Quotes about embarrassment (441 quotes, page 2)

“I never exert pressure on my children: I encourage the children, Katija and Rahima, to pursue their dreams. Rahima is embarrassed by autograph-seekers and doesn't want me to visit her school. In fact, I have never attended a single PTA meeting or gone to pick up the report cards of my children.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

A R Rahman: In tune with life

Children , School , Dreams

“We comprehend… that nuclear power is a real danger for mankind, that over-crowding of the planet is the greatest danger of all. We have understood that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Memory

“Grover Norquist is a mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep… an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home… [He] is repulsive, granted, but there aren't nearly enough of him to start a purge trial.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

Slate magazine, 17 July 1997
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1997/07/right-wing-journalism-4.html

Home

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women , People , World , Behavior

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth , Hope , Business , Freedom

“Fiction is just a constant torment, and an embarrassment. I loathe my fiction. I have a fantasy when I'm passing a bookstore that I could click my fingers and all my books would go blank, so that I could start again and get them right.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Books

“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, […] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, … The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures … Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, … Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, […] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order […] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. […] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, […] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234

Life , Hostility , Fate , World

“I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 256

People , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is that we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Women , Money , Friendship , Truth

“For me the ideal Olympics would be to go in with all that pressure, all that attention and have performances that are literally tear-jerking, that make people put their heads down because they’re embarrassed at how emotional they’re getting, that make people want to try sports, talk to their kids, call their f---ing ex-wives—and come away with no medals. I think that would be epic. That would be the perfect thing.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Newsweek, Nov. 2005, pub. 23 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11522274/

People , Jerk , Thinking , Tear

“'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that "proof" of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: "If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad."' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast… to Kant?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Never Talk to Strangers', MG, here Woland, Berlioz and Ivan are talking about Kant's views on existence of God
The Master and Margarita (1967)

People , Forgiveness , Thinking , Madness

“The President has so much good publicity potential that hasn't been exploited. He should just sit down one day and make a list of all the things that people are embarrassed to do that they shouldn't be embarrassed to do, and then do them all on television.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work

People

“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 book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

Future

“The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in The Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/the_hitch/article719803.ece (2008-01-26)

“Unused to the situations in which I find myself, and embarrassed by the slightest difficulties, I seldom, till too late, discover how I ought to act.”

Frances Burney book Evelina

Letter LXVI
Evelina (1778)

“Nowhere have REH’s epistemological flaws and empirical disappointments been more apparent than in efforts to model financial market outcomes, which are largely driven by participants’ expectations. Beginning with Robert Shiller’s (1981) pathbreaking paper, research has shown that REH models are unable to explain the basic features of fluctuations and risk in stock markets. Likewise, in their magisterial work on the current state of international macroeconomics, Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth Rogoff (1996: 625) concluded that “the undeniable difficulties that international economists encounter in empirically explaining nominal exchangerate movements are an embarrassment, but one shared with virtually any other field that attempts to explain asset price data.” The failures of REH explanations of aggregate outcomes gave rise to alternative approaches, most notably behavioral finance models. However, sober assessments even by the likes of Obstfeld and Rogoff did not dispel the faith of most economists that REH models would one day be able to explain financial market outcomes and macroeconomic performance.”

Roman Frydman (1948) American economist

"Which Way Forward for Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis?" 2013

Faith , Disappointment , Behavior , Failure

“As a young man, I was more a white liberal than I ever tried to put on black. For all that, I ended up a “minority,” the beneficiary of affirmative action programs to redress black exclusion. And, harder to say, my brown advantage became a kind of embarrassment. For I never had an adversarial relationship to American culture. I was never at war with the tongue. Brown was no longer invisible by the time I got to college. In the white appraisal, brown skin became a coat of disadvantage, which was my advantage. Acknowledgment came at a price, then as now. (Three decades later, the price of being a published brown author is that one cannot be shelved near those one has loved. The price is segregation.) I remain at best ambivalent about those Hispanic anthologies where I end up; about those anthologies where I end up the Hispanic; about shelves at the bookstore where I look for myself and find myself. The fact that my books are published at all is the result of the slaphappy strategy of the northern black Civil Rights movement.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Love , War , Books , Time

“I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),
write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two
whose glittering scales, so fleeting,
may only be the dark's embarrassed wink.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"In Heraclitus' River"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

Fish , Tree

“Does he really want to step into the ring with best fighter of this era and embarrass himself? Being the coward that he is, I doubt he'll get in the ring. We'll see what his excuse will be this time… When I retire, I'll get Ricky Hatton to wash my clothes and cut my lawn and buckle my shoes.”

Floyd Mayweather Jr. (1977) American boxer

About Ricky Hatton, as quoted in BBC http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/6328555.stm.

Shoe , Time , Clothes

“I immediately lost what breath I had left. And I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Gorsuch describing his reaction after receiving a cell telephone call while skiing informing him that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. Quote from "In Judge Neil Gorsuch, an Echo of Scalia in Philosophy and Style." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-nominee.html?_r=0 The New York Times. January 31, 2017.

Way , Mountain , Tear

“Everyone in the family wears fur except me. … Kim wore fur last night. I told her you cannot wear fur. It's embarrassing.”

Khloé Kardashian (1984) American television personality

"Khloe Kardashian Butts In to Animal Rights" https://web.archive.org/web/20081214052242/http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b72579_khloe_kardashian_butts_in_animal_rights.html, E! Online (10 December 2008).

Family , Night

“Fingers: We’ve all got them and we shouldn’t be embarrassed about them.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

“On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "…Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should…I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information…" Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic."”

Jack Cafferty (1942) American journalist

Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close.
[CNN, Jack Cafferty on Sarah Palin, 26 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc]
2008

Hell , Light , Wolf , Time

“About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I'd never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don't even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, "Wow." And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn't write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn't write any of it. What's disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I'm embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Interviews

People , Thinking , Drawing

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn't have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn't have to be "represented" in "data structures" in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes. So there is wisdom, particularly about preferences, embodied in the rest of the body. By using the old bodily systems as a sort of sounding board, or reactive audience, or critic, the central nervous system can be guided — sometimes nudged, sometimes slammed — into wise policies. Put it to the vote of the body, in effect….When all goes well, harmony reigns and the various sources of wisdom in the body cooperate for the benefit of the whole, but we are all too familiar with the conflicts that can provoke the curious outburst "My body has a mind of its own!" Sometimes, apparently, it is tempting to lump together some of the embodied information into a separate mind. Why? Because it is organized in such a way that it can sometimes make independent discriminations, consult preferences, make decisions, enact policies that are in competition with your mind. At such time, the Cartesian perspective of a puppeteer self trying desperately to control an unruly body-puppet is very powerful. Your body can vigorously betray the secrets you are desperately trying to keep — by blushing and trembling or sweating, to mention only the most obvious cases. It can "decide" that in spite of your well-laid plans, right now would be a good time for sex, not intellectual discussion, and then take embarrassing steps in preparation for a coup d'etat. On another occasion, to your even greater chagrin and frustration, it can turn a deaf ear on your own efforts to enlist it for a sexual campaign, forcing you to raise the volume, twirl the dials, try all manner of preposterous cajolings to persuade it.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

Wisdom , Secret , Sex , Way

“I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Live" with Thomas Sowell https://www.aei.org/publication/live-thomas-sowell/, The American Enterprise, September 2004.
2000s

People , Courage

“I take great pride in my literary works. Journalism is much faster. I'm not embarrassed by my journalism. I consider it to be like sketches, like an artist's sketch. I use it later in other writing. But I don't pretend that it has high literary merit either. I can do an essay pretty fast. I do them on airplanes, I do them at hotels, I do them at bus stops sometimes. I've written very good things on the go.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

“Political science, by which I mean nothing more abstruse or academic than consideration of a foreign country as a country in its own right, seems to have been almost completely supplanted by a preoccupation with international relations. What is thought irrelevant to that side of things (often wrongly) is considered beneath notice. This can be seen by the reflexiveness with which journalists now contact I. R. professors or nuclear specialists for comment on North Korea’s motivations, party conferences, personality cult, etc — and the perfect confidence with which that comment is supplied.This is not to say that discussion of the current crisis does justice to international relations as a discipline. Usually it is conducted in a very simplistic, moralizing, America-centric fashion, with no apparent sense of history. Much of the stuff on Twitter or in op-ed pieces is all the more embarrassing for having been written from a presumed position of great intellectual superiority to Donald Trump. For all his unsuitedness to be president, the fellow is no more ignorant of North Korea’s political nature than most of his critics are.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, And Then What? (June 2018)

Justice , Confidence , History , Motivation

“Everyone feels embarrassed, but when you laugh it off, it's fine.”

Corbin Bleu (1989) American actor, model, dancer, producer, and singer-songwriter

Tigerbeat interview (2006)

Feeling

“No question of priority arose to embarrass me in my loyalties to the railway companies until the Parliamentary session of 1924-25… In Scotland the Dean of Faculty [of Advocates] is the deciding authority… He pointed out that the L. M. S. Company which was claiming me was not the L. M. S. Company which had retained me… So I was awarded to the L. N. E. R. and duly appeared in the Committee Rooms on their behalf.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 138-9

Question , Appearance , Loyalty

“Out whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretense of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

World , Heart , Christ , Despair

“But you should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living
Cause it's the ones with the sorest throats Laura,
who have done the most singing.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Laura Laurent
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Singing

“While we need to deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online, we must not forget about the safe spaces that continue to exist in the real world. Yes, that means taking military action to destroy Isis in Iraq and Syria. But it also means taking action here at home. While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations. But the whole of our country needs to come together to take on this extremism, and we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech after the London Bridge attack (4 June 2017)

World , Home , Communication , Country

“Mugabe has destroyed that country while South Africa has stood by and done nothing. The way Mugabe was feted at the inauguration last month was an embarrassing disgrace. But it served well to illustrate very clearly Mbeki's point of view.”

Helen Suzman (1917–2009) South African politician

As quoted in "Democracy? It was better under apartheid, says Helen Suzman" https://web.archive.org/web/20120901223952/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1462042/Democracy-It-was-better-under-apartheid-says-Helen-Suzman.html (15 May 2004), by Jane Flanagan, The Telegraph
2000s

Way , Country

“Things have come to such a point in good society that, if you want to be polite, you can no longer ask a man from what country he comes, for if he is a Norman or a Calabrian he has, when he tells you so, to beg your pardon, or, if he is from the Pays de Vaud, to say he is Swiss. Nor will you ask a nobleman what his arms are, for if he does not know the jargon of heraldry you will embarrass him. You must not compliment a gentleman on his fine hair, for if it is a wig, he may think you are mocking him, nor praise a man or a woman on their fine teeth, for they may be false.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 8, chapter 9, p. 243
Referenced

Thinking , Falseness , Country

“Not once did an off-the-record comment return to haunt me. For example, my relationship with Walter Pincus, editor of the New Republic, one of the nation’s most liberal magazines, developed to the point were he understood our conversations went off the record without my having to say so. I never divulged anything of great substance, but many of my comments about personalities and my own prejudices could have been extremely embarrassing had he (or others) betrayed my confidence.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 236
At That Point in Time, Off-the record meetings

Confidence , Personality

“(speaking in a solemn tone to a group of young school children) Now you know that your headmistress, Miss Davis, was going to come in here and just check that you were all going to be well behaved. She can’t do that because, as many of you probably know, she can’t be here today, er, because her pants fell down earlier on. It’s not funny. If any of you see her, don’t make a fuss because it’s a bit embarrassing for her, OK? Alright? It’s not funny.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Children , School

“It’s only one planet. It’s all we have. So what we do here affects the other side of the planet in ways we never know. … I am [vegetarian] too, but leaning towards veganism. … I give people the dirtiest look when we walk down the street and see someone wearing fur. He gets embarrassed because I will look at them like, how could you even walk out of your house like that? You might as well be wearing my dog. What are you doing? I started getting into animal rights when I met him [Corey Feldman], but I’ve always loved animals.”

Susie Feldman (1982) American actress

"Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Corey and Susie Feldman Are Proud To Be Veg!", interview with Ecorazzi (11 December 2008) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/11/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-corey-and-susie-feldman-are-proud-to-be-veg/.

Love , People , Dogs , Way

“Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder,
Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives
being embarrassed by our parents and the last part
being embarrassed by our childer.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"What I Know About Life"
Versus (1949)

Life , Fate , Parent , Parting

“Sex was an infringement, an attack, an invasion; there was no other way he could see it; every act, however magical and intensely enjoyed, and however willingly conducted, seemed to carry a harmonic of rapacity. He took her, and however much she gained in provoked pleasure and in his own increasing love, she was still the one that suffered the act, had it played out upon her and inside her. He was aware of the absurdity of trying too hard to develop the comparison between sex and war; he had been laughed out of several embarrassing situations trying to do so (“Zakalwe,” she would say when he tried to explain some of this, and she would put her cool slim fingers behind his neck and stare out from the rambunctious black tangle of her hair. “You have serious problems.””

Iain Banks Culture series

She would smile), But the feelings, the acts, the structure of the two were to him so close, so self-evidently akin, that such a reaction only forced him deeper into his confusion.
Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter IX (pp. 144-145).

Love , War , Pleasure , Smile

“No change (Marshall replacing former SecDef. Louis Johnson, who, soon after he resigned, was diagnosed with a fatal "brain malady") could have been more welcome to me. It brought only one embarrassment. The General (Marshall) insisted, overruling every protest of mine, in meticulously observing the protocol involved in my being the senior Cabinet officer. Never would he go through a door before me, or walk anywhere but on my left; he would go around an automobile to enter it after me and sit on the left; in meetings he would insist on my speaking before him. To be treated so by a revered and beloved former chief was a harrowing experience. But the result in government was, I think, unique in the history of the Republic. For the first time and perhaps, though I am not sure, the last, the Secretaries of State and Defense, with their top advisors, met with the Chiefs of Staff in their map room and discussed common problems together. At one of these meetings General Bradley and I made a treaty, thereafter scrupulously observed. The phrases 'from a military point of view' and 'from a political point of view' were excluded from our talks. No such dichotomy existed. Each of us had our tactical and strategic problems, but they were interconnected, not separate.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

History , Problem , Thinking , Change

“When the veil drops, victims face financial wreckage… A lot of people call me, and they just want to talk, tell me what happened. But they don't want to go forward. They're too embarrassed. They don't want to see their name in the papers.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

How Modern Fortunetellers Pull Off Their Scams https://web.archive.org/web/20180222195134/http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/how-modern-fortunetellers-pull-off-their-scams-6352098, Broward Palm Beach New Times (6 June 2013)

People

“Mainstream sociological theory sees differences in jobs, skills, and education as the primary causes of inequality, and substantial wealth transfers embarrass this theory. The classical sociologist Emil Durkheim, for example, predicted that family inheritances would decline over time in favor of giving to charitable and nonprofit organizations, but studies examining actual bequests invalidate this predication. … In 1989 charitable bequests constituted less than 10 percent of proceeds of estates valued at over $600,000 in the United States.”

Thomas Shapiro (1947) American sociologist

Source: The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (2005), p. 32

Education , Family , Study , Time

“I think of my pictures as dramas; the shapes in the pictures are the performers. They have been created from the need for a group of actors who are able to move dramatically without embarrassment and execute gestures without shame. Neither the action nor the actors can be anticipated, or described in advance. They begin a an unknown adventure in an unknown space... Ideas and plans that existed in the mind at the start were simply the doorway through which one left the world in which they occur. The great cubist pictures thus transcend and belie the implications of the cubist program.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, pp. 167-168

World , Idea , Thinking

“I was profoundly embarrassed by it [the White Australia Policy] and did all I could to change it.”

Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) Australian politician, 21st Prime Minister of Australia

Quoted in Paul Kelly, 100 Years – The Australian Story (Allen & Unwin, ABC Books, NSW, 2001), p. 196

Change

“What terrible moments does one feel after one has engaged for a large work! In the beginning of my translating the Iliad, I wished any body would hang me a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, that I often used to dream of it; and do so sometimes still. When I fell into the method of translating 30 or 40 verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of the morning, it went on easily enough; and when I was thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with pleasure. […] The Iliad took me up six years, and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehensions. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night. I dreamed often of being engaged in a long journey, and that I should never get to the end of it. This made so strong an impression upon me, that I sometimes dream of it still; of being engaged in that translation, of having got about half way through it, and being embarrassed, and under dread of never completing it.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

As quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [arranged, with notes, by the late Edmund Malone], pp. 28–29 & 53–54.
Attributed

Pain , Pleasure , Dreams , Way

“One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Religion in the UK" (17 April 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=uOYje1oJt7Q
2007

Life , God , Feeling , Personality

“The criticisms were so tepid they were embarrassing. Almost nobody, including me, dared to criticize the U. S. attack on South Vietnam. That's like talking Hittite. Nobody even understood the words.”

Noam Chomsky book Class Warfare

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Class Warfare, 1995

“In 1978 I was on a parliamentary delegation to Japan and returned via China during the Cultural Revolution, a choice also made by young Winston Churchill, then the Conservative MP for Stretford. I was debriefed by the Minister for Information who asked if there was anything at all I would like to ask. I said: "Yes. Everything you do, you do with extreme care and precision. When I ask questions that your government does not like, my driver calls for me five minutes later than arranged. When I ask if there are any blind or handicapped children in China, I get cabbage soup for dinner."Now I am in your country with a colleague, than whom I am older, have been in parliament longer, have held higher positions in our respective political parties: we are both staying at the Peking Palace Hotel and his suite is bigger than mine. Why?"The Minister, very embarrassed, finally said: "It is because Mr Churchill had a famous grandfather."It is the only time that I have been out-grandfathered.”

Clement Freud (1924–2009) English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef

Some questions of interpretation

Children , Question , Time , Country

“(when children can watch without embarrassment their mothers breast feed brothers and sister) They realize the wholesomeness of sex and its naturalness. They don't put sex in the wrong proportion.”

Grace Kelly (1929–1982) American actress and Princess consort of Monaco

The Milwaukee Sentinel Princess Puts Motherhood First Jul 17, 1971

Children , Sex , Nature , Sister

“I wasn't into glam-rock. I was just into him. I never really saw him as glam-rock. Actually, I liked T-Rex too. Electric Warrior was great. But Bowie made me think. I just got lost in it—Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust—that era. I thought it was just magical, although I was dead impressionable then. But I though he looked brilliant—I still do. I hated the following he had though, especially around the Aladdin Sane era—it just destroyed his mystique. He doesn't hold that mystique for me now—he's just a normal bloke, I suppose. But I remember in 1972 when he was on the telly doing "Starman"—I couldn't believe it! It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It's meant to be a bit of an embarrassing admission now to have liked that kind of thing, but I really did. And I remember when I grew out of it and I couldn't get into Ziggy Stardust the way I used to. I felt really sad about it. I played it and nothing happened.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Describing how he feels about David Bowie
NME (1980)

Hate , World , Sadness , Way

“But at first we must necessarily meet with the inconveniences and difficulties and embarrassments incident to all changes of government. These will be felt in our postal affairs and changes in the channel of trade. These inconveniences, it is to be hoped, will be but temporary, and must be borne with patience and forbearance.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Hope , Change , Patience

“Humans are an embarrassing species w/ small glimmers of beauty that seep through the veil of bigotry&stupidity, every once in a small while.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

17 June 2014 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/479082538904723457
Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

Stupidity , Beauty

“This is love, and the trouble with it: it can make you embarrassed. Love is really liking someone a whole lot and not wanting to screw that up. Everybody's chewed over this. This unites us, this part of love.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Collectively

Love , Parting

“I asked you to conquer your fear, but all you did was give in to it. If you were in love with her, that would be one thing. Love is something to be afraid of, but this, this is embarrassing. So she talks too much, so she's too enthused about every little thing, so what? Get in, get your question answered, and get out. Stand up to her, for cryin' out loud!”

Wendelin Van Draanen Flipped

Flipped (2001)

Love , Fear , Question

“As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2005-08-19
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/what_cindy_sheehan_really_wants.html
What Cindy Sheehan Really Wants
Slate
1091-2339
2000s, 2005

Family

“I do like girls as friends, but definitely not as girlfriends. Bleurgh! Lots of girls try to hug me and tell me I'm cute, which is really embarrassing.”

Joseph McManners (1992) British singer, actor

Interview with British Newspaper The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk:

Girl

“Mary is embarrassed, because the people are bowing down to statues of her.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Why Is Mary Crying? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0040/0040_01.asp" (1987)

People

“He was ashamed and embarrassed, angry too that such a man could end like this. If peace did eventually come, there would be many more redcoats begging in the streets.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 6 "Single-Handed"

Peace

“You have spoken much today of my self-sacrifice and devotion to my country. I have heard that kind of speech ever since I came out of jail, but I hear it with embarrassment, with something of pain. For I know my weakness, I am a prey to my own faults and backslidings. I was not blind to them before and when they all rose up against me in seclusion, I felt them utterly. I knew them that I the man was a man of weakness, a faulty and imperfect instrument, strong only when a higher strength entered into me. Then I found myself among these young men and in many of them I discovered a mighty courage, a power of self-effacement in comparison with which I was simply nothing. I saw one or two who were not only superior to me in force and character, - very many were that, — but in the promise of that intellectual ability on which I prided myself.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Uttarpara Address (1909)

Men , Pain , Courage , Strong

“It's always a source of anxiety, come Emmy time… People are so supportive and so kind, but they put ideas in your head that you don't want to hear. They go, 'I know you're going to win,' and then when you lose, those same people don't want to make eye contact with you. I don't know who's more embarrassed, me or them.”

Scott Clifton (1984) American television actor, musician, internet personality.

Responding to an interviewer's question, "What's going on in your head leading up to tonight?" at the 38th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony. (19 June 2011) http://www.soapoperanetwork.com/interviews/item/4926-backstage-interview-with-daytime-emmy-award-winner-scott-clifton

People , Idea , Support , Time

“How often feelings are circular. How embarrassing to be embarrassed. How annoying to be annoyed.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

Aphorism #27
Interglacial (2004)

Feeling

“Barack has lead by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test—for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Speech to the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee in New York City (June 2008), quoted in "Did Michelle say Barack born in Kenya?" http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/136769/ by Jerome R. Corsi, WND.com (5 April 2010). Michelle says Barack's Home country is Kenya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJihJBePcs (YouTube video)
2000s

Home , Country

“You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination ¿ at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent. Not to just go ahead and make something that¿s completely different and ruin a franchise. At the same time, you don't want to be embarrassed in front of your peers and look like you¿re just copying something, and there's nothing individual. It's a very tricky balance. There are pressures, because you¿re going to be compared to the predecessors.”

Renny Harlin (1959) Finnish film director and film producer

Interview With Renny Harlin http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/04/27/interview-with-renny-harlin (April 27, 2001)

Truth , Imagination , Time

“I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Thinking

“What the immigrant cannot help noticing is that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, "People Like Us", which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have television sets and microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception of America that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?"”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

He replied, "Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."
Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 3: Becoming American

People , Cars , Help , Country

“How many times, have I had to seat women whom I received at audiences next to me, rather than facing me, in order to avoid general embarrassment? Nothing should compel us to suffer such trials. It puts the nerves of men and the modesty of women to a severe test.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Women , Men , Suffering , Time

“England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813)
1810s

Law , Idea , Personality , Country

“Though my heart is filled with feelings I want to convey
You see, I can't express them in words
If I had not met you
I wouldn't even have such an embarrassing pain”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

No Way To Say
Lyrics, Memorial Address

Pain , Feeling , Heart

“Nobody liked the caesar haircut. It was such an issue this year. There were memos about it. (…) I knew it was doomed when my grandmother, who swore she would never leave Ireland again, came over for the last time, walked in the door and told me I had to change my hairstyle. Not for my own sake, but because I had 'relations' and it's embarrassing for them.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article "Dawson's Geek" in Us Weekly magazine (October 1998)

Change , Time

“Surrealism was a genuine addition to the repertoire of avant-garde arts, its novelty attested by the ability to produce shock, incomprehension, or what amounted to the same thing, a sometimes, embarrassed laughter, even among the older avant-garde.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

The Arts 1914-1945
The Age of Extremes (1992)

Art , Laughter

“To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"On Being Embarrassed" (p. 140)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

“I don't care what denomination you belong to, as long as you're embarrassed by it.”

Irving Greenberg (1933) American rabbi

As quoted by Baruch Sienna in a 2006 review http://www.kolel.org/pages/blogger/2009/01/nothing-sacred-douglas-rushkoff-crown.html of Nothing Sacred : The Truth about Judaism (2003) by Douglas Rushkoff, and in "Across The Great Divide" by Jonathan Mark in The Jewish Week (3 September 2008) http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a13303/News/New_York.html.

“When I'm shooting, I just try to make sure I wouldn't be embarrassed of it later, because in Watertown, you don't get away with anything.”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

Eliza Dushku in Black and White http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/06_improper-bostonian.html

“In 2005: "Most of my fans are too sensitive. I’m a cruel and cold and hard person. I’ve been abused in every way you can imagine. Save your tears. I lost my sensitivity. You embarrass me when you cry."”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,3-2005270012,,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/article532790.ece
On his fans

Way , Imagination , Tear , Personality

“Since World War Two, Britain's elite has suffered from a collective collapse of cultural nerve. Many things contributed: postwar exhaustion, the collapse of the British Empire (and therefore of national purpose), and post-colonial flagellatory guilt of the kind that white western liberals have made their specialty. This left the British establishment vulnerable to the revolutionary ideology of the New Left, at the core of which lay a hatred of western society. As a consequence, the British elite decided not only that the British nation was an embarrassment but also that the very idea of the nation was an anachronism.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"The Country That Hates Itself" http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-country-that-hates-itself (June 16, 2006)

War , World , Idea , Suffering

“I would like to tell them, the graduates, all of this, and I know that if we thought they would not be embarrassed by hearing it, we would all be telling them about how proud we are of them and how much we believe in them and their future. But again maybe we don't have to tell them; maybe they know. Maybe they can tell just by seeing the love in our eyes today.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

Love , Future

“In 1982, when he was 45 and Philadelphia 76er owner Harold Katz was hot after him, the Houston Chronicle's George White asked Elvin Hayes if Chamberlain could still play. "Some things about Wilt, you never forgot," Hayes said. "He was such an awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down there and look up at him when he's towering up over you waiting to dunk, was a terrifying picture. To see him poised up there, knowing he was about to sweep down with that big jam... that must be the most frightening sight in sports. The ball goes shooting through the net and you better have your body covered up because he could really hurt someone. I was scared. Everyone was scared when he got that look in his eye, that don't-try-to-stop-this look that he got when he really wanted it.... "I think Russell realized there was no way he could have stopped Wilt if he had been fully intent on making it a two-man game. No one who ever put on a uniform could have done it. When I played him, I kept this foremost in my mind: Above all, don't make him mad. Don't embarrass him. You wanted to keep him quiet as long as possible."”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

[Heisler, Mark, Larger Than Life, The Los Angeles Times, 1999-10-13]
Post-NBA life

Way , Game , Thinking , Sport

“It's disgraceful and embarrassing that the highest technology in a typical inner city high school in this country is the metal detector the students pass through at the front door.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Metal Front Doors with Glass Like Success, likesuccess.com, 2017-01-16 http://likesuccess.com/img4416163,

School , Country

“We must have a new commitment to excellence and transparency at MU. The leadership of the school failed the students who expected more from the great university they chose to attend. Professor Click, on the grounds of an institution that is supposed to carry the banner of free thought and expression, on a campus with one of the world’s leading journalism schools -- trampled on the First Amendment, the very sacred defender of individual thought. The actions of a rogue professor and rudderless leaders have embarrassed the university and our state. To begin moving forward, it is long past time for the University to remove Professor Click. We must renew our commitment to Mizzou, which really is a commitment to the students, who are the future of our great state.”

Eric Schmitt (1975) American politician, lawyer

Reforming Mizzou: Earning back the taxpayers’ trust http://www.columbiatribune.com/bf4d55bb-fee4-5a97-8341-2824a3baba05.html (January 10, 2016)

World , School , Universe , Time

“Life is a magic garden. With wondrous softly shining flowers, but between the flowers there are the little gnomes, they frighten me so much, they stand on their heads, and the worst is, they call out to me that I should also stand on my head, every once in a while I try, and I die of embarrassment; but sometimes the gnomes shout that I am doing very well, and that I’m indeed a real gnome myself after all. But on no account I will ever fall for that.”

L. E. J. Brouwer (1881–1966) Dutch mathematician and logician

To C.S. Adama van Scheltema (1906); in Dirk van Dalen (ed.) The Selected Correspondence of L.E.J. Brouwer (2011), p. 23

Life , Flowers

“They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet… in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the American public, as quoted in "The Awkward Conscience of a Nation" in The Daily Mirror (3 November 2003); also partly quoted in "The company they keep" by Michael Barone, in U.S.News & World Report (12 July 2004) http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/040712/12barone.htm
2004

People , Stupidity , Suffering , Country

“Richard Chase declares, "No great poet has written so much bad verse as Emily Dickinson." He blames the Victorian cult of little women for the fact that "two thirds of her work" is seriously flawed: "Her coy and oddly childish poems of nature and female friendship are products of a time when one of the careers open to women was perpetual childhood." Dickinson's sentimental feminine poems remain neglected by embarrassed scholars. I would maintain, however, that her poetry is a closed system of sexual reference and that the mawkish poems are designed to dovetail with those of violence and suffering.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 637

Women , Friendship , Nature , Suffering

“I read Wuthering Heights when I was seven. I stole a copy from the library. We weren’t allowed books in the house because they’re ‘dirty and dusty’. My mum had a shelf of fake leather books which my dad used to hide whisky behind. I used to die of embarrassment every time a visitor tried to pick up a book and realized it was fake.
The library was forbidden so it became exotic and sexy in my imagination. I was dying to get in there and read a book!”

Carole Morin British writer

Trivial and Profound (2013)

Books , Imagination , Time , Reading

“As a physician I am embarrassed by the lack of initiative and obstructionist policies of my own medical profession toward healthier lifestyles. This is not surprising. Physicians lack training and knowledge of nutrition and are self-serving when they proclaim “patients won't follow plant-based nutrition.” Having counseled patients with severe coronary artery heart disease for over twenty years, I find the opposite to be true. Patients sent home to die by expert cardiologists after failing bypass or stents rejoice as they lose weight, eliminate angina chest pains, lessen their medication, lower their blood sugars, decrease or come off their insulin, revert their positive stress test back to normal, selectively diminish the plaque plugging their arteries, and resume a fully active life empowered by the knowledge that they, not their physicians, have become the locus of control for the disease that was destroying them.”

Caldwell Esselstyn (1933) American physician, author and rower

Foreword https://books.google.it/books?id=6Aosc1wlAXcC&pg=PA1 to No More Bull! by Howard Lyman (New York: Scribner, 2005).

Life , Pain , Disease , Home

“You could not tell a potential customer, expecting a learned and ancient magician, that you were not eve fully grown. Magnus had started lying about his age young, and had never dropped the habit.
It did get a little embarrassing sometimes when he forgot what lie he'd told to whom. Someone had once asked him what Julius Caeser was like, and Magnus had stared at him for much too long and said, 'Not tall?”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013), p. 20.

Lie , Age , Lying , Learning

“Jack was embarrassed — never hero more,
And as he knew not what to say, he swore.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

The Island (1823), Canto III, Stanza 5.

“She was worried about childbirth too cause she's little, you know. She's all scared. She's like, "When I have this kid, I want to be knocked out and unconscious." And I'm like "That's how ya were when you got pregnant!" That's full circle, right there! I did feel bad. That's tough. I'm tellin' ya. I felt horrible for her. Just pushing, and sweating, and screaming at the top of her lungs, and pushing and sweating, biting down on a stick… Ugh! Now she knows how I feel after a couple of Hot Pockets. You ever eat them Hot Pockets? Good Lord! I was backed up like a urinal on Saint Patrick's Day after eating them damn things. It was embarrassing. She's in the bed, giving b-[Grunting] I'm on the toilet next to her, [grunting] You know? I'm like "I need another Epidural in here if you got one!"”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

Feeling

“We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Life , World , School , Evil

“We must confine ourselves to what we may term the great highways of the science; and… we must wholly pass by many outlying researches of great interest and importance, as we propose rather to exhibit in a clear light the most fundamental and indispensable theories, than to embarrass the treatment of a subject, already sufficiently complex, with a multitude of details, which, however important in themselves, are not essential to the comprehension of the whole.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

Report on the Theory of Numbers (1859) Part I, p. 39.
The Collected Mathematical Papers of Henry John Stephen Smith (1894) Vol. 1

Light , Science

“Self-seeking, self-glory, that is not me. No. Many people say I embarrass them with my humility.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Interview in The New York Times, 25 December 2006

People

“If cognitive processes can be realized in a general machine then it is possible to execute mental operations in artifacts that are not necessarily subject to the embarrassing spatio-temporal limitations and structural frailties of a biological processor.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975), p. 2.

“I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to 'require[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary'. But interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Lee v. Weisman (1992, dissenting) ; decided June 24, 1992
1990s

Science , Holiday

“A week after the attack, one is free to taste the bile of its atrocious ingenuity. It is already trite — but stringently necessary — to emphasise that such a mise en scène would have embarrassed a studio executive's storyboard or a thriller-writer's notebook ("What happened today was not credible," were the wooden words of Tom Clancy, the author of The Sum of All Fears). And yet in broad daylight and full consciousness that outline became established reality: a score or so of Stanley knives produced two million tons of rubble.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Fear and loathing" (2001)

Fear , Reality

“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday.In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires — this is a benevolent form. The ideal self expressed in letters is not a crudely sugary affair except in dreary personalities; in any case the ideal is very much a part of the character, having its twenty-four hours a day to get through, and being no less unique in its combinations than one's fingerprints.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Anderson, Millay and Crane in Their Letters" (p. 133)
American Fictions (1999)

Dreams , Hope , Art , Communication

“By taking issue with Bell on this score, I am not saying that I am satisfied with my understanding of quantum mechanics. I share Feynman's belief that no one really understands quantum mechanics. But we should not exaggerate our embarrassment; it is ample as it stands. In any event, I agree with Bell that the foundations continue to merit the closest scrutiny.”

Kurt Gottfried (1929) American physicist

Does quantum mechanics carry the seeds of its own destruction? (1991)

Understanding

“I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I am not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004, I laid it all out there. And you’re right, on a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren’t in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And you know, I‘m embarrassed by it. I‘m very sorry I said it. I have said that, you know, it just didn‘t jive with what I had written about and knew to be the truth. So I know that it is something that some people have said, “Wait a minute. What happened here?””

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

But I have talked about this and written about it and then, unfortunately, in a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past.
April 16, 2008, Pennsylvania Democratic Presidential Debate, Philadelphia, when asked about her dishonesty concerning her recent comments about Bosnia. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iySWjciIrjB8hbu450lIABfnYcjwD903ANA80 http://youtube.com/watch?v=Cm_Cj6LNWmw http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/us/politics/16text-debate.html?pagewanted=9&_r=1
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

People , Truth , Books , Waiting

“Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works.”

Ken Dodd (1927–2018) English comedian, singer-songwriter and actor

Quoted in Manchester Evening News, http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/entertainment/comedy/s/234/234894_dodds_bolton_bonus.htmlDodd's Bolton bonus, Natalie Anglesey. (2008-04-28)

Life , World , Music , Laughter

“Welcome to Raw Is Jericho! And I am the new millennium for the World Wrestling Federation. Now for those of you who don't know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host, and most importantly, the most charismastic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen. And for those of you who DO know me, well, all hail the Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!
Now when you think of the new millennium, you think of an event so gigantic that it changes the course of history. You think of a dawning of a new era. In this case, the dawning of a new era in the WWF. Thank you, thank you. And a new era is what this once proud and profitable company sorely needs. What was once a captivating, trend-setting program has now deteriorated into a cliched, let's be honest, boring snoozefest that is in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and that's why I'm here. Chris Jericho has come to save the WWF!
Now let's go over the facts. Television ratings, downward spiral; pay-per-view buy-rates, plummeting; mainstream acceptance, non-existent; and reactions of the live crowds, complete and utter silence. And I know why you're silent! You're silent because you're embarrassed to be here. And quite honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. And the reason why you're embarrassed is because of the steady stream of uninteresting, untalented, mediocre "sports entertainers" who you're forced to cheer for and care for. No wonder you're not cheering! You could care less about every single idiot in that dressing room, [indicating The Rock] and especially this idiot in the center of the ring. You people have been led to believe that mediocrity is excellence. Uh-uh. Jericho is excellence. And now for the first time in WWF history, you have a man who can entertain you. You have a man who is good enough for you. You have a man who can make you jump up off your chairs, raise your filthy fat little hands in the air and scream "Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go!"”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

Thank you.
The new millennium has arrived in the WWF, and now that the Y2J problem is here, this company—from the front-office idiots to all the amateurs in the dressing room, including this one, to everybody watching tonight—will never, ee-e-e-e-(slaps face) ever be the same... again!
August 9, 1999 - WWE Raw

People , World , History , Problem

“Politicians may initially find it difficult to accept new standards of public accountability, but we must make the costs of not doing so even greater. The best way to do this is by publicly embarrassing and shaming those officials and departments who refuse to answer to the public.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 286.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Way

Quotes about embarrassment page 2

Quotes about embarrassment
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