Famous Quotes & Sayings

Russell Banks

When an old man and a young man work together, it can make an ugly sight or a pretty one, depending on who's in charge. If the young man's in charge or won't let the old man take over, the young man's brute strength becomes destructive and inefficient, and the old man's intelligence, out of frustration, grows cruel and inefficient. Sometimes the old man forgets that he is old and tries to compete with the young man's strength, and then it's a sad sight. Or the young man forgets that he is young and argues with the old man about how to do the work, and that's a sad sight, too.

Martha Beck

The effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let the Negro march. Let him make pilgrimages to city hall. Let him go on freedom rides. And above all, make an effort to understand why he must do this. For if his frustration and despair are allowed to continue piling up, millions of Negroes will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies. And this, inevitably, would lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Pete Townshend

Deep inside of every human being is this feeling that nothing is ever going to be complete, that the circle will never connect - and that itself is the secret to infinity.

Paulo Coelho

She was doing it because she had nothing to lose, because her life was one of constant, day to day frustration.

Peter Ustinov

The social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

History balances the frustration of 'how far we have to go' with the satisfaction of 'how far we have come.' It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.

Joseph Heller

Who's they?" He wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" "Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration. Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all.

Jules Feiffer

Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function.

Albert Einstein

Knowledge is limited; but imagination encircles the world.

Kate Winslet

'Harry Potter' really harnessed the imagination of so many young-adult minds, and it's the same with the 'Divergent' series.

Richard P. Feynman

What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible strait-jacket.

Rob Bell

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

Richard Dawkins

Religions are not imaginative, not poetic, not soulful. On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous.

Robin Wright

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that

Robert Nozick

The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.

Robert Rauschenberg

I prefer images that are less specific, so there is room for everyone's imagination.

Wallace Stevens

Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

Rocco Buttiglione

We desecrated the traditional values, but new values didn't come along.

Edith Wharton

traditions that have lost their meaning are the hardest of all to destroy.

Steven Strogatz

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

Tom Chapin

Mine is not a traditional music, but it comes from a tradition.

Robbie Williams

I come from the tradition of a big Irish family that loves to sing. I love to perform.

Ted Rall

There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.

John Searle

You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others.

Philip Johnson

I call myself a traditionalist, although I have fought against tradition all my life.

George Saunders

All traditions are also full of meanness for the sake of meanness.