me God's trying to make me a better person. Don't tell me all of this is so I can be stronger. Because I'm not stronger, Harv. I'm weak. I keep getting weaker and weaker, and I keep praying and praying...' He paused and swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. 'Why won't God answer me?'
Harvey's eyes were careful, empathetic, as if he were choosing his words thoughtfully. Finally, he said quietly, 'God has answered you, Brock. Every time. It's not always how we want, but He always hears us and He always cares. — Willowy Whisper

The other day I got a text from a boy, but it wasn't hot. I mean, if you're going to text me every day, you haven't seen me for months and you're trying to seduce me, you'd better spice up that text and make it more exciting than 'How was your day? I hope you're having a beautiful one.' Sadly, I haven't been doing a lot of kissing lately. — Chloe Sevigny

bit of inaccurate information that somehow concerned crop or commodity market information or conditions. It does not matter whether you sent that message by telephone or mail or telegraph. It does not matter who you sent that letter to. It does not matter whether the information was actually false, or merely misleading. It does not matter whether your note actually had any effect on market prices anywhere, or even whether you intended for it to have that effect. The way this law was written by the morons in Congress, you are guilty of a felony if you send a postcard to your grandmother in a nursing home, trying to make her feel better by lying about how nice the weather has been in Florida, or how low the gas prices have been. And you will not find this law in Title 18 either; this one is buried in the bowels of Title 7 (sec. 13), which lists the laws supposedly regulating "Agriculture." Even — James Duane