Quotes about effort
page 12

Frances Kellor photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Taj El-Din Hilaly photo

“I support the Intifada of the Palestinian people…And I welcome the national and Islamic resistance efforts in Lebanon.”

Taj El-Din Hilaly (1941) Egyptian imam

Mufti of Australia Declares his Support of Hizbullah http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=2 March 2004.

Alexander Maclaren photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“The existence of zero nuclear weapons may sound utopian, but the effort is required in the name of humanity.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx.
2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Catherine Samba-Panza photo
Cesare Pavese photo

“In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Ben Carson photo

“Rather than reacting to every risk we hear and see, we should make an effort to discern which ones we can do something about.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 58

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Atal Bihari Vajpayee photo
Richard Nixon photo
Neville Chamberlain photo

“Mussolini…hoped Herr Hitler would see his way to postpone action [against Czechoslovakia] which the Chancellor had told Sir Horace Wilson was to be taken at 2 p. m. to-day for at least 24 hours so as to allow Signor Mussolini time to re-examine the situation and endeavour to find a peaceful settlement. In response, Herr Hitler has agreed to postpone mobilisation for 24 hours. Whatever views hon. Members may have had about Signor Mussolini in the past, I believe that everyone will welcome his gesture of being willing to work with us for peace in Europe. That is not all. I have something further to say to the House yet. I have now been informed by Herr Hitler that he invites me to meet him at Munich to-morrow morning. He has also invited Signor Mussolini and M. Daladier. Signor Mussolini has accepted and I have no doubt M. Daladier will also accept. I need not say what my answer will be. [An HON. MEMBER: "Thank God for the Prime Minister!"] We are all patriots, and there can be no hon. Member of this House who did not feel his heart leap that the crisis has been once more postponed to give us once more an opportunity to try what reason and good will and discussion will do to settle a problem which is already within sight of settlement. Mr. Speaker, I cannot say any more. I am sure that the House will be ready to release me now to go and see what I can make of this last effort. Perhaps they may think it will be well, in view of this new development, that this Debate shall stand adjourned for a few days, when perhaps we may meet in happier circumstances.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/sep/28/prime-ministers-statement in the House of Commons (28 September 1938). Chamberlain received Hitler's invitation to Munich as he was ending his speech.
Prime Minister

Learned Hand photo

“The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 9.
Extra-judicial writings

John Calvin photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Nat Friedman photo
Conrad Black photo
Michael Moorcock photo
Ben Carson photo

“I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you decide to do and how much effort you put behind it.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"Interview: Dr. Benjamin Carson Talks Race, Politics and Life After Medicine" http://www.christianpost.com/news/interview-dr-benjamin-carson-talks-race-politics-and-life-after-medicine-91474/, The Christian Post (March 8, 2013)

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon photo
Frances Fuller Victor photo

“There should be always contemporaneous recorded history. It is my experience that little value attaches to any other evidence, and that confusion results from admitting hearsay testimony. My whole effort has been to weed out worthless authorities and to stamp out prejudices.”

Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) American writer

In a letter to Frederic George Young of the University of Oregon, as quoted in Women of the Gold Rush https://archive.org/stream/womenofgoldrusht00vict#page/n17/mode/2up

Cesare Pavese photo

“Things which cost nothing are those which cost the most. Why? Because they cost us the effort of understanding that they are free.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood photo
Wanda Orlikowski photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“The struggle for existence is very difficult here [Berlin! - in 1911 Kirchner and his Brücke-friends moved from Dresden to Berlin], but the possibilities are also greater. I hope that we can create a fruitful new school and convince many new friends of the value of our efforts.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

quote in a letter to Louise Schiefler, from Berlin, 5 November 1911; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Grosstad, Eros und Natur, aus der verborgenen Sammlungen der Region, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst Germany, 2005, pp. 113-114
about the move of Die Brücke artists from Dresden to Berlin, Kirchner was optimistic in the beginning
1905 - 1915

Walther von Brauchitsch photo

“The German Army is tired. The vain effort to defeat Russia's armies has used up its equipment and reduced its morale.”

Walther von Brauchitsch (1881–1948) German field marshal

Quoted in "Kaltenborn Edits the War News" - Page 25 - by Hans Kaltenborn - 1942

Gregory Benford photo

“A danger in emphasizing mean values for each sex is that these values may be projected onto all or most normally developing men and women. The mean may be treated as a description of the typical group member, despite the fact that the majority of individuals fall above or below it. Psychologists do make some effort to stress that means cannot be attributed to all members of any group, as evidenced by the fact that we often append the phrase “on average” to our descriptions of mean differences. But is this enough? Consider again the robust sex difference in willingness to engage in casual sex: The mean SO [sociosexuality] score for men is higher than that for women. What does this tell us, though, about individual men and women? It clearly does not tell us that all men are interested in casual sex and that all women are not. However, given the degree of overlap between the male and female distributions, it also does not tell us that a large majority of men are more interested in casual sex than a large majority of women. That is, it is not accurate to say even that “men are typically more interested in casual sex than women, but there are of course exceptions.””

Here is what the data that the means are drawn from actually tell us:
Men and women can be found at virtually every level of interest in casual sex. At the right-hand tail of the distribution, only a small number of people are strongly interested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are men than women. At the left-hand tail, only a small number of people are strongly <I>dis</I>interested in casual sex; however, of these people, more are women than men. Most people — men <I>and</I> women — fall somewhere in between. If you were to choose one man and one woman at random, it would be somewhat more likely that the man would have higher SO. However, you wouldn't want to bet your life savings on it. Around a third of the time — i.e., closer to 50% than to 0% — the woman would have higher SO.
The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013)

Jay Leiderman photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Henri Fayol photo

“coordination of all efforts towards the overall goal;”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908

C. Rajagopalachari photo
Louis Auguste Blanqui photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“The honourable gentleman has alluded to the distresses and financial embarrassments of the country. I should be the last man to speak of those distresses in a slighting manner; but in considering the amount of our burdens, we ought not to forget under what circumstances those difficulties have been incurred. Engaged in an arduous struggle, single-handed and unaided, not only against all the powers of Europe, but with the confederated forces of the civilized world, our object was not merely military glory—not the temptation of territorial acquisition—not even what might be considered a more justifiable object, the assertion of violated rights and the vindication of national honour; but we were contending for our very existence as an independent nation. When the political horizon was thus clouded, when no human foresight could point out from what quarter relief was to be expected, when the utmost effort of national energy was not to despair, I would put to the honourable gentleman whether, if at that period it could have been shown that Europe might be delivered from its thraldom, but that this contingent must be purchased at the price of a long and patient endurance of our domestic burdens, we should not have accepted the conditions with gratitude? I lament as deeply as the honourable gentleman the burdens of the country; but it should be recollected that they were the price which we bad agreed to pay for our freedom and independence.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (16 May 1820), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 15-16.
1820s

Emil M. Cioran photo
Charlotte Brontë photo

“Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

This quote is sometimes pointing Brontë as the author, but is is originally attributed to Richard Whately, first quoted in The Railroad Telegrapher, Volume 18 (1901), Order of Railroad Telegraphers, page 713.
Disputed

Amartya Sen photo

“That austerity is a counterproductive economic policy in a situation of economic recession can be seen, rightly, as a “Keynesian critique.” Keynes did argue—and persuasively—that to cut public expenditure when an economy has unused productive capacity as well as unemployment owing to a deficiency of effective demand would tend to have the effect of slowing down the economy further and increasing—rather than decreasing—unemployment. Keynes certainly deserves much credit for making that rather basic point clear even to policymakers, irrespective of their politics, and he also provided what I would call a sketch of a theory of explaining how all this can be nicely captured within a general understanding of economic interdependences between different activities… I am certainly supportive of this Keynesian argument, and also of Paul Krugman’s efforts in cogently developing and propagating this important perspective, and in questioning the policy of massive austerity in Europe.
But I would also argue that the unsuitability of the policy of austerity is only partly due to Keynesian reasons. Where we have to go well beyond Keynes is in asking what public expenditure is for—other than for just strengthening effective demand, no matter what its content. As it happens, European resistance to savage cuts in public services and to indiscriminate austerity is not based only, or primarily, on Keynesian reasoning. The resistance is based also on a constructive point about the importance of public services—a perspective that is of great economic as well as political interest in Europe.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Amartya Sen, "What Happened to Europe?", New Republic (August 2, 2012)
2010s

Fredric Jameson photo
Richard Russo photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“A tool is not necessarily better because it is bigger. A tool is best if it does the job required with a minimum of effort, with a minimum of complexity, and with a minimum of power.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 224

William Stanley Jevons photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo

“Writing fiction is … an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Source: Old Home Town (1935), Ch. 1.

Mohamed Nasheed photo

“Elections should be held only by the elections commission. The efforts by Jumhoory Party leader Gasim Ibrahim to keep [scandal hit] judge Ali Hameed in the Supreme Court bench are quite clear to me. He is also trying to bribe some members of our party's parliamentary group.”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Quoted on Haveeru, "Nasheed accuses Supreme Court of trying to 'rob' council elections" http://www.haveeru.com.mv/news/53270, January 14, 2013.

Vilhelm Ekelund photo

“What has been postponed by reason of road and effort is well postponed.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 132

Michael Moorcock photo
Baldassarre Castiglione photo

“Practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.”

Baldassarre Castiglione (1478–1529) Italian Renaissance author (1478-1529)

Usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura, che nasconda l'arte e dimostri ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza fatica e quasi senza pensarvi.
Bk. 1, ch. 26; p. 35.
Souced, Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)

Marco Rubio photo
Marianne Moore photo
Lee Myung-bak photo
Ernst Mach photo

“The mental operation by which one achieves new concepts and which one denotes generally by the inadequate name of induction is not a simple but rather a very complicated process. Above all, it is not a logical process although such processes can be inserted as intermediary and auxiliary links. The principle effort that leads to the discovery of new knowledge is due to abstraction and imagination.”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

3rd edition, p. 318ff, As quoted by Phillip Frank, Philosophy of Science: The Link Between Science and Philosophy (1957)
20th century, "Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung" (1905)

Thomas Szasz photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Condoleezza Rice photo

“Protests are a part of our democratic heritage and our democratic privilege … [US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq] are finally getting those countries to the place that actually people might have the same privilege of protest.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4798183-110878,00.html The Guardian, 2003-11-15

“The evolution of scientific thought is inseparable from the history of man's efforts to resolve the perplexities of his own existence.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 2. The Age of Innocence

Ayn Rand photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“In an effort to create reality on the ground - instead of reporting on it - the American media seem to color events by refracting them through a sickeningly sentimental prism.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Media’s Sickening Sentimentality on Egypt,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=587 WorldNetDaily.com, February 19, 2011.
2010s, 2011

Alain Aspect photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Tonight Vietnam must hold the center of our attention, but across the world problems and opportunities crowd in on the American Nation. I will discuss them fully in the months to come, and I will follow the five continuing lines of policy that America has followed under its last four Presidents. The first principle is strength. Tonight I can tell you that we are strong enough to keep all of our commitments. We will need expenditures of $58.3 billion for the next fiscal year to maintain this necessary defense might. While special Vietnam expenditures for the next fiscal year are estimated to increase by $5.8 billion, I can tell you that all the other expenditures put together in the entire federal budget will rise this coming year by only $0.6 billion. This is true because of the stringent cost-conscious economy program inaugurated in the Defense Department, and followed by the other departments of government. A second principle of policy is the effort to control, and to reduce, and to ultimately eliminate the modern engines of destruction. We will vigorously pursue existing proposals—and seek new ones—to control arms and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. A third major principle of our foreign policy is to help build those associations of nations which reflect the opportunities and the necessities of the modern world. By strengthening the common defense, by stimulating world commerce, by meeting new hopes, these associations serve the cause of a flourishing world. We will take new steps this year to help strengthen the Alliance for Progress, the unity of Europe, the community of the Atlantic, the regional organizations of developing continents, and that supreme association—the United Nations. We will work to strengthen economic cooperation, to reduce barriers to trade, and to improve international finance.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Elia M. Ramollah photo
K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera photo
Michael Swanwick photo

“I would appreciate it if just this once you would make the effort to curb your negativism.”
“I have to say what I think. That’s what I’m being paid for, after all.”

“A very common delusion.”
Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 1, “The Leviathan in Flight” (p. 10)

Eduard Hanslick photo

“That the sweetly intoxicating three-four rhythm which took hold of hand & foot, necessarily eclipsed great & serious music & made the audience unfit for any intellectual effort goes without saying.”

Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) austrian musician and musicologist

Quoted by Long Beach Opera Co. http://www.longbeachopera.org/index.php4?id=200403

Margaret Fuller photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
George Eliot photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Carl Panzram photo
Napoleon Hill photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Gabrielle Roy photo

“Quality improves with effort according to an exponential curve.”

Robert W. Bly (1957) American writer

101 Ways to Make Every Second Count: Time Management Tips and Techniques for More Success With Less Stress (1999)

“All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

<span title="New York Public Library card required, which can be requested online at http://nypl.org">"Postcard from L.A.,"</span> http://i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/476511393/ The Observer, (10 June 1979) http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/doc/476511393.html
Essays and reviews

Francis Escudero photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Paulo Freire photo

“Nothing is impossible. Just put a lot of effort and dedication because any of you can be the same or better than Yamilet…”

Yamilet Peña (1992) female gymnast from the Dominican Republic

Quoted in Manauri Jorge, 2012.
ARS Universal Press Conference, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2012-08-19

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Éamon de Valera photo

“All history is man's efforts to realise ideals.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

(5 February 1929).
I'm Glad You Asked Me That (2007)

Herbert Spencer photo

“Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

Pierre Corneille photo

“The greater the effort, the greater the glory.”

Plus l'effort est grand, plus la gloire en est grande.
Pauline, act IV, scene v.
Polyeucte (1642)
Variant: The greater the effort, the greater the glory.