A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun Tzu

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
Sun Tzu

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
Sun Tzu

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.
Dale Carnegie

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
Dale Carnegie

Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.
Colin Powell

To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.
Ted Turner

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
Plato

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.
Plato

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.
Plato

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.
Plato

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
Plato

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.
Plato

I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.
Walt Whitman

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Sigmund Freud

The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.
Sigmund Freud

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
Sigmund Freud