Quotes about stress
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Kofi Annan photo

“Throughout history, human life has been enriched by diversity, and different communities have learnt from each other. But, if our different communities are to live together in peace we must stress also what unites us: our common humanity, and our shared belief that human dignity and rights should be protected by law.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)
Context: Both security and development ultimately depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law.
— Although increasingly interdependent, our world continues to be divided — not only by economic differences, but also by religion and culture. That is not in itself a problem. Throughout history, human life has been enriched by diversity, and different communities have learnt from each other. But, if our different communities are to live together in peace we must stress also what unites us: our common humanity, and our shared belief that human dignity and rights should be protected by law.

Jean Piaget photo

“In order to remove all traces of moral realism, one must place oneself on the child's own level, and give him a feeling of equality by laying stress on one's own obligations and one's own deficiencies. In this way the child will find himself in the presence, not of a system of commands requiring ritualistic and external obedience, but of a system of social relations such that everyone does his best to obey the same obligations, and does so out of mutual respect.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 133 -->
Context: It is when the child is accustomed to act from the point of view of those around him, when he tries to please rather than to obey, that he will judge in terms of intentions. So that taking intentions into account presupposes cooperation and mutual respect. Only those who have children of their own know how difficult it is to put this into practice. Such is the prestige of parents in the eyes of the very young child, that even if they lay down nothing in the form of general duties, their wishes act as law and thus give rise automatically to moral realism (independently, of course, of the manner in which the child eventually carries out these desires). In order to remove all traces of moral realism, one must place oneself on the child's own level, and give him a feeling of equality by laying stress on one's own obligations and one's own deficiencies. In this way the child will find himself in the presence, not of a system of commands requiring ritualistic and external obedience, but of a system of social relations such that everyone does his best to obey the same obligations, and does so out of mutual respect. The passage from obedience to cooperation thus marks a progress analogous to that of which we saw the effects in the evolution of the game of marbles: only in the final stage does the morality of intention triumph over the morality of objective responsibility.
When parents do not trouble about such considerations as these, when they issue contradictory commands and are inconsistent in the punishments they inflict, then, obviously, it is not because of moral constraint but in spite of and as a reaction against it that the concern with intentions develops in the child. Here is a child, who, in his desire to please, happens to break something and is snubbed for his pains, or who in general sees his actions judged otherwise than he judges them himself. It is obvious that after more or less brief periods of submission, during which he accepts every verdict, even those that are wrong, he will begin to feel the injustice of it all. Such situations can lead to revolt. But if, on the contrary, the child finds in his brothers and sisters or in his playmates a form of society which develops his desire for cooperation and mutual sympathy, then a new type of morality will be created in him, a morality of reciprocity and not of obedience. This is the true morality of intention and of subjective responsibility. <!--
In short, whether parents succeed in embodying it in family life or whether it takes root in spite of and in opposition to them, it is always cooperation that gives intention precedence over literalism, just as it was unilateral respect that inevitably provoked moral realism. Actually, of course, there are innumerable intermediate stages between these two attitudes of obedience and collaboration, but it is useful for the purposes of analysis to emphasize the real opposition that exists between them.

Joseph Priestley photo

“The unity of God is a doctrine on which the greatest stress is laid in the whole system of revelation.”

Part I : The History of Opinions Relating to Jesus Christ, Introduction
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)
Context: The unity of God is a doctrine on which the greatest stress is laid in the whole system of revelation. To guard this most important article was the principal object of the Jewish religion; and, notwithstanding the proneness of the Jews to idolatry, at length it fully answered its purpose in reclaiming them, and in impressing the minds of many persons of other nations in favour of the same fundamental truth.
The Jews were taught by their prophets to expect a Messiah, who was to be descended from the tribe of Judah, and the family of David, — a person in whom themselves and all the nations of the earth should be blessed; but none of their prophets gave them an idea of any other than a man like themselves in that illustrious character, and no other did they ever expect, or do they expect to this day.
Jesus Christ, whose history answers to the description given of the Messiah by the prophets, made no other pretensions; referring all his extraordinary power to God, his Father, who, he expressly says, spake and acted by him, and who raised him from the dead: and it is most evident that the apostles, and all those who conversed with our Lord before and after his resurrection, considered him in no other light than simply as "a man approved of God, by wonders and signs which God did by him."

Jimmy Carter photo

“I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Remarks at a White House meeting commemorating the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (6 December 1978), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Jimmy Carter, 1978 Book 1: January 1 to June 30, 1978, p. 2163
Presidency (1977–1981)
Context: I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met.

Karel Čapek photo

“Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is — and that is the point I want to stress — that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word. . .”

Karel Čapek (1890–1938) Czech writer

R.U.R. supplement in The Saturday Review (1923)
Context: Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is — and that is the point I want to stress — that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word... I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.

“Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), commonly occurs among prostituted women, and is indicative of their extreme emotional distress.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

"Prostitution and Trafficking in 9 Countries: Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder" in Journal of Trauma Practice 2 (2003) http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/c-prostitution-research.html, p. 33-74; co-written with A. Cotton, J. Lynne, S. Zumbeck, T. Spiwak, M. E. Reyes, D. Alvarez , U Sezgin
Context: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), commonly occurs among prostituted women, and is indicative of their extreme emotional distress. PTSD is characterized by anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and hyperalertness. In nine countries, we found that sixty-eight percent of those in prostitution met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, a prevalence that was comparable to battered women seeking shelter, rape survivors seeking treatment, and survivors of state-sponsored torture. Across widely varying cultures on five continents, the traumatic consequences of prostitution were similar.

Edith Hamilton photo

“It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Saturday Evening Post (27 September 1958); also in Adventures of the Mind : From the Saturday Evening Post (1962), by Richard Thruelsen and John Kobler
Context: It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“Never shall we apprehend the nature of true divinity nor the true divineness of Jesus of Nazareth, the Carpenter's Son, till we learn to moralize our theology, training ourselves to lay less stress on "Almighty"”

Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838–1926) British theologian and author

an epithet characteristic of the silver age of Hebrew literature and of our Anglican Prayer Book, but never once used as an epithet of God by Him who knew Him as He is. By way of compensation, we must lay far more stress on "Wise" and "Good."
Paradosis : Or "In the Night in Which He Was (?) Betrayed" (1904), "Introduction : Paradosis or Delivering Up the Soul", p. 7

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.”

Preface
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Context: Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral, — the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince mankind — or, indeed, any one man — of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod, — or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, — thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.

Richard Wright photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Yet in time of stress and public agitation we have too great a tendency to disregard this policy and indulge in race hatred, religious intolerance, and disregard of equal rights. Such sentiments are bound to react upon those who harbor them. Instead of being a benefit they are a positive injury.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)
Context: Yet in time of stress and public agitation we have too great a tendency to disregard this policy and indulge in race hatred, religious intolerance, and disregard of equal rights. Such sentiments are bound to react upon those who harbor them. Instead of being a benefit they are a positive injury. We do not have to examine history very far before we see whole countries that have been blighted, whole civilizations that have been shattered by a spirit of intolerance. They are destructive of order and progress at home and a danger to peace and good will abroad. No better example exists of toleration than that which is exhibited by those who wore the blue toward those who wore the gray. Our condition today is not merely that of one people under one flag, but of a thoroughly united people who have seen bitterness and enmity which once threatened to sever them pass away, and a spirit of kindness and good will reign over them all.

Robert M. Sapolsky photo

“Most of us don't collapse into puddles of stress-related disease.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences (2001), Timecode 09:28

John Keats photo
Lupita Nyong'o photo

“I was completely overwhelmed…The body registers stress, whether good or bad, in the same way. So if it’s super exciting or super traumatising, your body is in equal distress. Though I would choose excitement over trauma every day.”

Lupita Nyong'o (1983) Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director

On her quick rise to stardom in “EXCLUSIVE: Lupita Nyong'o: 'Success Has Brought Me Freedom'” https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/exclusive-lupita-nyongo-interview/ in Grazia (2017 Sep 11)

Robert Sheckley photo

“I always feel that how people treat animals is not too far from how people treat each other, especially under stress or under certain circumstances…”

Yiyun Li (1972) Chinese American writer

Source: On including animal deaths in her work as symbolism in “An Interview with Yiyun Li” https://brickmag.com/an-interview-with-yiyun-li/ in Brick Magazine (2019 Feb 19)

Parteniy Zografski photo
Karel Čapek photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Harold Wilson photo
George Fitzhugh photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Bob Nygaard photo

“I would like to stress how ruthless these self-proclaimed psychics are. They have absolutely no regard for their fellow human beings.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Introducing Psychic-Busting Private Eye Bob Nygaard (Part 2) https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/introducing_psychic-busting_private_eye_bob_nygaard_part_2, CSI Online (22 August 2018)

Margaret Mead photo

“With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

The girls' minds were perplexed by no conflicts, troubled by no philosophical queries, beset by no remote ambitions. To live as a girl with many lovers as long as possible and then to marry in one's own village, near one's own relatives, and to have many children, these were uniform and satisfying ambitions.
Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 107

Neal Stephenson photo
Jane Austen photo
Robert Greene photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
David Hilbert photo
Boris Johnson photo

“I want to stress that for the vast majority of the people of this country, we should be going about our business as usual.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2020s, 2020
Source: As quoted in Coronavirus: Up to fifth of UK workers 'could be off sick at same time' https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51718917, 3 March 2020, BBC News.

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Margot Robbie photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Greg McKeown (author) photo
Greg McKeown (author) photo
Tenzin Gyatso photo
Nithyananda photo

“If a warrior is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.”

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Tales of Power" (Chapter 10)

James Howard Kunstler photo
Liu Wen (model) photo

“Career has given me a lot of happiness and I’ve fallen in love with it. Of course, there is joy in fame, but there are plenty of difficult periods to endure as well. It’s not unusual to feel down or stressed, but I use those as motivators to remain steadfast and look ahead.”

Liu Wen (model) (1988) Chinese model

Source: "Liu Wen opens up about fame, responsibility and finding meaning in her career" in Vogue https://vogue.sg/liu-wen-cover-vogue-singapore-leslie-zhang/ (1 March 2021)

Adrianus Sunarko photo

“Indonesians must grateful for what the founding fathers have inherited through Pancasila, which stresses inclusivity in a plural society. In Indonesia, religion is challenged to learn from local cultures and not to underestimate humanity”

Adrianus Sunarko (1966) Indonesian Roman Catholic bishop

Source: Indonesian prelate becomes a theology professor https://www.ucanews.com/news/indonesian-prelate-becomes-a-theology-professor/85179 (14 May 2019)

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde photo

“Women should empower themselves while still remaining true to their marriage and husbands. If a marriage is stressful, emotionally destructive, I think we should be strong enough to walk away from such damaging unions.”

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde (1978) Nigerian actress and singer

https://naijagists.com/omotola-jalade-ekeinde-wisdom-quotes-top-20-motivational-quotes-sayings-omosexy/ Omotola Jalade Ekehinde speaking on Career.

Viktor Yanukovych photo

“The United States and a number of other countries have been stressing that I have allegedly lost my legitimacy because I fled the country. Let me say again: I never fled anywhere.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: "Transcript: Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych on the situation in his country" in The Washington Post https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DGoGVKRGNYMJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/transcript-ukraines-viktor-yanukovych-on-the-situation-in-his-country/2014/03/11/ffb8fefe-a942-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us (11 March 2014)

Hugh Grant photo
Lorne Balfe photo

“Writing music for me is easy, and is less stressful than a nine-to-five job. What I find hard is going to meetings and dealing with lawyers. The Hollywood lifestyle is hectic and often you have to survive on just four hours sleep before starting again.”

Lorne Balfe (1976) British composer

Source: Composing a career of note in LA https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/composing-career-note-la-2453112 (9 July 2002)

Gilbert Murray photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Earth governments in moments of stress are not famous for being reasonable.”

Source: Short fiction, The Early Asimov Book One (1972), History (p. 297)

Swami Sivananda photo
Joe Biden photo

“Look, as a father and a grandfather — and I’m sure we all feel the same way — I understand how difficult this shortage has been for families all across the country. There is nothing more stressful than the feeling like you can’t get what your child needs — what he or she needs.”

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

2022, June 2022, Remarks by President Biden During Virtual Meeting on Accelerating Infant Formula Production Through Operation Fly Formula

Bill Maher photo