Middle Ground Quotes

I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable. ~ Warren Buffett

I'm a diplomat by nature. I help find the middle ground. I crack a joke and use humour to help resolve potentially vicious situations quickly. It gets things in perspective and helps everyone to see that things aren't as bad as they seem. ~ Ronnie Wood

We need to discover a common middle ground in which all of these things, from the city to the wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word "home." ~ William Cronon

(Liberalism is like this: Purporting to offer a middle ground between radical individualism and collectivism, what it really gives us is a diabolical synthesis of the two, a bureaucratically managed libertinism. ~ Edward Feser

There must be some middle ground between broken hearts and pure standoffishness. ~ Kathleen Kimmel

My relationships with both my mother and father are good. We spent several difficult years hashing over the problems and the past, and worked out a fairly solid middle ground. I wouldn't say my relationship with either of them - they're no longer together - is exactly typical, but that would be difficult after all we went through. ~ Marya Hornbacher

There were problems with having a reputation like his. Folks either wanted your hide or wanted you to save theirs. There was never any happy, indifferent middle ground. ~ Gillian Bronte Adams

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently. ~ Paul Reiser

We're living in a funny time right now, when people build restaurant-grade kitchens in their homes, and if you walk into a specialty cooking store, it seems like you need sixteen gadgets and a graduate degree to make a meal. At the same time, other people live entirely on takeout, frozen food, and energy bars that don't resemble anything close to food. I think there's a middle ground worth finding between those two extremes, where we feed ourselves and the people we love with our hands and without a lot of tricks and fanfare. ~ Shauna Niequist

A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalizing "same-sex marriage"] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture. ~ Michelangelo Signorile

I can't hurt any more than I've been hurt, I can't cry any more than I've cried. I've been to the highest of highs and lowest of lows, so one day I'm going to find my middle ground and be happy. ~ Cheryl Cole

What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed.
"I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Only the middle ground of this wicked world mattered, the vast gap that stretched between, and those who were born with enough grit to brave it. ~ David Joy

I don't say anything and I feel awful. I tell somebody and I feel worse. I'm having trouble finding a middle ground. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

One of the unfortunate consequences of the intellectualization of man's spiritual life was that the word "spirit" was lost and replaced by mind or intellect, and that the element of vitality which is present in "spirit" was separated and interpreted as an independent biological force. Man was divided into a bloodless intellect and a meaningless vitality. The middle ground between them, the spiritual soul, in which vitality and intentionality are united, was dropped. ~ Paul Tillich

To be able to impress, you have to get to this middle ground where you're not too advanced so it goes over people's heads, and you're not too minimalist where people think you're just trying to rob the game and not stretch out. ~ DJ Quik

To handle that stardom, the red carpets, the photo shoots, people all of a sudden recognizing you and following you in everyday life, it's a bit weird. It's strange, and it can have funny effects on you in terms of do you like it or don't you like it. Some people run away from it, some people embrace it; I found a good middle ground. ~ Roger Federer

The older I get, the more determined I feel to do whatever I can to help release that human potential somehow. Not in a fluffy way nor in a hardcore way. But in that middle ground, that marriage of love and power. I'm not afraid of either. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Somewhere in that hour I lost all relation to a middle ground, and I didn't regain it for what became a very long time. In ~ Hope Edelman

It is the sensitive people in any organization that become aware of the need to discover the acceptable "middle" ground between "profit only" and "people only" and act accordingly. ~ Herman L Glaess

The tension between what is, and what we dream of, is important. Not to discount what we have, but to hold onto that middle ground, because it's in there that the magic happens. ~ Susan Branch

Reality's its own thing. And I'm not really into reality that much. I'm into this cinematic stylized reality that can comment on reality. It's like the most beautiful parts of reality and the saddest parts, but it's none of this middle ground. ~ Zack Snyder

There is a middle ground in things. ~ Horace

There is such a thing as commonsense middle-ground gun reform, and most gun owners support it. ~ Mike Quigley

The mind is either at war with God or it is being renewed. There is no middle ground. ~ Bill Johnson

You can choose to listen to one end of the spectrum or the other on Twitter, just like you can on television. But hopefully what we've done is given a voice to that broad middle ground. ~ Dick Costolo

It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. ~ Haruki Murakami

When you play the games of thrones, you win or die. There is no middle ground. ~ George R R Martin

On Being Blue celebrates both language and that which it represents and carefully draws our attention to that difficult middle ground on which the writer finds himself in lifelong struggle to join the two without sullying or smearing the clarities of either. ~ Gilbert Sorrentino

There is no middle ground in Hollywood; you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild. ~ Javier Bardem

Pornography works to a degree, high quality works, bad is obvious. Nobody goes for bad. The terrible middle ground is the mediocre. That was kind of the essence, in a way, of broadcast television when there were only three channels. ~ Henry Blodget

in order to grab on to those tiny profits people studiously adopt another perspective, keeping their true opinions to themselves, and no one takes responsibility, everyone just huddles together on some middle ground, and it all gets less and less clear, yet in the end everyone ends up being crammed into a rigid, unyielding framework. I've seen the same story play out over and over again. But ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I wasn't rebellious. Maybe I was just more human than the average person. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

He that is not with me is against me (Mat 12:30). If you are not gathering, then you are scattering. If you are not walking in light, then you are walking in darkness! There is no neutral position; there is no middle ground! ~ Ken Ham

I think I'm a combination of very simple pleasures and the fact I've read a lot of books. I don't think it's a binary opposition across the board in humans and I think I'm an example that it's not. I'm hosting gay marriage rallies and I have tons of guns at home. There's a lot of middle ground in the world and I'm one of those people. ~ Dax Shepard

this is very important, so listen carefully. As I told you before, there is no middle ground with me. You take either all of me or nothing. That's the way it works. If you don't mind continuing the way we are now, I don't see why we can't do that. I don't know how long we'd be able to, but I'll do everything in my power to see that it happens. When I'm able to come see you, I will. But when I can't, I can't. I can't just come to see you whenever I feel like it. You may not be satisfied with that arrangement, but if you don't want me to go away again, you have to take all of me. Everything. All the baggage I carry, everything that clings to me. And I will take all of you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means? ~ Haruki Murakami

Even as we seek to be meek and to avoid contention, we must not compromise or dilute our commitment to the truths we understand. We must not surrender our positions or our values. The gospel of Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made inevitably cast us as combatants in the eternal contest between truth and error. there is no middle ground in that contest. ~ Dallin H. Oaks

It's been kind of extreme - people either love it or they don't like it at all - and I think that's a good thing. It's my first art project where there's not a middle ground. I find it very interesting. But the negative feedback hasn't at all kept me from doing it, obviously. Because I haven't really gotten any negative feedback that I feel is really warranted. ~ Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

At one time I was a nihilistic punk with a mohican and a ring in my nose. I think in the course of time I'll find a middle ground, but I also carry that sense of responsibility. I'm in a position to defeat stereotypes. ~ Michelle Shocked

We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them. ~ Dallin H. Oaks

Hebrews 11:1," says Mr. Taylor. "The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen." "NO. Wrong-you messed it!" Cedric laughs. "It goes: 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Man, Mr. Taylor, you always getting 'em wrong." Mr. Taylor howls, "All right, extra point for you," but, as usual, he wrestles the boy back to middle ground, thwarting an outright victory, "The Word, of course, is the Word my young friend. But make it into what's right for you. That's the lesson for today. Take from the Holy Scripture only what you need, nothing more. ~ Ron Suskind

You know what my father said about innocent clients? ... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life ... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."
Levin nodded thoughtfully.
"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either. ~ Michael Connelly

At that point the enemies saw clear. You may accept the lofty claims of Jesus. You may take Him as very God. Or else you must reject Him as a miserable, deluded enthusiast. There is really no middle ground. Jesus refuses to be pressed into the mould of a mere religious teacher. ~ J. Gresham Machen

Jack Kerouac died after throwing up blood. The malt liquor. Then that other guy who shot his wife in the head. Burroughs somebody. And I wonder about literary figures. They're all drunk and staggering and haunting people today, I bet, still muttering and ranting in disassociated lines.

Or, I'm wondering about a middle ground with wooly blankets and nubbly cardigans and nobody shot in the head. Where yes, you are uniquely mad. But functionally uniquely mad. Endlessly absorbed but in the mildly scattered kind of way instead of in the crap-I-shot-my-wife-in-the-head kind of way. Unable to dedicate to another human being only in occasional fits.

Roald Dahl says you're a fool to become a writer, your only compensation being absolute freedom but then I'm not so sure about that. He bought a wagon from a Romanian gypsy and his kids played in it and I think he had more in the way of compensation than absolute freedom. He's got a point, though, even if he reached a point where his own point no longer applied to him. He had no master except his own soul, and that, he was sure, was why he did it. ~ Kate Inglis

If a man loves a girl who is in the first place young and inexperienced; who in the second place is educated with a background of caveman tradition, a middle-ground of poetry and romance, and a foreground of unspoken hope and interest all centering upon the one Event; and who has, furthermore, absolutely no other hope or interest worthy of the name - why, it is a comparatively easy manner to sweep her off her feet with a dashing attack. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

All the best movies are the ones that are cut from a more middle ground. ~ Kristen Schaal

Why does it have to be so cut-and-dried? In your view, I either have to hate them or be in league with them. There's a middle ground, you know. I can still be loyal to the Alchemists and on friendly terms with vampires and dhampirs. ~ Richelle Mead

There was no middle ground with Charlotte. Either I was all in or all out. ~ Vi Keeland

They were a pair of people with no middle ground, nothing between polite formalities and an engulfing intimacy ~ Alice Munro

The interior was dim like a cave. The ceiling, pressed tin, was stalactited with hooks from the days when the shopkeeper would hang it with buckets, watering cans, coils of rope and paired boots. Refrigerator cases lined a side wall, shallow crates of withered fruit and vegetables the back, and in the vast middle ground were aisles of rickety shelving, stacked with anything from tinned peaches to tampons. The sole cash register was adjacent to the entrance, next to ranks of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines and a little bookcase thumbtacked with a sign, Library. If you were a farmer in need of an axe or some some sheep dip you headed for the far back corner. If you wanted to buy a stamp, you headed a couple of paces past the library. ~ Garry Disher

Knowing that death is not far off brings remarkable clarity. After that news, there is no middle ground; something is either very important or not important at all. ~ Matthew Kelly

Jefferson sensed that, as with lovers and intimate friends, there can often be no middle ground between engagement and estrangement. In the presence of passion, or of former passions, acquaintance is impossible. It is all or nothing, for once affections have cooled it is very difficult to bring them back to a middling temperature. In such cases human nature tends to rekindle the flames to their old force, or consign them to perpetual chill. ~ Jon Meacham

Follow your bliss. That which you love you must spend your life doing, as passionately and as perfectly as your heart, mind and instincts allow. The sooner you identify that bliss, which surely resides in the soul of most human beings, the greater your chance of a truly successful life. In the act of creativity, being careful guarantees sameness and mediocrity, which means your work will be invisible. Better to be reckless than careful. Better to be bold than safe. Better to have your work seen and remembered, or you've struck out. There is no middle ground. ~ George Lois

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously. ~ Alanis Morissette

What I saw when I was doing research is that in pursuit of a middle ground, people will kind of split the difference between the two extremes that they're hearing. And I think what's problematic is that people are seeing vaccinating on schedule, on time, as an extreme position. ~ Eula Biss

I believe we're headed to an Elijah/Jezebel showdown on the Earth, not just in America but all over the globe, and the main warriors will be the prophets of Baal versus the prophets of God, and there will be no middle ground. ~ Lou Engle

No middle ground is possible on this subject. Either "taxation without consent is robbery," or it is not. If it is not, then any number of men, who choose, may at any time associate; call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves; plunder them at will; and kill them if they resist. ~ Lysander Spooner

To straddle the middle ground and win elections, we have to be in charge of the political agenda. This can only be done by not being beaten in the argument with our critics. They complain that I come down too hard on their arguments. But wrong ideas have to be challenged before they influence public opinion and make for problems. Those who try to be clever at the expense of the government should not complain if my replies are as sharp as their criticisms. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

There's something I never told you about that decision I made four years ago ... I've never felt a middle ground between acceptance and remorse. Every day for the last four years, it's been one or the other. Black or white. There was no grey, but I could bear it because I had you. When I lost you, I began slipping into perpetual guilt. Carrying that secret, alone, for the first time, while trying to balance the idea of a benevolent God with a God who could let this happen to you - it was like falling into quicksand. ~ Tammara Webber

There's a fine line between what would characterize you as a troglodyte and what would characterize you as a brilliant, avant-garde, forward-thinking genius. There's some middle ground. ~ Michael Eisner

That middle ground of films used to be 70, 80, 90, 100; now it's like anything over 20 or under 140, the middle ground has become this huge area where they don't really want to be. ~ Eric Fellner

We are becoming so entrenched into fighting for our positions that we're losing sight of the fact that there is a huge middle ground, with most people in it. Hell, fighting for the righteousness of their position seems to now be many people's overarching priority...more than saving people, more than helping them get better.

If that's not fucked up, then I don't know what is. ~ Anna Valdiserri

You can have information and ease of use and have artistic integrity at the same time. The art of being a good Web designer is getting yourself into that middle ground and treating it as a final destination instead of as a compromise. ~ Mike Davidson

As events developed, the debate about jobs and energy extraction in general became more divisive. Those at one extreme embraced the industry as an expression of old-fashioned free enterprise. It offered work that built character and brought deserving rewards for those with initiative, whether they be roughnecks working twelve-hour shifts, investors staking their capital, or researchers staking their reputation on the next big discovery. At the other end of the spectrum were those who saw the industry as a relic of grandfather clauses and cronyism that dated to a period of predatory exploitation, when fantastical deals were pitched by door-to-door peddlers, manufacturing waste was buried in lagoons on private property, and unions were nonexistent. The middle ground was occupied by an untold number of consumers used to cheap plentiful energy, and property owners, who had their worries but also were able to calculate how much a mineral rights lease might be worth. ~ Tom Wilber

I'm not good with limitations. I tend to like to find my own. It hurts sometimes, but it's good. I'm little extreme in that sense - the middle ground is not my forte. ~ Leonor Varela

The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground. ~ Steve Pavlina

If an economy is to sustain progress, it must satisfy the basic principles of ecology. If it does not, it will decline and eventually collapse. There is no middle ground ~ Lester R. Brown

There is no way of finding the middle ground, even with the best intentions of the world. Our most sensible policy is to stall. ~ Yitzhak Rabin

10:30 - "I and the Father are one." In this verse, Jesus proclaimed His unity of nature and equality in the Godhead (Deut. 6:4). Based on His assertion, we must make a decision: either we believe He really is God, or we must reject everything He says - there is no middle ground. As believers, we know that there is only one God and that He is three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We also know that everything Jesus said is absolutely true because He is the truth (John 14:6). ~ Charles F. Stanley

That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake." "I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine," Ned said, "but that was not one of them." "Oh, but it was, my lord," Cersei insisted. "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." She turned up her hood to hide her swollen face and left him there in the dark beneath the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were coming out. ~ George R R Martin

Where was the middle ground between a sense of adventure and just plain sense? ~ Richard Russo

It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were. ~ Nicholas Sparks

There's a big middle ground between pedestal and porn. ~ Melanie Harlow

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. ~ George R R Martin

We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground. ~ Leon Panetta

People, y'know, they either love us or they hate us; there's no middle ground. ~ Ace Frehley

When I was growing up, I always felt there was an expectation that I would do one of two things: be great at something, or go crazy and become a total failure. There is no middle ground where I come from, and I am only now beginning to get a sense that there is a middle ground at all. ~ Marya Hornbacher

The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. He finds both wrong by being in extremes. He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. ~ Marsilio Ficino

It was war times, and you had to take a side: good or bad. There was no middle ground ~ Yunnuen Gonzalez

Healthy self-care means finding fulfillment so that you have energy, love, and empathy for others. Finding the middle ground means realizing that it is not an either-or situation - you are neither full of self nor drained of self. ~ Karyl McBride

On one hand, you've got 'decent' men, and on the other you've got neanderthal misogynist bawbags - and the middle ground is what's disappearing. ~ Val McDermid

The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible "mixed economy," thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and socialism whose viability has so long been denied by both capitalists and socialists. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can't be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat. ~ Ed Lynskey

I never liked the middle ground-the most boring place in the world. ~ Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

We have no middle ground, no foggy gray area where we can sin a little without suffering spiritual decline. That is why we must repent and come to Christ daily on submissive knees so that we can prevent our bonfires of testimony from being snuffed out by sin. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Sara flinched as his hands slid around her waist, pulling her to his naked body. The heat of his skin sank through the insubstantial layer of her shift. He was aroused, throbbing hard and forcefully erect against her. "Open your eyes," he said. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
She forced herself to comply, staring straight ahead into his chest. Her heart thumped so violently that it seemed to batter against her ribs.
As if he could read her mind, Derek lowered his mouth to her hair and held her tightly. "Sara... I'm going to take care of you. I'll never hurt you, or force you to do something you don't want." He took a long breath and forced himself to add reluctantly, "If you want this to stop, then tell me. I probably won't be kind. But I'll wait."
She would never know how much the words cost him. It went against his nature to deny himself what he wanted so badly. He had been deprived of too much when he was young- it had made him selfish to the core. But her needs had become too important to him, her affection too precious to risk.
Sara looked up at him, reading the truth in his face. Gradually her body relaxed against his. "You must tell me how to please you," she said softly. "I-I don't know anything... and you know too much."
His black lashes lowered over a flick of green fire. A wry smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "We'll find some middle ground," he promised, and kissed her. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I wasn't really geeky. In terms of the high school hierarchy, I was very much in the middle ground. You have the really popular guys, you have the nerdy guys, and then you have the people who really don't care - and that was me. I wasn't really picked on or anything like that. ~ Callan McAuliffe

One is either packed or unpacked. There is no middle ground. ~ Caroline Stevermer

I wondered whether systems in the brain concerned with the perception (or projection) of meaning, significance, and intentionality, systems underlying a sense of wonder and mysteriousness, systems for appreciation of the beauty of art and science, had lost their balance in schizophrenia, producing a mental world overcharged with intense emotion and distortions of reality. These systems had lost their middle ground, it seemed, so that any attempt to titrate them, damp them down, could tip the person from a pathologically heightened state to one of great dullness, a sort of mental death. ~ Oliver Sacks

Novels, says Sartre, are not life, but they owe our power upon us, as upon himself as an infant, to the fact that they are somehow like life. In life, he once remarked, 'all ways are barred and nevertheless we must act. So we try to change the world; that is, to live as if the relations between things and their potentialities were governed not by deterministic processes but by magic.' The as if of the novel consists in a similar negation of determinism, the establishment of an accepted freedom by magic. We make up aventures, invent and ascribe the significance of temporal concords to those 'privileged moments' to which we alone award their prestige, make our own human clocks tick in a clockless world. And we take a man who is by definition de trop, and create a context in which he isn't.

The novel is a lie only as our quotidian inventions are lies. The power which goes to its making--the imagination --is a function of man's inescapable freedom. This freedom, in Mary Warnock's words, 'expresses itself in his ability to see things which are not.' It is by his fiction that we know he is free. It is not surprising that Sartre as ontologist, having to describe many kinds of fictive behaviour, invents stories to do so, thus moving into a middle ground between life and novel. .... ~ Frank Kermode

Emember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. ~ James A. Garfield

Our strength, in other words, has rested in our determination to reject simplistic absolutes and to redefine and revitalize a productive middle ground, relinquishing outdated solutions and embracing new approaches. As President Lincoln said in his time, 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

Trying to overcorrect is a great way to find middle ground. In order for me to speak the right amount in a meeting, I have to feel as if I am saying very little. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Each of us has to face the matter - either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Between Don Quixote the mystic and Sancho Panza the sensualist there is no middle ground. ~ John Dos Passos

Those who speak of harmony and consensus should beware of what one might call the industrial chaplain view of reality. The idea, roughly speaking, is that there are greedy bosses on one side and belligerent workers on the other, while in the middle, as the very incarnation of reason, equity and moderation, stands the decent, soft-spoken, liberal-minded chaplain who tries selflessly to bring the two warring parties together. But why should the middle always be the most sensible place to stand? Why do we tend to see ourselves as in the middle and other people as on the extremes? After all, one person's moderation is another's extremism. People don't go around calling themselves a fanatic, any more than they go around calling themselves Pimply. Would one also seek to reconcile slaves and slave masters, or persuade native peoples to complain only moderately about those who are plotting their extermination? What is the middle ground between racism and anti-racism? ~ Terry Eagleton

The choice is not between the current crisis and blissful isolation. The choice is between the current crisis and an orderly, managed system of mass migration. You can have one or the other. There is no easy middle ground ~ Patrick Kingsley

The more you start to love someone, the more you ache when they're gone, and maybe it's that middle ground that hurts the most, when you can see them and still not feel like you're near enough. ~ Robin Benway

I wish she knew that there are other options besides "complete and utter breakdown" and "plastic smile, everything's fine." There's a middle ground, waiting to be found. ~ Cat Clarke

Maybe you held back for too long and then you had to explode. Maybe there was no middle ground let. Sometimes we need to get violent with out words because no one is listening otherwise. ~ Matthew Quick