Difficult Quotes - Page 28

• The transition from the concept of information in the technical (communication engineering) sense to the semantic (theory of meaning) sense was indeed difficult, if not impossible.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Communication, Engineering, Information

  "Readings in interpersonal & organizational communication" by Richard C. Huseman, (p. 35), 1977.

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• The outstanding feature of behavior is that it is often quite easy to recognize but extremely difficult or impossible to describe with precision.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Impossible, Easy, Behavior

  "Toward Definition of Mind" edited by Jordan Ma Scher, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, (p. 92), 1962.

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• In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir ... designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mind, Alchemist, Prejudice

  "The Abyss". Book by Marguerite Yourcenar, Author's note, p. 367, 1968.

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• The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.

  Roger Scruton

  Wall, Culture, Firsts

  Roger Scruton (2013). “Modern Culture”, p.85, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• One of the first and most difficult steps in a science is to conceive clearly the nature of the magnitudes about which we are arguing.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Firsts, Steps, Arguing

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• I find Christmas very difficult.

  Steven Morrissey

  On stage at Earl's Court, December 18, 2004.

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• I never enjoyed life in my twenties, not one minute of it. It was a test of endurance that I'm surprised I survived. Professionally, of course, I was doing very well but personally it couldn't have been worse or more difficult for me if I'd been living in a mud hut in Leeds.

  Steven Morrissey

  Endurance, Twenties, Tests

  "Q" Magazine Interview, 1995.

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• If they think they can get anyone who could have better handled the complex and difficult issues surrounding North Korea, Iran and other controversies, they are not understanding the world right now.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Thinking, Iran, Korea

  "IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped". www.washingtonpost.com. December 12, 2004.

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• As a young child, being different is isolating, and as a teenager it's humiliating. I wish I had been able to stand out with more confidence when I was a child, and especially when I was a teenager. I was different, but it wasn't always a conscious choice, and it often made me miserable. But I'm all grown up now, and so are you. Today, difference is your strength, your power, and your trademark. It's your signature. It can still be difficult to be different--sometimes even harder than it used to be. Even so, it's time to embrace being yourself. It's time to be authentic.

  Bethenny Frankel

  Being Yourself, Children, Teenager

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• Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult.

  Benjamin Graham

  Achievement, Forever, Growth

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

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• Even if your difficult time comes at you out of the blue - like cancer - even those times, opens your heart to the magic and power of life, and gives you this inner commitment to live every moment.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Cancer, Heart, Commitment

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Creativity is basically a feminine process. I'm convinced that we have in our soul, everybody, this masculine side and this feminine side. So at the end of the day, you always use this feminine creative energy to write or to do any type of art or creativity. So if I see that my protagonist is feminine, it's not more difficult, no. And even when my protagonist is masculine, I'm writing from using this feminine energy.

  Paulo Coelho

  Art, Creativity, Writing

  "Book Talk: Paulo Coelho on life, work and 'Adultery'". Interview with Lisa Von Ahn, www.reuters.com. November 13, 2014.

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• I tend to not speak up as much, so saying no is rather difficult for me. The biggest step of being an adult is saying, "This is what I do like. This is what I don't like." Being yourself means certain people aren't going to like that. I'm still figuring it out and taking things day by day.

  Selena Gomez

  Being Yourself, Mean, People

  "Selena Gomez Talks RUDDERLESS, Sympathizing with the Character, HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2, Where Her Career Is Headed, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. October 18, 2014.

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• In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Financial, Easy

  "Warren Buffett: 'My elephant gun is loaded'". Interview with Dominic Lawson, Robert Peston and Grant, www.telegraph.co.uk. September 22, 2002.

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• If you're going to make a law, make a law that actually works. It's extraordinarily difficult.

  Eric Schmidt

  Law, Working It, Ifs

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• You can understand Tunisia revolution as a failure to censor the internet. And Libya had that failure too. It's very difficult for governments that are autocratic and don't have broad popular support to be in power when a lot of people have these devices. That was what Arab Spring was about, that people could express this and lead to revolution.

  Eric Schmidt

  Spring, Government, People

  "Google's Big Tent event: porn, copyright, Eric Schmidt and all". www.theguardian.com. May 23, 2012.

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• Getting my father to throw anything away was pretty difficult. He was not trying to hide who he was, and he said, you don't have to hide the fact that I'm manic-depressive. You can tell people that's who I am. It's - explains a lot about your situation.

  Maya Forbes

  Father, Who I Am, People

  "'Infinitely Polar Bear' Director Relives Childhood With Mentally Ill Parent". "All Things Considered" with Audie Cornish, www.npr.org. June 22, 2015.

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• I have the deepest regret about 9/11. Sept. 11, 2001, was one of the most difficult days I've ever had. I was in Lima, Peru, and had to fly back eight hours not knowing what happened in my own country, knowing thousands of my fellow citizens had died.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Regret, Eight

  "Secretary of State Colin Powell". Interview with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. March 25, 2004.

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• I loved Latin -- the grammar, the difficult tenses, the history -- but for some reason I was very bad at it, shamefully and blushingly bad at it. ... In moments of stress the embarrassment of how bad I was at Latin -- a subject I loved -- really hit me. It was like being laughed at by someone you desperately loved.

  Peter Greenaway

  Stress, Latin, Moments

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

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• I am obliged to interpolate some remarks on a very difficult subject: proof and its importance in mathematics. All physicists, and a good many quite respectable mathematicians, are contemptuous about proof. I have heard Professor Eddington, for example, maintain that proof, as pure mathematicians understand it, is really quite uninteresting and unimportant, and that no one who is really certain that he has found something good should waste his time looking for proof.

  G. H. Hardy

  Good Man, Example, Waste

  "Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work". Book by G. H. Hardy, 1940.

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• They [Afghans] understand the difficult truth that their best hope of freedom lies in a temporary experience of imperial rule.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Lying, Hoping For The Best, Temporary

  "Nation-Building Lite" by Michael Ignatieff, www.nytimes.com. July 28, 2002.

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• Why did the generals who have been so ready to term me a complaisant and incompetent yes-man fail to secure my removal? Was that all that difficult? No, that wasn't it; the truth was that nobody would have been ready to replace me, because each one knew that he would end up just as much a wreck as I.

  Wilhelm Keitel

  Men, Wrecks, Failing

  "The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel". Book by Walter Gorlitz, p. 52, 1966.

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• The first thing I did when I was forty years old, I put handcuffs on and I jumped off Alcatraz prison and swam to San Francisco handcuffed. That made national publicity. Then, there were three or four years where I would do more difficult feats. Another birthday I towed a thousand pound boat across the Golden Gate. On my 65th Birthday I towed 65 boats a mile and a half in Tokyo. On my 70th Birthday I towed 70 boats with 70 people in it with my feet and hands tied a mile and a half in Long Beach.... My next Birthday I will be 93. I'm gonna tow my wife across the bathtub.

  Jack LaLanne

  Beach, Hands, Years

  Interview with Antonia Venezia, aliveeastbay.com. March 2007.

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• In my mind I first felt like, Oh, I'll be back to work right after the babies are born. But then you don't want to. Even now, it's very difficult for me to leave them in the morning. It just tortures me. I'm like, It's been hours; are they wondering where I am? Do they know that I love them so much and I'm thinking only about them?

  Jennifer Lopez

  Baby, Morning, Thinking

  "Jennifer Lopez: Still Wild at Heart". Interview with Veronica Chambers, www.glamour.com. August 2, 2010.

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• It's difficult to talk to people who whisper even at home, afraid of Americans eavesdropping on them. It's not a figure of speech, not a joke, I'm serious.

  Vladimir Putin

  Home, People, Speech

  "Ask the President! Some of Putin’s Very Best Hotline Answers". Answer during the "Direct Line with Vladimir Putin", sputniknews.com. April 15, 2015.

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