Quotes about trouble
page 11

“The pain which has passed away has been spent up by experience. It cannot, therefore, fall within the sphere of avoidable. And that which is present, is being experienced at the time of its existence; it cannot, therefore, be considered as the avoidable with reference to the future movement of time. Hence that pain alone which has not yet been experienced, troubles the Yogi who is sensitive as the eye-ball; it does not trouble any other knower. Hence that alone is avoidable pain.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 124.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Pain, Time, Future

“Before Christianity suicide was not in any way troubling. Our lives were our own, and when we tired of them we were at liberty to end them. One might think that as Christianity has declined, this freedom would be reclaimed. Instead secular creeds have sprung up, in which each person’s life belongs to everyone else. To hand back the gift of life because it does not please is still condemned as a kind of blasphemy, though the offended deity is now humanity instead of God.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 231-2)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, God, Way, Thinking

“Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Thinking

“My mother, whom I loved very much, had trouble with me. I had very good school certificates. But I tormented her with horribly stinky collections. It was not enough for me at home to have a dog, a cat, a canary, a fish, and even a white mouse, which loved to walk around the apartment, although it lived in a cage. I added the protozoa to this menagerie. Traditional definitions regarded these small organisms – such as, for example, amoebae, flagellates, sponges, algae – as single-celled. What in these asexually reproducing animals or plants could intrigue the little boy so much that he permanently endured this abomination (as the mother would say) home?! After all, neither the request nor the threat of this exceptionally tolerant woman, who carried out her home diligently on a daily basis, did not help. A trip to the ponds, or actually to the stagnant at Bonarka – where today is Mateczny Roundabout – were exciting for the little boy. And even more he enjoyed moments when he could watch for hours what was happening in aquariums, jars or cages.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Bętkowska, Teresa (August–September 2010). "Mistrz niszowej dyscypliny" http://www2.almamater.uj.edu.pl/126/17.pdf (PDF). Alma Mater (in Polish). Kraków: Jagiellonian University (126–127): pp. 41–46.

Love, School, Dogs, Home

“.. when I see people making quote 'abstract' painting, I think it's just a dialogue and a dialogue isn't enough, that is to say, there is you painting and this canvas. I think there has to be a third thing, it has to be a trialogue. Whether that third thing - it must be, to reverberate and make trouble, you have to have trouble and contradictions, it has to become complex because life is complex, emotions are complex, - whether that third element is a still life of something, or an idea or a concept, in each case it has to be a trialogue and above all has to involve you.... The real thing that matters is how involved you are in that.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75

Life, People, Quotes, Idea

“I am the one to whom you wrote in care of the Belgian Academy… Read no newspapers, try to find a few friends who think as you do, read the wonderful writers of earlier times, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and the classics of other lands, and enjoy the natural beauties of Munich's surroundings. Make believe all the time that you are living, so to speak, on Mars among alien creatures and blot out any deeper interest in the actions of those creatures. Make friends with a few animals. Then you will become a cheerful man once more and nothing will be able to trouble you.
Bear in mind that those who are finer and nobler are always alone — and necessarily so — and that because of this they can enjoy the purity of their own atmosphere.
I shake your hand in heartfelt comradeship, E.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Response to a letter from an unemployed professional musician (5 April 1933), p. 115
The editors precede this passage thus, "Early in 1933, Einstein received a letter from a professional musician who presumably lived in Munich. The musician was evidently troubled and despondent, and out of a job, yet at the same time, he must have been something of a kindred spirit. His letter is lost, all that survives being Einstein's reply....Note the careful anonymity of the first sentence — the recipient would be safer that way:" Albert Einstein: The Human Side concludes with this passage, followed by the original passages in German.
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Beauty, Nature, Thinking, Time

“In manliness he will greet my trouble,
Should I be bled, I should evidently get better;
Truly I saw no one before, who saw not in me
Every indisposition, he will cultivate his business.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Taliesin, a Song to Urien

Business

“Let me tell you 'bout a place
Somewhere up a New York way,
Where the people are so gay,
Twistin' the night away…Here they have a lot of fun,
Puttin' trouble on the run.
Man, you find the old and young,
Twistin' the night away.They're twistin', twistin'
Everybody's feelin' great.
They're twistin', twistin'
They're twistin' the night away.”

Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur

Twistin' the Night Away (1962)
Song lyrics, Singles

People, Way, Night

“Troubles also pass, as everything passes, without trouble.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Las dificultades también pasan, como todo pasa, sin dificultad.
Voces (1943)

“I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[11333@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

“My first night in camp, as I sat eating sardines out of a tin and watching my Somalis driving the camels up from the river to couch them by the tent, I knew that I would not have been anywhere else for all the money in the world. For a month I travelled in an arid, hostile land. I was alone; there was no one whom I could consult; if I met with trouble from the tribes I could get no help; if I were sick there was no one to doctor me. Men trusted me and obeyed my orders; I was responsible for their safety. I was often tired and thirsty, sometimes frightened and lonely, but I tasted freedom and a way of life from which there could be no recall.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 8.

Life, Men, Money, Hostility

“I feel better now than I did at any time last season; the shoulder really hurt me bad last year. The left shoulder still gives me some trouble. It makes me swing differently. I have to adjust. Sometimes I find I'm over-cutting the ball. That is not my natural style. I used to swing and I just knew I could hit the ball hard. I knew when I could hit to right field, when I could pull. Now it's different. I have to force myself more than I ever did. Maybe it's because I'm getting old. Maybe.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Discussing two separate pre-season shoulder injuries, sustained, respectively, in February 1968 to the right shoulder, and in March 1969 to the left; as quoted in "A Sounder Clemente Has New Outlook; Buc Super Star May Play On and On" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JFAOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4H0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7168,1534716 by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, August 12, 1969), p. 18 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1969</big>

Feeling, Nature, Time, Hurt

“Some of these by-products [of official goals] may become so important to the participants who make up the institution as to constitute unofficial goals. “I would not be interested in this hospital unless it…” did something or other. “The trouble with this place is everyone is so concerned with” this or that pursuit. Where these blanks are not filled in with good patient care, teaching and research we have unofficial goals of some group or individual, and thus we have uses to which the institution is put other than the avowed ones.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 15. (Emphasis in the original by Jones (2013)).

“The fundamental tenet of Steiner's teaching is that if we take the trouble to recognize the independent existence of the inner worlds of thought, and keep the mind turned in that direction, we shall soon become increasingly conscious of their reality. We are not, as Sartre believed, stranded in the universe of matter like a whale on a beach. That inner world is our natural home. Moreover, once we grasp this truth, we can also recognize that we ourselves possess an "essential ego," a "true self," a fundamental identity that goes far beyond our usual feeble sense of being "me."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 26

Truth, World, Home, Nature

“The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Rand, Ayn (2005). Mayhew, Robert, ed. Ayn Rand Answers, the Best of Her Q&A. New York: New American Library. p. 73. (1976)

World, Idea

“At the very least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist professor would mean challenging the way universities are run—and I don’t mean by demanding an anarchist studies department, either—and that, of course, is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever write.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Fragments for an Anarchist Anthropology (2004), p. 7

Way, Imagination, Study, Universe

“In making these comments, my motive is really not to go to all the trouble for the sake of the ancient author, but because I feel I have an obligation to the future readers and wish to do something about it.”

Jin Shengtan (1610–1661) Chinese writer

"What Can I Do About It?"

Feeling, Motivation, Future

“M: If you cannot impress people simply by being part of the great fat human race, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you don't impress people by the way you look, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you are now going to ask is everything I did just a way to gain some form of attention, well that's not entirely true. It is in a small way, but that's in the very nature of being alive.
PM: Wanting to be loved?
M: To be seen, above all else. I wanted to be noticed, and the way I lived and do live has a desperate neurosis about it because of that. All humans need a degree of attention. Some people get it at the right time, when they are 13 or 14, people get loved at the right stages. If this doesn't happen, if the love isn't there, you can quite easily just fade away. … In a sense I always felt that being troubled as a teenager was par for the course. I wasn't sure that I was dramatically unique. I knew other people who were at the time desperate and suicidal. They despised life and detested all other living people. In a way that made me feel a little bit secure. Because I thought, well, maybe I'm not so intense after all. Of course, I was. I despised practically everything about human life, which does limit one's weekend activities”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From "Wilde child", interview by Paul Morley, Blitz (April 1988).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Love, Life, People, Way

“The day will come, sooner or later, when people will wonder at the necessity of taking all this trouble to expose the folly of a system, so childish and absurd, and yet so often enforced at the point of a bayonet.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XVII, Digression, p. 159

People

“2763. Avoid Men that are Hot and Quarrelsome; they will affront thee for nothing, and urge Things beyond Reason and Measure. They will bring thee into Troubles, which thou wilt not easily get out of. Keeping Company with such is living with Wolves, Bears, and Tygers.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Men

“Above all, do not give up your moral and political autonomy by accepting in somebody else's terms the illiberal practicality of the bureaucratic ethos or the liberal practicality of the moral scatter. Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues — and in terms of the problems of history making.”

C. Wright Mills book The Sociological Imagination

Appendix: "On Intellectual Craftsmanship"
The Sociological Imagination (1959)

History, Problem, Personality

“That’s the way it was then, you see. Folks noticed other people's trouble every bit as quick as if it was their own.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 3.

People, Way

“The reason movies are often so bad out here isn't because the people who make them are cynical money hacks. Most of them are doing the very best they can; they really want to make good movies. The trouble is with their heads, not their hearts.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in Against the American Grain (1962) by Dwight Macdonald, p. 30

Money, People, Heart

“This must be our belief when we have a correct knowledge of our own self, and comprehend the true nature of everything; we must be content, and not trouble our mind with seeking a certain final cause for things that have none, or have no other final cause but their own existence, which depends on the Will of God, or, if you prefer, on the Divine Wisdom.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.13

Wisdom, God, Nature, Knowledge

“My teacher, Ales Adamovich, whose name I mention today with gratitude, felt that writing prose about the nightmares of the 20th century was sacrilege. Nothing may be invented. You must give the truth as it is. A "super-literature" is required. The witness must speak. Nietzsche's words come to mind – no artist can live up to reality. He can't lift it. It always troubled me that the truth doesn't fit into one heart, into one mind, that truth is somehow splintered. There's a lot of it, it is varied, and it is strewn about the world.”

Svetlana Alexievich (1948) Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction prose writer

Quotes from Nobel Lecture

Truth, World, Literature, Reality

“Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Truth and untruth
Source: "I am That." P.69.

Love, Truth, Search, Support

“My major criticism of today's media is, they're no longer reporting the news, they're creating it. When that happens, you're in deep trouble.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 3 (p. 48)

“Explain it,” Hamilton muttered. “This place—this bar. Why doesn’t God erase it? If this world operates by moral laws—”
“This bar is necessary to the moral order. This is a sinkpit of corruption and vice, a fleshpot of iniquity. You think salvation can function without damnation? You think virtue can exist without sin? That’s the trouble with you atheists; you don’t grasp the mechanics of evil. Get on the inside and enjoy life, man. If you’re one of the Faithful, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Opportunist.”

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

“Bet your sweet soul.”
Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 5 (p. 66)

Life, God, World, Faith

“After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

As quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, London (1981), and The Annual Obituary 1983 (1984) edited by Elizabeth Devine and Marion Stoker Morgan, p. 143

War, World, Idea, Thinking

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

Life, Death, Hunger, God

“The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

WSEZ interview, 2011-03-29, answering a caller's question, quoted in * Aliyah
Shahid
Rick Santorum, GOP presidential hopeful, blames Social Security problems on abortion
2011-03-30
Daily News
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-30/news/29381880_1_randall-k-o-bannon-abortion-rick-santorum
2011-04-15

People, Support

“If you or any one else will take the trouble and have the inteligence and paitince to follow and examine every one of my crimes and actions you will find that I have consistently followed one idea thru all my life. I preyed upon the weak the harmless or unsuspecting. Those I have harmed were all either weaklings either mentaly or phisicaly. Those who were strong in either mind or body I first lied to and led into a trap where they were either asleep or drunk or helpless in some way. I always had all the best of it, because I knew ahead of time just what to expect and the others did not. I therefore was strong in my knolledge and stronger in body than those preyed upon. This lesson I was taught by others. Might makes right.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
From a undated letter to Henry Lesser, Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 193, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Life, Way, Idea, Strong

“Presently they saw their Mother coming out of the drawing-room with a visitor following her. Jane and Michael could see that the newcomer had shiny black hair — "Rather like a wooden Dutch doll," whispered Jane. And that she was thin, with large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue-eyes.
"You'll find that they are very nice children," Mrs. Banks was saying.
Michael's elbow gave a sharp dig at Jane's ribs.
"And that they give no trouble at all," continued Mrs. Banks uncertainly, as if she herself didn't really believe what she was saying. They heard the visitor sniff as though she didn't either.
"Now, about reference —" Mrs. Banks went on.
"Oh, I make it a rule never to give references," said the other firmly.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

Source: Mary Poppins (1934), Ch. 1 "East-Wind"

Children, Drawing

“I am tired of playing in a shadow Everything I do they compare to Paul Waner. I am not Paul Waner's shadow. I try not to let it bother me, but I get tired of the things some people say. They call me a showboat because I make basket catches. They don't call Willie Mays a showboat, do they? They say I'm a hypochondriac, too. When I have trouble with my back, they say it's in my mind. In Houston last year, right before the end of the season, I was still in the race for the batting title and Murtaugh told me to do everything possible to win it. One time I was being intentionally walked and I swung at one of the pitches. Then I wasn't a team player any more. People said I was out for myself.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Roberto's Not Happy; Clemente in Waner's Shadow" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15674492/ by Sandy Padwe (NEA), in The Indiana Gazette (July 2, 1964), p. 16 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

People, Time, Season

“But it don't bother me. I never yet saw anybody hit the baseball with their face. Besides, I like to get kidded; that means they like me. When they stop kidding me, I'm in trouble.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

As quoted in "Stupid, You Say?" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2ykxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MhAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4563%2C4702173 by Frank Litsky, in The Milwaukee Sentinel American Weekly (Sunday, September 18, 1960), p. 7.

“When the Lord of the Wedding Rings held his no-questions-asked press conference, he said he was sorely "troubled." At last, I thought, an admission. But no, he wasn't talking about his mental condition.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Wedded to the Republicans http://progressive.org/?q=node/805 The Progressive, Unplugged

Question, Wedding

“Most merciful and gracious God, who hast preserved me unto this hour, I most humbly acknowledge Thee as the guide and companion of my youth. Thou hast protected me through the dangers of infancy and childhood, and in my youth Thou didst bless me with the full enjoyment, the happy intimacy, of the best of fathers. Be as gracious and merciful then as Thou hast hitherto been, now that I am about to enter a new stage of existence. Teach me, I beseech Thee, to strengthen in my soul the cultivation of Thy truth, the recollection of the uncertainty of life, the greatness of the objects for which I was created. Revive those delightful religious impressions which in early days I felt more strongly than now; and as Thou hast been pleased lately to permit me to look to a way of life to which formerly I dared not to do, let the leisure I shall enjoy enlarge my warmth of heart towards Thee. Make every branch of study which I may pursue strengthen my confidence in Thy ever-ruling providence, that, undeceived by views of false philosophy, I may ever in singleness of heart elevate my mind from Thy works unto Thy divine essence. Keep from me a vain and overbearing spirit; let me- ever have a thorough sense of my own ignorance and weakness; and keep me through all the trials and troubles of a transitory state in body and soul unto everlasting life, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.”

James David Forbes (1809–1868) Scottish physicist and glaciologist

"Completing my Twenty-first Year" (1839), a prayer written by Forbes on April 20th, 1830. Life and letters of James David Forbes p. 450.

Life, God, Truth, Youth

“When General Osborne came to see me just after the victory, he asked me what I thought should be done to educate the Germans. I said there is only one thing to be done and that is to teach them disobedience, as long as they are obedient so long sooner or later they will be ordered about by a bad man and there will be trouble. Teach them disobedience, I said, make every German child know that it is its duty at least once a day to do its good deed and not believe something its father or its teacher tells them, confuse their minds, get their minds confused and perhaps then they will be disobedient and the world will be at peace. The obedient peoples go to war, disobedient people like peace, that is the reason that Italy did not really become a good Axis, the people were not obedient enough, the Japs and the Germans are the only really obedient people on earth and see what happens, teach them disobedience, confuse their minds, teach them disobedience, and the world can be peaceful. General Osborne shook his head sadly, you'll never make the heads of an army understand that.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Off we all went to see Germany. In: LIFE Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 6, August 6, 1945, S.56, ISSN 0024-3019. google books https://books.google.at/books?id=0EkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=%22gertrude+stein%22+%22off+we+all+went%22&source=bl&ots=xOi2_KGtgA&sig=rCjhy5aEb48I1LiWrDQNNVtw37c&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwij1sqZr7_cAhUFdcAKHQQhB_sQ6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22gertrude%20stein%22%20%22off%20we%20all%20went%22&f=false

War, People, World, Education

“This world materialist, hedonist and exhibitionist it doesn't even thrill me; and, considering that he reads me, you/he/she should know him/it. But I would want to know the system that you have in mind, and don't have the courage or the ability to propose. A Franciscan world? Beautiful: but looked around you, and tell me if you see a saio. A revised and correct communism? It would make the end of the other, even if he/she won't succeed in repeating its disasters. Believe me G.: the only acceptable social and economic system today, in West, it is that based on the market: a checked capitalism and moderate, to intend us. It is desirable that it may also correct: and not this always happens, it is true. The trouble is that the capitalism is served as the capitalists - and those, must admit, they are often difficult to be digested. You don't try to confuse me the ideas, therefore. You won't succeed us. I probably have three times his/her years, and I have seen where they conduct these generic pulls against "the multinationals": sooner or later, someone will depose the bar and he/she will take the gun. I forgot: I sign my opinions, she throws the stone and it hides the hand. All brave ones so, you boys of Seattle?”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Corriere della Sera, 9 June 2001.
2000s - 2010s

World, Beauty, Boy, Communication

“No. Sorry, but no. I fully appreciate how much “trouble” I will get into for this, but no. I cannot let this pass without comment. Using the only hours past death of your own mother to make a point about a comic book story? There are not sufficient words in the English language to properly express my disgust.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2008
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22720&PN=0&TPN=43
When a fan and forum member made the announcement in one of the message board threads that his mother had passed earlier in the day

Death, Books, Past

“After refreshment St. George made a speech, in which he informed his audience that he had removed their direful scourge, at a great deal of trouble and inconvenience to himself, and now they weren't to go about grumbling and fancying they'd got grievances, because they hadn't. And they shouldn't be so fond of fights, because next time they might have to do the fighting themselves, which would not be the same thing at all.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Time, Fight

“The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending …”

Martin Amis book Experience

Introduction
Experience (2000)

Life, Feeling

“I want to quote this— "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law", on and on and on and on. I mean, God's in the first 10 words. So – why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn't have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn't you just shut up?”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2002-10-30
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
to atheist Eagle Scout Darrel Lambert

God, Law, Quotes, Reading

“The trouble is, SMers are allowing themselves to be defined by what they are not. We think, "Oh, so many people believe that we're all murderers and rapists, and we have to explain that we're not!" Uh — so, a slogan for the gay civil rights movement should be "Normal, Non-threatening and Not After Your Children"?”

Laura Antoniou (1963) American novelist

Source: "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny", p. 14

Children, People, Thinking

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). 1937

Love, Children, People, World

“We had a president, Moi, who was a dictator. He ruled the country with an iron fist, and anyone who dared question his authority was arrested, tortured, jailed or even killed. That meant that people were taught to be smart cowards, stay out of trouble. Being a coward was not an insult. Being a coward was a compliment. We used to be told that a coward goes home to his mother. What that meant: that if you stayed out of trouble you're going to stay alive. I used to question this advice, and eight years ago we had an election in Kenya, and the results were violently disputed. What followed that election was terrible violence, rape, and the killing of over 1,000 people. My work was to document the violence. As a photographer, I took thousands of images, and after two months, the two politicians came together, had a cup of tea, signed a peace agreement, and the country moved on. I was a very disturbed man because I saw the violence firsthand. I saw the killings. I saw the displacement. I met women who had been raped, and it disturbed me, but the country never spoke about it. We pretended. We all became smart cowards. We decided to stay out of trouble and not talk about it.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

Women, People, Peace, Home

“Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Sleeping at Last http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/crossetti/bl-crossetti-sleep.htm, st. 1 (1893) .

Lovers, Sleep, Past

“Obama can't announce that man-in-space is out of date because of the political consequences… Senators and congressmen from Florida, Texas and Alabama (centers of space-program jobs) would give him so much trouble he can't cancel it.”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

Source: Michael Hiltzik. " TRW co-founder Simon Ramo: The epitome of a 'Renaissance man' http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/16/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20100616." June 16, 2010 at articles.latimes.com.

“God is all love, and the more we are like Him the more we shall love; the trouble is not in the quantity but the quality of our love. If it were wholly pure, wholly unselfish, it could not be too deep or intense; for all true loving lifts us to a higher plane, bringing us nearer to God and the eternal goodness.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 395.

Love, God

“There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

Life, Knowledge, Science

“A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

"Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/1990s/TESTIMONYCommitteeBanking100198.html, October 1 1998

War, Law, Change, Past

“Put music to our troubles and we'll dance them away.”

Aaron Weiss

The Ghost.
A→B Life (2002)

Music, Dance

“What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He said, in a regretful tone, 'The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped'. I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation. 'Well', he said, 'I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines'. He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude, and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing impatience there was being manifested through the North at the war. He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object, and of failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere, with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and, like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 434–435.

Men, War, Peace, Hope

“Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

Attributed to Inge in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), which cites the London Observer, 14 February 1932. However, this aphorism was in circulation decades earlier, e.g., it features in an advertisement in The Grape Belt, 2 October 1906, p. 5 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LY9CAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tLkMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5967,3394664&dq=worry-is-interest-paid-on-trouble-before-it-falls-due&hl=en Misattributed

“She remembered taking money out from gathering crop
And buying Johnnys guitar at the broker shop
As long as he would play it by the railroad side
And wouldn't get in trouble, he was satisfied
But never thought that there would come a day like this
When she would have to give her son a goodbye kissGoing bye, bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye Johnny
Bye, bye Johnny B. Goode”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Bye Bye Johnny" (1960)
Song lyrics

Money

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?(Farquharson translation)
Ὄρθρου, ὅταν δυσόκνως ἐξεγείρῃ, πρόχειρον ἔστω ὅτι ἐπὶ ἀνθρώπου ἔργον ἐγείρομαι· ἔτι οὖν δυσκολαίνω, εἰ πορεύομαι ἐπὶ τὸ ποιεῖν ὧν ἕνεκεν γέγονα καὶ ὧν χάριν προῆγμαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον; ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦτο κατεσκεύασμαι, ἵνα κατακείμενος ἐν στρωματίοις ἐμαυτὸν θάλπω;
V, 1
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

Back To Work, World

“It is God’s will that we take His behests and His comfortings as largely and as mightily as we may take them, and also He willeth that we take our abiding and our troubles as lightly as we may take them, and set them at nought. For the more lightly we take them, and the less price we set on them, for love, the less pain we shall have in the feeling of them, and the more thanks and meed we shall have for them.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 63

Love, God, Pain, Feeling

“In all cases, not only in the two which we have analyzed, recovery came of itself. There is certainly this much of truth in the talk about the recuperative powers of our industrial system. But this is not all: our analysis leads us to believe that recovery is sound only if it does come of itself. For any revival which is merely due to artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone and adds, to an undigested remnant of maladjustment, new maladjustment of its own which has to be liquidated in turn, thus threatening business with another crisis ahead. Particularly, our story provides a presumption against remedial measures which work through money and credit. For the trouble is fundamentally not with money and credit, and policies of this class are particularly apt to keep up, and add to, maladjustment, and to produce additional trouble in the future.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian economist

"Depressions: Can we learn from past experience?" in Schumpeter, Joseph A.; Chamberlin, Edward; Leontief, Wassily W.; Brown, Douglass V.; Harris, Seymour E.; Mason, Edward S.; Taylor, Overton H., The economics of the recovery program (1934)

Money, Truth, Business, Future

“You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Preface, p. xi
2010s, Why Marx Was Right (2011)

People

“Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spelled trouble for the women who loved them.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Denise Holton, Chapter 21, p. 231
2000s, The Rescue (2000)

Love, Women, Men, Secret

“It seemed like an awful lot of trouble just to be naked.”

Gina Barberi

Radio From Hell (July 31, 2006)

“I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England…owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes. I worked for many years in an industrial business, and had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men…I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time. It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground, a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handle of a wheelbarrow, smoking their pipes. Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survivor of that type of works, and ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925). 1925

Life, Men, People, Home

“My friends are all broad-minded, and well educated, but we do not keep a record of our conversations. The reason for this is (1) we are too lazy, and do not aspire to fame; (2) to talk gives us pleasure, but to write would give trouble; (3) none of us would be able to read it again after our deaths, so why worry; (4) if we wrote something this year we should probably find it all wrong the next year.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Preface to Water Margin

Death, Pleasure, Education, Reading

“When we look over the rest of the world, in spite of all its devastation there is encouragement to believe it is on a firmer moral foundation than it was in 1914. Much of the old despotism has been swept away, While some of it comes creeping back disguised under new names, no one can doubt that the general admission of the right of the people to self-government has made tremendous progress in nearly every quarter of the globe. In spite of the staggering losses and the grievous burden of taxation, there is a new note of hope for the individual to be more secure in his rights, which is unmistakably clearer than ever before. With all the troubles that beset the Old World, the former cloud of fear is evidently not now so appalling. It is impossible to believe that any nation now feels that it could better itself by war, and it is apparent to me that there has been a very distinct advance in the policy of peaceful and honorable adjustment of international differences. War has become less probable; peace has become more secure. The price which has been paid to bring about this new condition is utterly beyond comprehension. We can not see why it should not have come in orderly and peaceful methods without the attendant shock of fire and sword and carnage. We only know that it is here. We believe that on the ruins of the old order a better civilization is being constructed.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War, People, World, Fear

“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. 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.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 107

Children, Girl, Lovers

“I don't know anything about Angola, but Angola's in trouble.”

Charles Barkley (1963) American basketball player

Press conference before the USA played Angola in the 1st round of the 1992 Olympics.

“I am very troubled by this horrible issue of "who is a Jew?" I'm very simplistic about it. I ask, if Hitler were here, would he consider me a Jew? And of course he'd say yes, and that's the end of that. If we were all in line to go to Auschwitz, would the Orthodox pull us out of line and say, "You're not a Jew"?”

Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015) American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer

"A Conversation with Leonard Nimoy" http://www.reformjudaism.org/jewish-life/arts-culture/conversation-leonard-nimoy, Reform Judaism Magazine (Spring 1998).

“Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.”

Euripidés Medea

Variant translation (by Paul Roche): For nothing is like the sorrow or supersedes the sadness of losing your native land.
Source: Medea (431 BC), Line 653 (translated by David Kovacs: Perseus Digital Library)

“If one prefers to have little with blessing, to have truth with concern, to suffer instead of exulting over imagined victories, then one presumably will not be disposed to praise the knowledge, as if what it bestows were at all proportionate to the trouble it causes, although one would not therefore deny that through its pain it educates a person, if he is honest enough to want to be educated rather than to be deceived, out of the multiplicity to seek the one, out of abundance to seek the one thing needful, as this is plainly and simply offered precisely according to the need for it.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 128-129
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses (1843-1844)

Pain, Truth, Education, Imagination

“Until the “time of troubles” starting in the late ’70s, Afghans were proverbial in their hospitality and readiness to welcome foreigners. Over two decades, an estimated 1.2 million young Westerners traveled there in search of the mythical east — without facing any hostility. As for misogyny, Afghanistan was among the first Muslim countries to declare education compulsory for both boys and girls. From the ’60s, it had women doctors, professors, parliamentarians and even Cabinet ministers.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of our Afghanistan debate" http://nypost.com/2009/10/15/myths-of-our-afghanistan-debate/, New York Post (October 15, 2009). New York Post

Women, Hostility, Education, Travel

“I was much troubled in spirit, in my first years upon the bench, to find how trackless was the ocean on which I had embarked. I sought for certainty. I was oppressed and disheartened when I found that the quest for it was futile. I was trying to reach land, the solid land of fixed and settled rules, the paradise of a justice that would declare itself by tokens plainer and more commanding than its pale and glimmering reflections in my own vacillating mind and conscience.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 165-166.
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Justice

“I dont never hav enny trouble in regulating mi own kondukt, but tew keep other pholks straight iz what bothers me.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“The trouble with me is that I’m an outsider. And that’s a very hard thing to be in American life.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Quoted in The Unknown Wisdom of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1994) edited by Bill Adler

Life

“What troubles me is that we will see in Germany no approximation of the East German income to the West German income anymore, because productivity stays so far behind.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

speech "The catch-up process of the East has gone to end in 1996 - What to do?" at the 10. May 2004 for the "Erfurt Dialogues", thueringen.de http://www.thueringen.de/de/tsk/veranstaltungen/dialog/archiv/schmidt/

“Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe courses… Prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 21; translated by W. K. Marriot

Imagination, Evil

“There was considerable missionary sympathy for Karen separatism, and not an insignificant part of the troubles that Burma had to face after her independence may justifiably be attributed to the favouritism with which the Christian elements among the Karens were treated by the West.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Parting

“You have called upon us to expose ourselves to all the subtle machinations of their malignity for all time. And now, what do you propose to do when you come to make peace? To reward your enemies, and trample in the dust your friends? Do you intend to sacrifice the very men who have come to the rescue of your banner in the South, and incurred the lasting displeasure of their masters thereby? Do you intend to sacrifice them and reward your enemies? Do you mean to give your enemies the right to vote, and take it away from your friends? Is that wise policy? Is that honorable? Could American honor withstand such a blow? I do not believe you will do it. I think you will see to it that we have the right to vote. There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Constitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 General Jackson addressed us as citizens; 'fellow-citizens'. He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Men, War, Peace, History

“Judgments upon books are formed with even more haste and levity than judgments upon men. Writings are talked of without being known; and people take up an opinion for or against, in consequence of decisions which it would cost them some trouble to determine the source. These are evils which must be borne with patience, and the more so because they are common.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Men, People, Books, Decision

“Oh, philosophers may sing
Of the troubles of a King,
But of pleasures there are many and of worries there are none;
And the culminating pleasure
That we treasure beyond measure
Is the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Gondoliers (1889)

Pleasure, Feeling, Singing

“It may also be noted that the authoritarian states are in trouble internationally. Some regard this as intentional, as part of the diversion and scapegoat technique, while others think that it is more or less inevitable because of the very co-ordination of the economic activities of the individual nations in question.”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Notes on the Theory of Organization," 1937, p. 40

Question, Thinking, Parting

“Do you kill people?'
'Not regularly. It's too much trouble making my peace with the gods afterwards.”

Lindsey Davis book Time to Depart

Time to Depart

God, People, Peace

“Trump: I'm Donald Trump, and I'm running for president. Our country is in deep trouble because let's face it: politics are all talk and no action. My opponents have no experience in creating jobs or making deals. The fact is, I'm going to make the greatest trade deals we've ever made in our country. And I'm going to bring jobs and money back to the United States. I'll take care of our veterans and make our military so strong that nobody will ever mess with us. I'll secure our borders, and yes, we will have a wall. You can't have a country without borders. Obamacare is a total disaster. It will be repealed and replaced with something much better. If the people of Iowa vote for me, you'll never be disappointed. I don't disappoint people, I produce. Together, we're going to Make America Great Again. I'm Donald Trump, candidate for president, and I approve this message.
Female V/O: Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Radio ad aired in Iowa (5 November 2015)
2010s, 2015

Money, People, Disappointment, Strong

“When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and know his cares,
When you've come to understand him and the burdens that he bears,
When you've learned the fight he's making and the troubles in his way,
Then you find that he is different than you thought him yesterday.
You find his faults are trivial and there's not so much to blame
In the brother that you jeered at when you only knew his name.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), When You Know a Fellow, stanza 1, p. 12.

Way, Understanding, Learning, Joy

“She was crazy but he needed her. Oh I am in so much trouble he thought, and stared blindly up at the ceiling as the droplets of sweat began to gather on his forehead again.”

Stephen King book Misery

Misery (1987)

“It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Soul

“They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are rough-and-ready proles, laughing along with us at the efforts of our social "betters" to reform and improve us. That they are often, in fact, people of privilege doing their utmost to boost the fortunes of a political party that is the traditional tool of the privileged is a contradiction that does not trouble them.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 116).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

People, Effort

“The only thing that you can get into without a lot of trouble is a lot of trouble.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

id.

“I can imagine anything! That's the trouble with me. I can imagine things now — this minute. I could even make them sound all right, but of course none of them would be true.”

Agatha Christie book Dead Man's Folly

Ariadne Oliver
Dead Man's Folly (1956)

Imagination

“Not too much science but too little science is at the root of our troubles.”

Ralph Vary Chamberlin (1879–1967) American biologist (1879-1967)

"The Kingdom of Man" https://archive.org/details/kingdomofman289cham (1938)

Science

“They looked like men. That was the trouble with devils, Carolyn thought. Too often they looked like men.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 20 (p. 449)

Men

“I grew up in a world, [a] very New Jersey, American, Dominican, immigrant, African-American, Latino world. And, you know, I went to school and it was basically the same. I went to college; it was basically the same, where largely I wasn't really encouraged to imagine women as fully human. I was in fact pretty much — by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV — encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men. And so I think that a lot of guys, part of our journey is wrestling with, coming to face, our limited imagina[tion] and growing in a way that allows us not only to imagine women as fully human, but to imagine the things that we do to women — that we often do blithely, without thinking, we just sort of shrug off — as actually deeply troubling and as hurting another human being. And this seems like the simplest thing. A lot of people are like, 'Really, that's like a huge leap of knowledge, of the imagination?”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

But for a lot of guys, that is. NPR interview (September 2012) http://www.npr.org/2012/09/11/160252399/fidelity-in-fiction-junot-diaz-deconstructs-a-cheater

Women, Men, People, World