Quotes about Promises

• Promises are like babies:  easy to make, hard to deliver.
• Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
• Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made.
• We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
• Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
• 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. 
• It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
• The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
• 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.
• Never take a solemn oath.  People think you mean it.
• 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.
• All promise outruns performance.
• Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
• Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out at once. 
• He loses his thanks who promises and delays. 
• Promise is most given when the least is said.
• Eggs and oaths are easily broken.
• Nothing weights lighter than a promise. 
• A promise made is a debt unpaid.
• Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.
• An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. 
• Losers make promises they often break.  Winners make commitments they always keep.
• We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.
• For every promise, there is price to pay. 
• The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.
• Promises are like the full moon, if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day.
• One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises that one makes.
• Better break your word than do worse in keeping it. 
• Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.
• The promise given was a necessity of the past:  the word broken is a necessity of the present. 
• Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
• Oaths are the fossils of piety.
• Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing. 
• Let God's promises shine on your problems. 
• Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.
• A promise is a comfort for a fool.
• He was ever precise in promise-keeping.
• When a man repeats a promise again and again, he means to fail you.
• A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain.
• I thought he was a young man of promise; but it appears he was a young man of promises.
• It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he is in love, drunk, or running for office. 
• 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.
• Promise little and do much.
• Promise only what you can deliver.  Then deliver more than you promise.
• This is the first convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it. 
• 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.
• A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
• Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
• Life didn't promise to be wonderful.
• Rarely promise, but, if lawful, constantly perform.
• Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.
• A promise is a debt.
• A liar is always lavish of oaths.
• Everyone's a millionaire where promises are concerned. 
• In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything.  In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter.
• Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
• Between today and tomorrow are graves, and between promising and fulfilling are chasms.
• No pillow so soft as God's promise.
• One promises much, to avoid giving little.
• Go for it now.  The future is promised to no one.
• God's promises are like the stars; the darker the night the brighter they shine. 
• Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
• 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.
• Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits. 
• It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality. 
• Each morning I gaze at the eastern horizon, and if the sun keeps its promise, I keep mine. 
• Promises may fit the friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies. 
• 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.
• For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises
• A politician is known by the promises he keeps. 
• The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. 
• When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat? 
• 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.
• But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep...
• April is a promise that May is bound to keep. 
• Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. 
• 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. 
• Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. 
• Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. 
• Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers. 
• Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. 
• 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.