Quotations about Promises

Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. ~Author Unknown


Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. ~Hannah Arendt


Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made. ~Edgar Watson Howe


We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld


Oaths are but words, and words but wind. ~Samuel Butler


To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. ~Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876


It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath. ~Aeschylus


The best way to keep one's word is not to give it. ~Napoleon Bonaparte


When a man takes an oath... he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then - he needn't hope to find himself again. ~Robert Bolt


Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it. ~Norman Douglas


Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


All promise outruns performance. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them. ~Thomas Fuller


Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out at once. ~Norman Vincent Peale


He loses his thanks who promises and delays. ~Proverb


Promise is most given when the least is said. ~George Chapman


Eggs and oaths are easily broken. ~Danish Proverb


Nothing weights lighter than a promise. ~German Proverb


A promise made is a debt unpaid. ~Robert Service


Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken. ~Jonathan Swift


An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. ~William Dean Howells


Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep. ~Denis Waitley


We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot. ~Abraham Lincoln


For every promise, there is price to pay. ~Jim Rohn


The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today. ~William Lyon MacKenzie


Promises are like the full moon, if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day. ~German Proverb


One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises that one makes. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Better break your word than do worse in keeping it. ~Thomas Fuller


Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them. ~William Hazlitt


The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present. ~Niccolo Machiavelli


Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. ~Edmund Burke


Oaths are the fossils of piety. ~George Santayana


Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing. ~Bernard M. Baruch


Let God's promises shine on your problems. ~Corrie Ten Boom


Promises make debt, and debt makes promises. ~Dutch Proverb


A promise is a comfort for a fool. ~Proverb


He was ever precise in promise-keeping. ~William Shakespeare



When a man repeats a promise again and again, he means to fail you. ~Proverb


A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain. ~Arabian Proverb


I thought he was a young man of promise; but it appears he was a young man of promises. ~Author Unknown


It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he is in love, drunk, or running for office. ~Shirley MacLaine


And be these juggling friends no more believ'd,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope.
~William Shakespeare


Promise little and do much. ~Hebrew Proverb


Promise only what you can deliver. Then deliver more than you promise. ~Author Unknown


This is the first convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it. ~Author Unknown


The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. ~Carl Jung


A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise. ~Niccolo Machiavelli


Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught. ~Sydney J. Harris


Life didn't promise to be wonderful. ~Teddy Pendergrass


Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform. ~William Penn


Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth. ~Mohandas Gandhi


A promise is a debt. ~Proverb


A liar is always lavish of oaths. ~Pierre Corneille


Everyone's a millionaire where promises are concerned. ~Author Unknown


In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter. ~Chinese Proverb


Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it. ~Jean Jacques Rousseau


Between today and tomorrow are graves, and between promising and fulfilling are chasms. ~Author Unknown


No pillow so soft as God's promise. ~Author Unknown


One promises much, to avoid giving little. ~Marquis de Vauvenargues


Go for it now. The future is promised to no one. ~Wayne Dyer


God's promises are like the stars; the darker the night the brighter they shine. ~David Nicholas


Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans. ~Peter F. Drucker


Being of no power to make his wishes good:
His promises fly so beyond his state
That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes
For every word.
~William Shakespeare


Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits. ~William Shakespeare


It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality. ~Harold Geneen


Each morning I gaze at the eastern horizon, and if the sun keeps its promise, I keep mine. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Promises may fit the friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies. ~Benjamin Franklin


Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. ~Benjamin Franklin


For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service. ~John Burroughs


A politician is known by the promises he keeps. ~Author Unknown


The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. ~Bill Cosby


When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat? ~Chuck Palahniuk


If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven. ~Will Rogers


But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep...
~Robert Frost


April is a promise that May is bound to keep. ~Hal Borland


Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. ~Karl Popper


But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail. ~Fareed Zakaria


Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust


Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. ~Simone Weil


Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers. ~Nikita Khrushchev


Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. ~Samuel Johnson


In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence. ~George Washington