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.

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.

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.

Madeleine L'Engle

If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.

Emmanuelle Beart

There are moments when you feel that the desire to work is fading, and the only way to bring it back is to get away from it, to put yourself in a state of frustration so you feel the need again.

Lou Holtz

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Henry Williamson

The slow rhythm of the body, the insistent rhythm of the wit, were they becoming irreconcilable in modern civilisation? The sedentary life, frustration and irritability; work with the body, fatigue - and peace of mind.

Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.

Bill Ayers

Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.

Neil Gaiman

Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation.

Michael Stipe

Our generation was supposed to be about trying to deal with nuclear concerns and environmental disasters.

Jeffrey Sachs

Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope and that we worked together to heal the world.

Jeff Myers

When the people of a nation stop communicating, they lose the common purpose that made them great. Their cities become ghost towns. People live aimlessly because they have no cause for which they are willing to die. The cry of the populace is 'Just leave me alone'. Perhaps the ultimate hell is that the wish will be granted. It is not unlikely that our own nation will collapse not through an explosive roar, but through a deafening silence. This silence must be broken in our generation. We may never get another chance.

Francis Schaeffer

I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.

William Shakespeare

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find.

Saint Francis de Sales

It is a great imperfection to complain unceasingly of little things.

Kevin Rudd

There are many who criticise the United Nations. And those of us who know this institution well know that it is not immune from criticism. But those who argue against the United Nations advance no credible argument as to what should replace it. Whatever its imperfections, the United Nations represents a necessary democracy of states.

Tara Brach

Imperfection is not our personal problem - it is a natural part of existing.

Brene Brown

Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we're all in this together.

Duke of Wellington

It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.

Ambrose Bierce

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

Sri Chinmoy

Cry within. Meditate within. Dive within. Your inner achievements will far outweigh your outer imperfections.

Tibor Kalman

I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability. That's what we really pay attention to anyway. We don't talk about planes flying; we talk about them crashing.

Victor Davis Hanson

Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.