Predicaments Quotes

Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone. ~ Philip Roth

The present predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from a historical situation. Their solutions are not so much a matter of personal decision as that of a fundamental social transformation of the structures of our societies starting with a real break with imperialism and its internal ruling allies. Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never develop the continent. ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo

Life is adventure, not predicament. ~ James Broughton

There are many predicaments in life that one must be a bit crazy to escape from. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are many ways to become mistress (or master) of one's fate after a betrayal, but they all have things in common: conscious effort and a fighting spirit, embodied in what I call 'the Affirmative No.' The Affirmative No incorporates self-enhancing outrage, independence, and courage. It is a stance through which a traumatized person actively proclaims her will by rejecting the role of victim.... Unable to change our predicaments, we actively changed their meaning and our relationship to them, and in the process, we discovered that we could exert power when we thought we had none. ~ Jeanne Safer

What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. ~ Christopher Isherwood

I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

She was a real human being laying herself bare, fearlessly, that we might come to understand the nature of our own predicaments. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Only trust me! You have fallen into a fit of despondency and there is not the least need! In fact, nothing could be more fatal, in any predicament! It encourages one to suppose that there is nothing to be done, when a little resolution is all that is wanted to bring matters to a happy conclusion. ~ Georgette Heyer

It is only in statistics that people die by the millions. Each person dies individually, in his own predicament. ~ Liv Ullmann

Life is perpetually testing us not only by administering these "thousand natural shocks" but by making us choose among them. Rarely is the answer as easy and obvious as "cake." In the most challenging predicaments, perceived causality for an undesirable outcome, even if there was no clearer or better choice, can be a debilitating burden. We frequently pay a mental and emotional tax for freedom of choice. ~ Sheena Iyengar

In statesmanship there are predicaments from which it is impossible to escape without some wrongdoing. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head. ~ Charlie Chaplin

I was not aware of my actions. Everyone must find out who they are and be aware of their actions before they wind up in a vicious predicament. ~ Richard Ramirez

When we are not any lengthier capable to alter a predicament, we're challenged to alter ourselves ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Many of our choices have led to the predicaments we are presently complaining about. ~ Monica Johnson

A lot of people saw Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland as persecuted and tragic and vulnerable, and I think a lot of gay men feel that way because of their particular predicament in society and not being accepted completely. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament. ~ James G. Frazer

And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rolled toward my mother as though she were standing at the bottom of a steep hill. Mother had no hand in this, only heart. ~ Tayari Jones

The enormous spotlight that focused on King, combined with the construction of Rosa Parks as a saintly symbol, hid the women's long struggle in the dimly lit background, obscuring the origins of the MIA and erasing women from the movement. For decades, the Montgomery bus boycott has been told as a story triggered by Rosa Park's spontaneous refusal to give up her seat followed by the triumphant leadership of men like Fred Gray, Martin Luther King, Jr., E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy. While these men had a major impact on the emerging protest movement, it was black women's decade-long struggle against mistreatment and abuse by white bus drivers and police officers that launched the boycott. Without an appreciation for the particular predicaments of black women in the Jim Crow South, it is nearly impossible to understand why thousands of working-class and hundreds of middle-class black women chose to walk rather than ride the bus for 381 days. ~ Danielle L. McGuire

There are only a few things worse than having to face up to the fact that the predicaments one finds oneself in are usually the results of one's own foolish actions. ~ Jean Ferris

When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experiences of nearly forty years at sea, I merely say uneventful. I have never been in an accident of any sort worth speaking about ... I never saw a wreck and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. ~ Edward Smith

For example, I'm terribly proud. I'm as mistrustful and as sensitive as a hunchback or a dwarf; but, in truth, I've experienced some moments when if someone had slapped my face, I might even have been grateful for it. I'm being serious. I probably would have been able to derive a peculiar sort of pleasure from it-the pleasure of despair, naturally, but the most intense pleasures occur in despair, especially when you're very acutely aware of the hopelessness of your own predicament. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

I think the hardest thing about the part is the responsibility that you feel playing something that is so real and resonant in our times. There are people coming home right now with those stories, and I'm just an actress pretending to be that person. You hope that you can shed some light on somebody's predicament. ~ Linda Cardellini

We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it. ~ Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question Have we anything to eat? will be answered not in material but in ethical terms. ~ Hugo Ball

The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline. ~ Michel Houellebecq

We are in an unusual predicament as a global civilization. The maximum that is politically feasible, even the maximum that is politically imaginable right now, still falls short of the minimum that is scientifically and ecologically necessary. ~ Al Gore

Our lives are in constant flux, which generates many predicaments. But when these are faced with a calm and clear mind supported by spiritual practice, they can all be successfully resolved. When our minds are clouded by hatred, selfishness, jealousy, and anger, we lose not only control but also our judgment. At those wild moments, anything can happen, including war. Although the practice of compassion and wisdom is useful to us all, it is especially valuable for those responsible for running national affairs, in whose hands lie the power and opportunity to create a framework for world peace. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The medical profession's classic prescription for coping with such predicaments, Primum non nocere (First, do no harm), sounds better than it is. In fact, it fails to tell us precisely what we need to know: What is harm and what is help?
However, two things about the challenge of helping the helpless are clear. One is that, like beauty and ugliness, help and harm often lie in the eyes of the beholder
in our case, in the often divergently directed eyes of the benefactor and his beneficiary. The other is that harming people in the name of helping them is one of mankind's favorite pastimes. ~ Thomas Szasz

Our present predicament comes from the fact that running the economy on blood is no longer fashionable. We can't end this depression with another war. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Now when I hear about someone's illness, no matter what dire their predicament seems to be, I know that if they're willing to do the mental work of releasing and forgiving, almost anything can be healed. The word incurable, which is so frightening to so many people, really only means that the particular condition cannot be cured by 'outer' methods and that we must go within to effect the healing. The condition came from nothing and will go back to nothing. ~ Louise Hay

When we stop to count our blessings rather than focusing on our predicament, our attitude will be able to help us cope with our situation more productively. ~ Kevin Eikenberry

How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless. ~ George Orwell

It has always struck me as an amusing thing that the world, and all the human beings thereon, do get themselves into such curious and painful predicaments, and then spend the rest of the time wishing they could get out. ~ Bruce Bairnsfather

When we look into the human heart we see the lust, the greed, the hate, the pride, the anger, and the jealousies that are so destructive. This is at the heart of the human predicament, and the Scriptures call this condition sin. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

When the world asks if there is any hope, we can say absolutely! No one is exempt from tragedy or disappointment- God himself was not exempt. Jesus offered no immunity, no way out of the unfairness, but rather a way through it to the other side. ~ Philip Yancey

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility--of being unable to undo what one has done--is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself. ~ Hannah Arendt

The attack on youth is a national pathology, unwarranted by fact, smokescreen for the failure of adulthood and its leadership to confront larger predicaments. No rescue by the monied, governing, institutional, or otherwise privileged is in sight. It's up to the energy and inventiveness of the younger generation to pull the gated minds of millennium America toward acceptance of diversity, community, and fairness, and I hope they have as much fun as I did in my adolescences achieving what we Sixties kids only imagined. ~ Mike A. Males

The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it ~ Neal Stephenson

Chess, which exists predominantly in two dimensions, is one of the world's most difficult games. Three-dimensional chess is an invitation to insanity. But human relationships, even of the simplest order, are like a kind of four-dimensional chess, a game whose pieces and positions change subtly and inexorably between moves, whose players stare dumbly while their powerful positions deteriorate into hopeless predicaments and while improbable combinations suddenly become inevitable. To make matters worse, some games are open to any number of players, and all sides are expected to win. ~ Robert Grudin

At that point, Frank seemed to run out of words. There was somebody that he'd reminded me of, as he was spinning out his story and struggling to explain himself. Then I realized: it was myself...when I had desperately tried to talk my way out of something that could never be put right. He was doing the same thing I had done. He was trying to talk his way into absolution. In that moment, I felt overcome by a sense of mercy...for that younger version of myself...Then my mercy swelled, and for just a moment I felt mercy for everyone who has ever gotten involved in an impossibly messy story. All those predicaments that we humans find ourselves in - predicaments that we never see coming, do not know how to handle, and then cannot fix. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

A problem is something you can do something about. If you can't do something about it, then it's not a problem. It's a predicament. That means it's something that must be coped with, endured. ~ John C. Maxwell

Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. ~ Richard Avedon

It is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too ~ Charles Dickens

Predicament, n. The wage of consistency. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. ~ Garrison Keillor

Islanzadi sighed, and suddenly appeared tired. "Ormomis may have been your proper teacher, but you have proved yourself to be Brom's heir, not Oromis's. Brom is the only person who managed to entangle himself in as many predicaments as you. Like him, you seem compelled to find the deepest patch of quicksand and then dive into it."
Eragon hid a smile, pleased by the comparison. ~ Christopher Paolini

Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat ... Never take yourself too seriously. ~ Og Mandino

Adversity introduces a man to himself. ~Author Unknown ~ Steve Hilts

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and - without even knowing it - we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego. ~ Pema Chodron

The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us. ~ Terence McKenna

I forgot to sup
annoyance
from his glass full of
mingled dread and rage
Now let me take
a small draught of solace
from my own little cup
full of predicaments!
From the poem- Draught ~ Munia Khan

There is only a limited number of plots, recurring down the ages, derived from an even more limited number of basic patterns-the conflicts, paradoxes, and predicaments inherent in man's condition. And if we continue the stripping game, we find that all these paradoxes and predicaments arose from conflicts between incompatible frames of experience or scales of value, illuminated in consciousness by the bisociative act. In this final illumination Aristotle saw 'the highest form of learning' because it shows us that we are 'men, not gods'; and he called tragedy 'the noblest form of literature' because it purges suffering from its pettiness by showing that its causes lie in the inescapable predicaments of existence. ~ Arthur Koestler

Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true andfalse but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation. ~ Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods, has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which any one can get into. ~ J. Ogden Armour