NO MATTER WHAT I DO, I CANNOT CONNECT through a proxy server!
I am connected to the internet through a D-Link router and I am running Mozilla Firefox and Norton Protection Center.

What I did was find a list of proxy servers. Here is an example website I used: http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1...
I edited my "Manual Proxy Configuration" in Firefox. I entered proxy server IP and port numbers for both HTTP and SSL

Firefox can't connect to any of them though! I just get the error message: "The connection has timed out" The server at Google is taking too long to respond. It does this with EVERY website and EVERY proxy server!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

All right there could be a few things blocking it
#1 NPC (Norton) could be blocking 8080, 1080, 1020, 8000 or whatever port it's using
#2 70% of the proxys out there are dead
#3 Why are you wanting to us a proxy? You can use a CGI proxy which is just as good.