If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.

Take responsibility for your last bad decision, and then let it go. Don’t blame others or make excuses for yourself.

There may often be excuse for doing things poorly in this world, but there is never any excuse for calling a poorly done thing, well done.

Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.

A leader can’t make excuses. There has to be quality in everything you do. Off the court, on the court, in the classroom.

There is no waste of time like making excuses.

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.

Fear isn’t an excuse to come to a standstill. It’s the impetus to step up and strike.

A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.

The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it suggests a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity.

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself – a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

Don’t make excuses, make good.

We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God.

The most embarrassing one is that I had no idea – and please excuse me – that you guys call a condom a rubber. My version of a rubber is an eraser. I’ve done that – very loudly asked for a rubber and people have given me strange looks. That was embarrassing!

Start making excuses and there’s no end to it. I can’t live that kind of life.

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

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

Religion isn’t the cause of wars, it’s the excuse.

Don’t let where you are be an excuse not to grow.

‘If only’ is the excuse of the loser; ‘I can’ is the affirmation of the winner.

What drivel it all is!… A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they’ll murder their neighbours for using a word they don’t happen to like. A word that probably doesn’t mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.

Being in a rock band is just an excuse not to get a job

When the magistrate says ‘That’s not a good enough reason my man.’ He said ‘Excuse me, could I ask you? Have you taken an oath of allegiance to the Monarch?’

The argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression.

We weed out the darnel from the corn and the unfit in war, but do not excuse evil men from the service of the state.

We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.

One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography – that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs.

I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.

Neglecting small things under the pretext of wanting to accomplish large ones is the excuse of a coward.

Michael Moore: a man who never without an excuse for keeping murdering tyrants in power. But now he’s supporting the man who bombed Milosevic into submission? How about an explanation, Mr Moore?

A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenceless!