Quotes about push
page 8

Jeanette Winterson photo
Frank Bainimarama photo
Georges Braque photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“You can't push on a string.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Attributed by [Hal R., Varian, http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/people/hal/NYTimes/2003-06-04.html, Dealing with Deflation, The New York Times, June 5, 2003, 2007-01-11]
Attributed

Ellen Page photo
Nick Griffin photo
Tom Rath photo

“Instead of celebrating what makes each child unique, most parents push their children to "fit in" so that they don't "stick out."”

Tom Rath (1975) American author

Tom Rath & Donald O. Clifton (2004) How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. p. 36

Adlai Stevenson photo

“Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech in Los Angeles California (27 October 1956), as quoted in The New America (1971), edited by Seymour E. Harris, John B. Martin, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., p. 249

Winston S. Churchill photo

“We have pushed taxation of wealth to a point in Great Britain where in many cases the yield would be greater if the rate were less. The idea that prosperity can be wooed by chasing millionaires is one of the most common and most foolish of modern popular delusions.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Soapbox Messiahs, Collier's, 20 June 1936
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol IV, Churchill at Large, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 335. ISBN 0903988453
The 1930s

Jim Webb photo
Norman Angell photo

“What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe, notably the Anglo-German? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?
They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others…. It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.
The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another — to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive….”

The Great Illusion (1910)

Neil Peart photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned photo
Omar Bradley photo
Mao Zedong photo
Zhang Zhijun photo
Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
Aron Ra photo
Algis Budrys photo
Laura Antoniou photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
William O. Douglas photo

“The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

"The Dissent: A Safeguard of Democracy," 32 Journal of the American Judicial Society 104, 105 (1948).
Other speeches and writings

William L. Shirer photo
Sydney Smith photo
Ryan Adams photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Mark Zuckerberg photo

“It takes courage to choose hope over fear. As I look around the world, I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward, against the idea of a connected world and a global community. The path forward is to bring people together, not push them apart. I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others’. I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases even for cutting access to the internet.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

Quoted: Mark Zuckerberg takes a swipe at Donald Trump telling people to 'choose hope over fear http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/7071854/Mark-Zuckerberg-takes-a-swipe-at-Donald-Trump-telling-people-to-choose-hope-over-fear.html, The Sun, 13 April 2016
Source: Zuckerberg's speech during Facebook's F8 developers event on 12 April 2016, developers.facebook.com https://developers.facebook.com/videos/f8-2016/keynote/

Herman Cain photo
Mark Heard photo

“Regular life, our humanness, often gets pushed aside. -Fingerprint.”

Mark Heard (1951–1992) American musician and record producer

Liner Notes

“I'm two people. One is a teddy bear who is soft and cuddly. And the other is this guy who says, "Don't push me."”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in "Fischer: a Ferocious Teddy Bear : Pianist Says He's Soft and Cuddly--When You Stay on His Good Side" http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-03/entertainment/ca-1426_1_teddy-bear by Don Heckman, in The Los Angeles Times (July 3, 1992)

Gene Vincent photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
John Updike photo
Jack McDevitt photo
John Crowley photo
George Rogers Clark photo

“Never was a person more mortified than I was at this time, to see so fair an opportunity to push a victory; Detroit lost for want of a few men.”

George Rogers Clark (1752–1818) American general

After aborting plans to raid Fort Detroit due to a lack of enlistments (1779), quoted in [Wilson, George R., Thornbrough, Gayle, The Buffalo Trace, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, 1946, Indiana Historical Society Publications, volume 15, number 2, 189]

Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“I know that sounds tough, but as I said, if you’re not tough inside, the world will always push you around anyway.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Andrew Sega photo

“I'm not a big fan of asynchronicity just for its own sake - a lot of people push rhythmic variation so far that the basic pulse of the music gets lost”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

and the listener is confused
Static Line interview, 1998

John Fante photo

“There is no hope, as far as I can see, of pushing the postulates of economic theory back to a set of irreducible axioms.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 15

Helmut Kohl photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Paul Thurrott photo
Charles Henry Fowler photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo

“So we listen. We add up associations of people with people. When a push against Scientology starts somewhere, we go over the people involved and weed them out. Push vanishes.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Manual Of Justice (1959).

Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

José Mourinho photo

“I did it because I want to push my son to do the same. I also did it because I want to push the young players on my team to have a proper haircut, not the Rastafarian or the others they have.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm
Chelsea FC

Thomas F. Wilson photo

“A thin and sickly kid, I was pushed around and beaten up by bullies throughout my childhood, until I grew bigger than everybody and it stopped, I knew very well how they operate, and specifically the joy they take in scaring people. I’d stared them in the face so often that it wasn’t particularly challenging to do an impression.”

Thomas F. Wilson (1959) actor, writer, musician, painter, voice-over artist, stand-up comedian, and podcaster

'Back to the Future's' Thomas Wilson: Biff Was a Reflection of the Bullies Who Tormented Me http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/back-future-thomas-wilson-biff-833035 (October 19, 2015)

Robert A. Heinlein photo
David Draiman photo
Derren Brown photo
John Banville photo

“We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

14th time lucky (2005)

Rick Santorum photo

“When you look and see what the left is trying to do in America today, progressives are trying to shutter faith, privatize it, push it out of the public square, oppress people of faith, strip their charitable deductions away from them, trying to weaken them, churches — trying to say that anybody who believes in the value of Judeo-Christian principles, as we saw in the Ninth Circuit just this week, that if you believe that — this is what the court said — that if believe that, if believe what's taught in Genesis, if you believe what's practiced Biblically and in generations since, then you are irrational. The only possible reason you could believe this, according to the Ninth Circuit, is that you are a bigot, and that you are a hater. Because you can't possibly think differently, you can't possibly think differently unless you are a bigot or a hater, cause there's no rational reason not to see marriage as the way the Ninth Circuit does. They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what's left is the. What's left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left, in France, became the guillotine.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're a long way from that, but if we do, and follow the path of President Obama, and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

referring to Ninth Circuit ruling unconstitutional , which banned same-sex marriage

Margaret Cho photo
Ravachol photo

“I worked to live and to make a living for my own; as long as neither myself nor my own suffered too much, I remained that which you call honest. Then work got scarce and with unemployment came hunger. It was then that that great law of nature, that imperious voice that allows no retort: the instinct of survival, pushed me to commit some of the crimes and offences that you accuse me of and that I recognise being the author of.”

Ravachol (1859–1892) French anarchist

J'ai travaillé pour vivre et faire vivre les miens ; tant que ni moi ni les miens n'avons trop souffert, je suis resté ce que vous appelez honnête. Puis le travail a manqué, et avec le chômage est venue la faim. C'est alors que cette grande loi de la nature, cette voix impérieuse qui n'admet pas de réplique : l'instinct de la conservation, me poussa à commettre certains des crimes et délits que vous me reprochez et dont je reconnais être l'auteur.
Trial statement

Tim O'Brien photo
Fernand Léger photo
Ted Cruz photo
Joe Biden photo

“As I pushed through to the podium, I could hear people murmuring under their breath: "There he is… Goddam Biden…. Kill the sonofabitch." And these were my voters- working-class Democrats.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: 2000s, Promises to Keep (2008), Page 127

Krist Novoselic photo

“It seems like our politics is so old, like, it almost seems like turning on the t. v. and there's ABC and CBS and NBC, and, y'know, there's like one newspaper in town, and so they're all pushing things on us, and that's all going away.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

5:10–5:28
"Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

Scott Lynch photo

“Push your luck, gorgeous, and eventually luck pushes back.”

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 8 “The Five-Year Game: Infinite Variation” section 8 (p. 468)

Langston Hughes photo
Björk photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“At present there is far more to be gained by pushing the boundaries of what can be done by the bottom than by focusing on what can be done at the top.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Daniel Dennett photo
Ernest Becker photo

“What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out—not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in "natural" accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U. S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism's comfort and expansiveness.”

"Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?", pp. 282–283
The Denial of Death (1973)

Bruno Schulz photo
John Peckham photo

“As you see double if you push the eye out of its place with your finger; so prelates, through evil counsel, judge a priest to be worthy of two benefices, when he ought to be contented with one.”

John Peckham (1227–1292) Archbishop of Canterbury

De Oculo Morali quoted in Georg Herzfeld (ed.) An Old English Martyrology (1900)

Roberto Durán photo
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank photo
Jay Leiderman photo
Starhawk photo
Warren Farrell photo
Bart D. Ehrman photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 109

Fernand Léger photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
Charles Stross photo

““But then—you’re telling me they brought unrestricted communications with them?” he asked.
“Yup.” Rachel looked up from her console. “We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be. I mean, some things — if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed. “You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
“Well—” Vassily blinked at him in mild confusion. “Are you telling me you let information circulate freely where you come from?”
“It’s not a matter of permitting it,” Rachel pointed out. “We had to admit that we couldn’t prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself.”
“But, but lunatics could brew up biological weapons in their kitchens, destroy cities! Anarchists would acquire the power to overthrow the state, and nobody would be able to tell who they were or where they belonged anymore. The most foul nonsense would be spread, and nobody could stop it—” Vassily paused. “You don’t believe me,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, we believe you alright,” Martin said grimly. “It’s just—look, change isn’t always bad. Sometimes freedom of speech provides a release valve for social tensions that would lead to revolution. And at other times, well—what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
“But, terrorists!”
“Yes,” Rachel interrupted, “terrorists. There are always people who think they’re doing the right thing by inflicting misery on their enemies, kid. And you’re perfectly right about brewing up biological weapons and spreading rumors. But—” She shrugged. “We can live with a low background rate of that sort of thing more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everyone, all the time.” She looked grim. “If you think a lunatic planting a nuclear weapon in a city is bad, you’ve never seen what happens when a planet pushed the idea of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship to the limit. There are places where—” She shuddered.”

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

David Carter photo
Mortimer J. Adler photo
Michelle Obama photo

“He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

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

Campaign rally at UCLA, quoted in "It’s All About Him" by William Kristol in The New York Times (25 February 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/opinion/25kristol.html?ref=opinion
2000s

Mao Zedong photo

“Every difference in men's concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking.”

On Contradiction (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 人的概念的每一差异,都应把它看作是客观矛盾的反映。客观矛盾反映入主观的思想,组成了概念的矛盾运动,推动了思想的发展,不断地解决了人们的思想问题。

“If your opponent imagines that because you are a woman you’re easy to bluff, that you’d never bluff yourself and that you can be pushed around, you can exploit those assumptions.”

Victoria Coren (1972) British writer, presenter and poker player

Interview, Evening Standard 31 May 2012 http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/victoria-coren-my-obsession-with-children-five-proposals-a-week-and-why-david-and-i-are-no-power-couple-7807614.html