Ambivalent Quotes

• It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.

  Anna Freud

  Mother, Children, Feelings

  Anna Freud, Dorothy T. Burlingham (1967). “The Writings of Anna Freud: Indications for child analysis and other papers, 1945-1956”

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• Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral.

  Vernon A. Walters

  Attitude, Want, Feels

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• The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate.

  Elia Kazan

  Uncertain, Anticipate

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• Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

  Etgar Keret

  Mean, Anything Goes, Life Is

  "Parables of anarchy". Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2005.

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• We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.

  Samuel Florman

  Work, Emotional, Feelings

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• Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself; in fact, confused.

  James McGreevey

  Children, Confused, Who I Am

  "McGreevey Describes 'Intensely Personal Decision' in Speech". James McGreevey's speech televised live from Trenton, www.nytimes.com. August 12, 2004.

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• Although I'm certainly glad cartoons are finally getting some respect as an art, I'm fairly ambivalent to see cartooning as a legitimate academic offering. If comics need to be deconstructed and explained, something is really wrong with them.

  Bill Watterson

  Art, Offering, Needs

  Source: www.annistonstar.com

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• I don't know that I've ever been completely comfortable with anything.

  Shannon Elizabeth

  Knows, Comfortable

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• Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.

  Keith Ablow

  Fear, People, Tragedy

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• I've always been profoundly ambivalent about fame. I think it just eats the reality out of you and it can be intoxicating because I like some of it.

  Jane Pauley

  Thinking, Reality, Fame

  "Jane Pauley Says Goodbye". Interview with Barbara Walters, abcnews.go.com. May 30.

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• Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart. Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn't know it then.

  Barbara Ascher

  Sibling, Heart, Destiny

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• It's time to "stop being ambivalent." ... They (groups like the Islamic State) have no ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people.

  Barack Obama

  Islamic, People, Groups

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• His version of 'real' love isn't sufficient for me, I don't think anyone should settle for so little. It wasn't love - not in the true sense. On my part, it was neediness, insecurity, dependence, habit - desperate to feel loved by a man who was often ambivalent towards me. 

  Freya North

  Real, Men, Thinking

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• Visiting is a pleasure; being visited is usually a mixed or ambivalent joy. ... The visitor can always go home; the visitee is already home, trapped like a rat in a drainpipe.

  Barbara Holland

  Home, Joy, Rats

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• If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.

  Edward Albee

  Writing, Play, Numbers

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.57, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Real love isn't ever ambivalent.

  Tony Kushner

  Real, Love Is, Angels In America

  "Angels in America". www.imdb.com. 2003.

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• I am ambivalent about London because I am so ambivalent about England in general.

  Jane Jacobs

  London, England

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

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• I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.

  John Burnham Schwartz

  Children, Real, Animal

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• God is erratic, sometimes vindictive, sometimes merciful. The people I was taught were heroes - Jacob or Moses or David - were ambivalent figures, or worse. But that messiness was joyful, and challenging. I loved having a Bible that I could argue with.

  David Plotz

  Hero, People, Challenges

  "Biblically Speaking". Online chat, www.slate.com. March 4, 2009.

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• I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

  Mike Leigh

  Cutting, Guy, Feelings

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• I've never been socially outgoing, but I suspect I've gotten more and more ambivalent about making new friends. I'm irritated by how-do-you-do chit-chat, but that's how new relationships usually begin.

  Ariel Gore

  New Relationship, Irritated, New Friends

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• I've had some ambivalent feelings about being an actor. I don't know that I've ever been totally and completely comfortable with it.

  Don Johnson

  Feelings, Actors, Knows

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• In the U.S. I think there are really two reasons we should pursue energy policy. One is climate change, and the second is this notion that the oil market is cartel-ized by people, some of whom are friendly, some of whom are not, some of whom are in a more ambivalent position to us.

  Brad Carson

  Thinking, Two, Oil

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• I prefer to make a film that people have a really intense reaction to than have a film that people feel ambivalent about.

  Emily Browning

  People, Film, Intense

  "'Sleeping Beauty' Star Emily Browning: 'I knew it would be more intense than anything I’ve done before'". Interview with Brian Brooks, www.indiewire.com. November 30, 2011.

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• I'd rather make an interesting film that gets people talking, that maybe some people hate, than make the kind of 'entertaining' film that everyone feels ambivalent about.

  Emily Browning

  Hate, Talking, People

  "Emily Browning: total control". Interview With Maddy Costa, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2011.

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