Quotes about frustration
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Cecelia Ahern photo
Eugene H. Peterson photo
Donna Tartt photo
Neal Stephenson photo

“Boredom is a mask frustration wears.”

Source: Anathem

Donald Barthelme photo
Carlos Zambrano photo

“If you walk somebody, you just have to get the next hitter out. You can't be frustrated about walks or who is on base. If you've got good stuff that night, you're good enough to get the next hitter out.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Duncan, Chris, Chi Cubs 3, Houston 0 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=260814118, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 16, 2007
2006

Geert Wilders photo
David Berg photo
Dean Acheson photo

“a "mixture of frustration and progress is the daily grind of foreign affairs."”

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Principles

Jennifer Beals photo
Ian McDonald photo
George H. W. Bush photo

“To those who work outside Washington, I would send a special message. At times it may be frustrating when it seems that the head office is thousands of miles away and the message is not getting through. But if I may, I'm going to issue a verbal Executive order: We're going to listen, because the heart of our government is not here in Washington, it's in every county office, every town, every city across this land. Wherever the people of America are, that's where the heart of our government is.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

George Bush: "Remarks to Members of the Senior Executive Service," January 26, 1989. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=16628&st
Address to the Senior Executive Service (1989)

Eric Hoffer photo
Colin Wilson photo
Johnny Cash photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Sugar Ray Leonard photo

“Duran quit in frustration. People were laughing and he couldn't deal with that.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Leonard referring to the epic no mas(no more, in spanish) fight against Roberto Duran.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20061006/ai_n16774982/pg_3

Daniel Dennett photo

“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)

William H. Rehnquist photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

John Eardley Wilmot photo
Terry Eagleton photo
William H. McNeill photo
Samuel R. Delany photo
Michelle Obama photo

“We cannot sit back and hope that everything works out for the best. We cannot afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical.”

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

2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)

Miss Shangay Lily photo
John Milton photo

“Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell,
And devilish machinations come to nought.”

Book I: Lines 72-73
Paradise Regained (1671)

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Scott Lynch photo

““What’s your hand look like?“
“A parched desert… How’s yours?“
“A wasteland of bitter frustration.“”

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 1 “Little Games” section 1 (p. 7)

Prem Rawat photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Edward Heath photo

“I have always had a hidden wish, a frustrated desire, to run a hotel.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech at the Hotel Exhibition, Olympia, 1969.[citation needed]
Leader of the Opposition

Bernie Sanders photo

“In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6 month old daughter to go about without her diapers on. Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on peoples sexual frustrations.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1969 essay in the Freeman — as quoted in "You Might Very Well Be the Cause of Cancer": Read Bernie Sanders' 1970s-Era Essays http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride, by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones (6 July 2015)
1970s

Paulo Coelho photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
John Derbyshire photo

“Secondly, the student is trained to accept historical mis-statements on the authority of the book. If education is a pre- paration for adult life, he learns first to accept without question, and later to make his own contribution to the creation of historical fallacies, and still later to perpetuate what he has learnt. In this way, ignorant authors are leading innocent students to hysterical conclusions. The process of the writers' mind provides excellent material for a manual on logical fallacies. Thirdly, the student is told nothing about the relationship between evidence and truth. The truth is what the book ordains and the teacher repeats. No source is cited. No proof is offered. No argument is presented. The authors play a dangerous game of winks and nods and faints and gestures with evidence. The art is taught well through precept and example. The student grows into a young man eager to deal in assumptions but inapt in handling inquiries. Those who become historians produce narratives patterned on the textbooks on which they were brought up. Fourthly, the student is compelled to face a galling situation in his later years when he comes to realize that what he had learnt at school and college was not the truth. Imagine a graduate of one of our best colleges at the start of his studies in history in a university in Europe. Every lecture he attends and every book he reads drive him mad with exasperation, anger and frustration. He makes several grim discoveries. Most of the "facts", interpretations and theories on which he had been fostered in Pakistan now turn out to have been a fata morgana, an extravaganza of fantasies and reveries, myths and visions, whims and utopias, chimeras and fantasies.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Allen C. Guelzo photo
David Icke photo
Cédric Villani photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Hans Frank photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
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PewDiePie photo
Lech Wałęsa photo

“It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Na zmęczeniu, goryczy, uczuciu bezsilności nie można budować.
Walesa, Lech. Speech. "Nobel Lecture". 1983 Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1983/walesa-lecture.html (11 December 1983)

Newton Lee photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Harlan Ellison photo
David Crystal photo
George W. Bush photo
Robert Smith (musician) photo
Greg Kroah-Hartman photo

“If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong.”

Greg Kroah-Hartman Linux kernel developer

Comment posted on Reddit (1 December 2014) https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2ny1lz/im_greg_kroahhartman_linux_kernel_developer_ama/cmhysmb

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Jane Collins photo
Clive Barker photo

“It was absurd and frustrating, to feel so much and know so little.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Seven “The Demagogue”, Chapter vi “Hello, Stranger”, Section 2 (p. 306)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

“If it is the case that one Department of this Government deliberately organised a leak to frustrate a Minister in the same Government, that is not only dirty tricks but a habit that is inimical to the practice of good government in this country.”

John Smith (1938–1994) Labour Party leader from Scotland (1938-1994)

Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 89, col. 1157.
Speech on the Westland affair, 15 January 1986.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Clint Eastwood photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

The Odyssey File (1984), also quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 128
1980s

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Haile Selassie photo
Aneurin Bevan photo
Derren Brown photo
F. Lee Bailey photo

“I use the rules to frustrate the law. But I didn’t set up the ground rules.”

F. Lee Bailey (1933) American lawyer

New York Times, 20 September 1970.

Eric Hoffer photo
Anne Brontë photo
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Suzanne Ciani photo

“The frustration was with the philosophy of the instrument.”

Suzanne Ciani (1946) Italian American composer and musician

"INTERVIEW: Suzanne Ciani...," (2014)

Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
Queen Rania of Jordan photo

“My fossils, ferns and porcelain (i. e. my hobbies) are an island of sanity in a mad world, an island found by others of my profession who devote a quiet hour to their postmarks, butterflies, stamps or poetry. My palaeontology was a sure restoration of equanimity after the frustrations of working for and with some politicians.”

Claud William Wright (1917–2010) British paleontologist

Shovelton, Patrick (2010). Claud Wright: Senior civil servant who was also a leading expert in geology, palaeontology and archaeology — Obituary http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/claud-wright-senior-civil-servant-who-was-also-a-leading-expert-in-geology-palaeontology-and-archaeology-1917829.html, The Independent, Monday, 8 March 2010.

Robert Mugabe photo
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