Quotes about trouble
page 13

Andrew Johnson photo
Javier Marías photo

“…and a little later comes the question that no one asks before acting or before speaking: 'Do I dare disturb the universe?', because everyone dares to do just that, to disturb the universe and to trouble it, with their small, quick tongues and their ill-intentioned steps.”

...y un poco más tarde viene la pregunta que nadie se hace antes de obrar ni antes de hablar: ‘Do I dare disturb the universe?’, porque todo el mundo se atreve a ello, a turbar el universo y a molestarlo, con sus rápidas y pequeñas lenguas y con sus mezquinos pasos.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 2. Baile y sueño [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 2: Dance and Dream] (2004), p. 111

Herbert Hoover photo

“What the country needs is a good big laugh. … If someone could get off a good joke every ten days, I think our troubles would be over.”

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

Statement http://books.google.com/books?id=6swLAAAAYAAJ&q=%22What+the+country+needs+is+a+good+big+laugh%22+%22if+some+one+could+get+off+a+good+joke+every+ten+days+i+think+our+troubles+would+be+over%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage to Raymond Clapper http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/clapper-raymond.cfm (c. February 1931)

Clement Attlee photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo

“The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

This was quoted as an anonymous saying heard in Moscow around the time of the first Russian elections, in Voltaire, Goldberg & Others : A Compendium of the Witty, the Profound and the Absurd (2000), p. 201; it was later attributed to Brezhnev in Brewer's Famous Quotations: 5000 Quotations and the Stories Behind Them (2006) by Nigel Rees, p. 441, but without citations, and it is clearly derived from a statement widely attributed to Vyacheslav Molotov as early as the 1954 Berlin Conference, according to an eyewitness writing in International Affairs Vol. 36 (1960), p. 4 : "The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they are going to to turn out."
Misattributed

Pete Doherty photo

“There's the moon trying to look romantic
Moon's too old that's her trouble
Aren't we all?”

Roger McGough (1937) British writer and poet

"Aren't We All", from The Mersey Sound (1967)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“The trouble with you John, is that your spine does not reach your brain.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On Conservative backbencher John Whittingdale after being summoned to her room to urge MPs to vote against the Maastricht Treaty. Whittingdale was reported to have emerged from the room in tears. (The Times 26 November 1992)
Post-Prime Ministerial

Alvin C. York photo
Edward R. Murrow photo
Godfrey Higgins photo

“It's good fishing in troubled waters.”
Aqua turbida piscosior est.

Peter of Blois French poet and diplomat

Letter 50, to Henry, Bishop of Bayeux, 1170, in J. A. Giles (ed.) Petri blesensis bathoniensis archidiaconi opera omnia (Oxonii: J. H. Parker, 1846-7) vol. 1, p. 155; translation from Provérbios Latinos. http://www.hkocher.info/minha_pagina/adagia/adagia_a.htm

Aldous Huxley photo
William Morris photo
Simon Stevin photo
Pat Condell photo
Martin Amis photo
Shane Claiborne photo
Warren G. Harding photo

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my god-damned friends, White, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor nights!”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Remark to editor William Alan White, as quoted in Thomas Harry Williams et al. (1959) A History of the United States.
1920s

Seishirō Itagaki photo
Camille Paglia photo
Arun Shourie photo

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Alastair Reynolds photo
George William Russell photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

George Washington Plunkitt photo

“I rope them all in by givin’ them opportunities to show themselves off. I don’t trouble them with political arguments. I just study human nature and act accordin’. p. 26”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 6, To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin’

George Long photo
Francis Bacon photo
African Spir photo
Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi photo

“He [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] wanted to say that if certain people have created troubles for the Jewish community they should bear the expenses, and it is not others who should pay for that.”

Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (1960) Iranian politician

As quoted in Anti-Israel remarks 'misunderstood,' says Iranian official, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 16 December 2005 http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/12/16/iran_holocaust051216.html,

Jack Vance photo
Tommy Douglas photo

“It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do. They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats. Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are. Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort. All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat. You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice. Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!"”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea!
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/Politics/Parties+and+Leaders/Tommy+Douglas/ID/1409090169/?sort=MostPopular

Fernando J. Corbató photo
John Buchan photo

“If anyone makes trouble I've advised him to dot him one on the jaw in the best British style.”

Source: The House of the Four Winds (1935), Ch. III

Bob Dylan photo

“Throw my ticket out the window,
Throw my suitcase out there too,
Throw my troubles out the door, I don't need them anymore,
'Cause tonight I'll be staying here with you.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You

Stephen Leacock photo
Jesse Ventura photo

“Every fat person says it's not their fault, that they have gland trouble. You know which gland? The saliva gland. They can't push away from the table.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Interview in Playboy (November 1999)

George Gordon Byron photo

“[Armenian] is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it.”

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

"To Mr. Moore", From the Letters of Lord Byron, 5 December 1816, p. 12.
Lord Byron's Armenian Exercises and Poetry (1870)

Heinrich Himmler photo

“I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination  of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The Posen speech to SS officers (4 October 1943), original translation from "International Military Trials - Nurnberg Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV", US Govt Printing Offc 1946 pp. 563-4.

Noel Gallagher photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Madeleine K. Albright photo

“What really troubles me is that democracy is getting a bad name because it is identified with imposition and occupation. I'm for democracy, but imposing democracy is an oxymoron. People have to choose democracy, and it has to come up from below.”

Madeleine K. Albright (1937–2022) Former U.S. Secretary of State

When asked what she considered the greatest mistake of the George W. Bush administration, interview with Deborah Solomon http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE5DB173FF930A15757C0A9609C8B63, New York Times (April 23, 2006)
2000s

Elton Mayo photo

“One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider our problem, can change our whole outlook on the world.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Elton Mayo, cited in: Edward William Bok (1947), Ladies' Home Journal.Vol. 64, p. 246

Berthe Morisot photo
Thérèse of Lisieux photo
Bill Hicks photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“When there is noise and crowds, there is trouble; when everything is silent and perfect, there is just perfection and nothing to fill the air.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Perfect Boredom http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/perfect-boredom/
From the poems written in English

Thomas Jefferson photo
Howard Dean photo

“I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can't—think it can't be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is that by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear, the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Describing a theory held by some that President George W. Bush knew about the 9-11 attack coming to America. The Diane Rehm Show, public radio station WAMU, December 1, 2003. Quoted by Timothy Noah, "Howard Dean: Whopper of the Week" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2003/12/whopper_howard_dean.html, December 13, 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2016.

Ramakrishna photo
Albert Einstein photo

“The trouble with a man who takes his time is that he takes your time, too.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

Featherisms (2008)

Robert Charles Wilson photo
Rudolf Hess photo
Herb Caen photo

“The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.”

Herb Caen (1916–1997) American newspaper columnist

Dell, Diana. Memorable Quotations: Humorists, Wits, and Satirists of the Past, p. 54 http://books.google.com/books?id=IhgDPQvUM6YC&pg=PA54. iUniverse, 2000. ISBN 0595165958
Attributed

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Ed Yourdon photo

“A system composed of 100,000 lines of C++ is not be sneezed at, but we don't have that much trouble developing 100,000 lines of COBOL today. The real test of OOP will come when systems of 1 to 10 million lines of code are developed.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Yourdon (1990) cited in: Andreas Paepcke (1991) Object-oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications. p. 166.

Al Gore photo
Gordon R. Dickson photo
Saul Leiter photo

“I never felt the need to do what everyone else did. And I wasn’t troubled by the fact that other people were doing other things.”

Saul Leiter (1923–2013) American photographer

Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast (2009)

Willem Roelofs photo

“[one watercolor] is in spite of all its difficulties, and perhaps because she has given so much trouble, less fresh and has become a little heavy - I myself have considered for a long time whether she was good enough to send it [for a exhibition in Utrecht] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) [een aquarel] is niettegenstaanden alle moeite, en misschien wel omdàt zij moeite heeft gekost, minder frisch en wat zwaar geworden – Ik heb zelf lang in beraad gestaan of zij goed genoeg was om te zenden [naar Utrecht]
In a letter to P. verLoren van Themaat, 23 Nov. 1866; in Haagsch Gemeentearchief / Municipal Archive of The Hague
1860's

Luc Besson photo

“You no trouble. Me… Fifth element… supreme being… me protect you.”

Luc Besson (1959) French film director, writer, and producer

The Fifth Element (1997)

Eric Hoffer photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Half a century ago, the first feeling of all Englishmen was for England. Now, the sympathies of a powerful party are instinctively given to whatever is against England. It may be Boers or Baboos, or Russians or Affghans, or only French speculators – the treatment these all receive in their controversies with England is the same: whatever else my fail them, they can always count on the sympathies of the political a party from whom during the last half century the rulers of England have been mainly chosen…It is striking, though by no means a solitary indication of how low, in the present temper of English politics, our sympathy with our own countrymen has fallen. Of course, we shall be told that a conscience of exalted sensibility, which is the special attribute of the Liberal party, has enabled them to discover, what English statesmen had never discovered before, that the cause to which our countrymen are opposed is generally the just one…For ourselves, we are rather disposed to think that patriotism has become in some breasts so very reasonable an emotion, because it is ceasing to be an emotion at all; and that these superior scruples, to which our fathers were insensible, and which always make the balance of justice lean to the side of abandoning either our territory or our countrymen, indicate that the national impulses which used to make Englishmen cling together in face of every external trouble are beginning to disappear.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

‘Disintegration’, Quarterly Review, no. 312; October 1883, reprinted in Paul Smith (ed.), Lord Salisbury on Politics. A selection from his articles in the Quaterly Review, 1860-1883 (Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 342-343
1880s

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Wentworth Miller photo
Taliesin photo

“Don't worry about those Jewish bastards. You'll soon be on your way up the chimney and your troubles will be over.”

Heinrich Baab (1908) German Gestapo officer

To mothers, who were worried about the fate of their children. Quoted in "Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny" - Page 118 - by Edward Crankshaw - History - 1956

George S. Patton photo

“The more I see of Arabs the less I think of them. By having studied them a good deal I have found out the trouble. They are the mixture of all the bad races on earth, and they get worse from west to east, because the eastern ones have had more crosses.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Letter to Frederick Ayers (5 May 1943), published in The Patton Papers 1940-1945 (1996) edited by Martin Blumenson, p. 243

Alex Salmond photo

“No-one should have any trouble finding a party.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

St Andrew's Day (November 30, 2007)

Nico Perrone photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Henry Miller photo

“The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.”

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 14. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 339)

Chrissie Hynde photo
H. G. Wells photo
André Breton photo
Tom Selleck photo

“You know, I understand how you feel. This is a really contentious issue. Probably as contentious, and potentially as troubling as the abortion issue in this country. All I can tell you is, rushes to pass legislation at a time of national crisis or mourning, I don't really think are proper. And more importantly, nothing in any of this legislation would have done anything to prevent that awful tragedy in Littleton.What I see in the work I've done with kids is, is troubling direction in our culture. And where I see consensus, which is I think we ought to concentrate on in our culture is… look… nobody argues anymore whether they're Conservatives or Liberal whether our society is going in the wrong direction. They may argue trying to quantify how far it's gone wrong or why it's gone that far wrong, whether it's guns, or television, or the Internet, or whatever. But there's consensus saying that something's happened. Guns were much more accessible 40 years ago. A kid could walk into a pawn shop or a hardware store and buy a high-capacity magazine weapon that could kill a lot of people and they didn't do it.The question we should be asking is… look… suicide is a tragedy. And it's a horrible thing. But 30 or 40 years ago, particularly men, and even young men, when they were suicidal, they went, and unfortunately, blew their brains out. In today's world, someone who is suicidal sits home, nurses their grievance, develops a rage, and is just a suicidal but they take 20 people with them. There's something changed in our culture.</p”

Tom Selleck (1945) American actor

On <i>The Rosie O'Donnell Show</i> on May 19th, 1999.

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Howard Zinn photo

“David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Comment on David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor, quoted at 911Truth.org (13 August 2004) http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040525224251221

St. Vincent (musician) photo

“Honey the party went away quickly, but thats the trouble with ticking and talking.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Party"
Actor (2009)

Griff Rhys Jones photo

“My family wasn't troubled by much dysfunction. The most hotly contested issue was probably 'Who is going to have the most peas?'. Consequently, I haven't got much time for angst. Anything that happens to you is your own responsibility.”

Griff Rhys Jones (1953) British actor and comedian

Michael Odell, "This much I know: Griff Rhys Jones" http://arts.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1939605,00.html, The Guardian, November 5 2006.
Talking about dysfunction

C. Everett Koop photo
Thomas Carew photo
DJ Shadow photo
Mohammed Alkobaisi photo
Théodore Rousseau photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

Aaron Sorkin photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Lucille Ball photo

“The thing is … nothing’s as easy as we'd like it to be. … And the real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", p. 282
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

Benjamin Franklin photo

“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

As quoted in Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 22.
Decade unclear
Variant: Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.