Embarrassment Quotes - Page 6

• I HATED the Salinger story. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Stories, Pages, Way

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• Those who see what's obvious aren't necessarily brighter than others. They're just more likely to observe that the emperor is naked. Like children, they see what's actually there. Their perceptions are less clouded by belief systems, taboos, habits of thought. One responsibility of management--an important one--is to call attention to the invisible obvious, pointing it out as a child does (sometimes to the embarrassment of adults). Doing so also requires supporting employees who take that risk, too, and other risks as well.

  Richard Farson

  Children, Responsibility, Risk

  Richard Farson, Ralph Keyes (2003). “Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins”, p.76, Simon and Schuster

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• Compare the emotional vocabulary available to a leader (confidence, satisfaction, indignation) with the emotions not permitted (regret, embarrassment, dread, angst, mortification, anger, surprise, wonder, doubt), and it becomes apparent why perfectly normal people, upon entering public life, transform into cartoons - because they are not free to express what a normal person would feel in their situation.

  John MacLachlan Gray

  Regret, Emotional, Vocabulary

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• You will be most effective when members can compliment each other without embarrassment and disagree without fear.

  Peter R. Scholtes

  Team, Collaboration, Conflict

  "The team handbook for educators: how to use teams to improve quality".

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• Voting in particular is an embarrassment, being a public display of weak character and low intelligence. Let us face the truth: Democracy, like spitting in public or the Roman games, is the proper activity of the lower intellectual and moral classes. It amounts to collusion in one's own suckering.

  Fred Reed

  Character, Games, Class

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• In the circle where I was raised, I knew of no one knowledgeable in the visual arts, no one who regularly attended musical performances, and only two adults other than my teachers who spoke without embarrassment of poetry and literature — both of these being women. As far as I can recall, I never heard a man refer to a good or a great book. I knew no one who had mastered, or even studied, another language from choice. And our articulate, conscious life proceeded without acknowledgement of the preceding civilisations which had produced it.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Teacher, Art, Book

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• The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.”“The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better.”“In 20 or 30 years, you’ll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world.”“The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment they can tolerate.”“The key thing about all the world’s big problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we don’t get collectively smarter, we’re doomed.

  Douglas Engelbart

  Writing, Keys, Hands

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• Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Energy, Doe

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• Embarrassment, or the risk of it, accompanies all your important choices.

  Roy H. Williams

  Important Choices, Risk, Accompany

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• Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

  Billy Bragg

  Mixing, Usual, Use

  Song: Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

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• Im going to become the best-remembered artist of my generation by staying away from the party as often as possible. That way, people will remember me, not because I was great, but because I didnt cause them any later embarrassment.

  Julian Cope

  Party, Artist, People

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• I deeply regret those situations that have blemished the image of the University of Oklahoma, and I hope that I can rectify the embarrassment I have brought the university.

  Brian Bosworth

  Regret, Oklahoma, Rectify

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• Unless people feel that they are accepted and that they have a right to express their feelings without fear of embarrassment or ridicule, all they will do is react and rebel and struggle for their identity.

  Stephen Covey

  Motivational, Struggle, People

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• Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act.

  Charles Jeffries

  Creative, Theatre, Partners

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• There aren't any embarrassing questions — just embarrassing answers.

  Carl T. Rowan

  Embarrassing Questions, Answers, Embarrassing

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• Something peculiar has happened. As I write, none of the Republican candidates for Senate has become a public embarrassment. On the contrary: For the first time in a decade, it is the Democratic candidates, not the Republican ones, who are fodder for late-night comics. That the Democrats are committing gaffes and causing scandals at a higher rate than Republicans not only may be decisive in the battle for the Senate. It could signal a change in our politics at large.

  Matthew Continetti

  Writing, Night, Battle

  "The Macaca Democrats" by Matthew Continetti, www.realclearpolitics.com. October 17, 2014.

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• In so strong a light, nevertheless, do they appear to the Secretary, that, on their due observance, at the present critical juncture, materially depend, in his judgment, the individual and aggregate prosperity of the citizens of the United States; their relief from the embarrassments they now experience; their character as a people; the cause of good government.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Strong, Character, Light

  United States. Dept. of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1828). “Reports of the secretary of the Treasury of the United States”, p.4

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• We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

  Jonah Lehrer

  Silly, Talking, People

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• The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame, and it should be a national embarrassment.

  Mark Shields

  Thinking, Scandal, Shame

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Black, Causes, Facts

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Patrick Renshaw (1998). “Democracy in America”, p.140, Wordsworth Editions

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• What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potential embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint.

  Lance Armstrong

  Running, Athlete, Suffering

  Lance Armstrong (2012). “It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back to Life”, p.18, Random House

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• I discovered early that the hardest thing to overcome is not a physical disability but the mental condition which it induces. The world, I found, has a way of taking a man pretty much at his own rating. If he permits his loss to make him embarrassed and apologetic, he will draw embarrassment from others. But if he gains his own respect, the respect of those around him comes easily.

  Alexander P. de Seversky

  Respect, Inspiration, Loss

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• If there is a sort of national American emotion I would call it optimism. If there is an English one I would call it embarrassment - not even pessimism - just sheer shame, embarrassment and confusion.

  Stephen Fry

  Optimism, Confusion, Emotion

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• I mean, I haven't been around very long. I can't expect everyone to have seen 'The House Bunny'. Oh God. I am having such waves of internal embarrassment, which now I'm admitting on a tape recorder. This is so one of the things I should keep in my head.

  Emma Stone

  Mean, Long, House

  "Emma Stone: Riot Girl" by Jessica Pressler, www.elle.com. June 8, 2011.

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• Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.- Those who boast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysics should receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundle which, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealed behind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products of that scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: a dear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certain quantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of 'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Nice, Light

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