Effort Quotes - Page 136

It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.

The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.

This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perservereingly during fifty-five years; that word is failure

My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.

Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move.

When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion.

The low-hanging fruit is cynicism and pessimism, and it's there if you want it. You can reach out and you can grab it, you don't even have to make any effort.

The Obama administration has vastly expanded the use of armed drones and concentrated a great deal of diplomatic effort on building and maintaining alliances that share information about terrorists, provide access to get near them, and then strike against them.

I've learned not to let it be the end of the world if a boy doesn't like you. I used to put so much effort into boys. I started playing guitar because I wanted to impress this boy. Then, I ended up in love with guitar and I didn't care about the boy anymore.

The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then 'Ole!' And if not, do your dance anyhow. And 'Ole!' to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. 'Ole!' to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding.

practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

Tea Party Republicans, in an effort to kill the farm bill will stereotype and make racial comments about food stamps - which is a big element to the program.

If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?

I get sick of saying how hard everything is. It's hard to get up in the morning. Everything's hard. Everything takes effort.

Ironically, many of these people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

It is impossible to reduce, or, at least, to hold a distant country against the wishes and efforts of its inhabitants.

Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.

That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying.

I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

No facts, however indubitably detected, no effort of reason, however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.