Rat Race Quotes

To enter the corporate rat race, you need to become a rat. ~ Lakshmy Menon Chatterjee

Jesus doesn't participate in the rat race. He's into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling - all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace. Words used to describe us being with Him. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

And all of this leaves me wondering if this dream of mine-that out there, somewhere, hiding, there exists a guy who is cultured and calm, and smiley and faithful, who want´s to escape the rat-race with me and, apparently like the French, wear wellies and make cheese...Well, I wonder if it can possibly exist. I don´t want much...just someone who would flat on his stomach next to me in the garden watching ants carrying crumbs through the jungle of blades of grass. I wonder if that can ever exist, anywhere, for anyone. ~ Nick Alexander

They said, congratulations you got what it takes. They sent him back to the rat race without any brakes. ~ Bob Dylan

A bus drives past and I'm nauseated by a whiff of exhaust. Then rotting fish. The rancid stench of sewage. Is it garbage day? I'm trapped in the pungent fog, in the dreary suburban-style shops, the rat race of city life. The city, even on the west coast, has the power to beat us down, to suck us of passion, to crush our dreams. ~ Shannon Mullen

It's hopeless, trying to recruit a stranger to help me find someone who's a stranger to him. But then again, we are all strangers to ourselves, caught up in the monotony of daily life, stuck in our routines, never really stopping to think about what will happen to us if we fall off track. ~ Shannon Mullen

Another reptilian brain disguised as a modest mouse in the rat race. ~ Alejandro Saint-Barthélemy

I am very ambitious and have set goals for myself. I really don't keep a tab on what my contemporaries are doing. I want to push myself as an actress and don't want to get into the rat race. With every film, I want to grow as a person and an actress. The character I play needs to change me in real life. ~ Sonam Kapoor

After what happened when my last - and if I'm being completely honest, my only - real relationship imploded, my focus needs to be on my career. Sex and marriage and a family and all that can fall into place after I'm a top fund manager. Sometime in the mid-nineties, perhaps.
But the eighties? The eighties are all about getting ahead in the rat race.
And I am determined to be at the front of the pack.
Of rats. ~ Karen Grey

It requires more toughness to resist the world than to join in the rat-race ~ Sir James Darling

Rat race is the perfect name for it,' she said. 'We're always going and going and going, and never asking where. Did you ever hear of having more than you wanted? So that you couldn't want anything else and then started looking for something else to want? It seems like we're always searching for something to satisfy is, and never finding it. Maybe if we could lose our cool we would. ~ S.E. Hinton

Today I'll become the bull. This small heart can get lonely. I lose myself inside myself. No one can touch you when you're outside staring in. Remove myself from this rat race. ~ Atreyu

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race. ~ Johann Lamont

Everybody in America is so money-hungry. It's like a rat race and even when you win you're still a freaking rat. ~ Mike Tyson

It may be that you will be happiest in the rat race; perhaps, like me, you are basically a rat. ~ Richard Koch

But I knew I wanted to be with him, and he wanted to be with me, too, and also knew what he wanted to do with his life. So, we compromised. He took the job in Des Moines, and it was my responsibility to get a job that would make enough money for what we needed, and that I enjoyed enough. I didn't have to love it, but it didn't matter whether I did, either, because I had him. I kept trying new things, too, and eventually discovered pottery. It's fun, of course, but the most important part is that I didn't feel like my job had to be my everything."

This is what I have to keep reminding myself. Sometimes a job can just be a job. We aren't all going to win the rat race. "I know. ~ Christina Lauren

Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction. ~ June Goodfield

You are the part of rat race because you are letting them treat you like a rat. This is the modern definition of a slave. ~ Saurabh Sharma

I go down to New York, do the project, and leave. I have no interest in participating in the rat race down there. Hip jazz fans know who I am. There's a generation of musicians in New York who know my records better than I do. ~ Paul Smoker

In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race, ... it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or world culture. One's own products are likely to be personal or parochial. ~ Paul Goodman

there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. ~ Alan W. Watts

Cezanne said, 'I love to paint people who have grown old naturally in the country.' And I say I love to paint people who have been torn to shreds by the rat race in New York. ~ Alice Neel

Seventy-five years. That's how much time you get if you're lucky. Seventy-five years. Seventy-five winters, seventy-five springtimes, seventy-five summers, and seventy-five autumns. When you look at it like that, it's not a lot of time, is it? Don't waste them. Get your head out of the rat race and forget about the superficial things that pre-occupy your existence and get back to what's important now. ~ Eddie Murphy

A lot of people live with no apparent means of support. I kind of envy the musicians up there. You're down here, busting your ass in Hollywood, and it's like Lily Tomlin's joke about the rat race - all you prove in the end is that you're a rat. ~ Kurt Voss

It's not about being a sex prostitute. It's about this power play in the war of the sexes. It's a rat race, like, "I'm in charge," "No, I'm in charge." ~ Lykke Li

Retirement: It's nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along with less cheese. ~ Gene Perret

Our everyday cares, making a living, the crazy rat race of life, often make us forget the value of a good deed. Thus, the goodness that exists within each and every one of us is covered with layer upon layer of indifference and unawareness. In fact, we almost have to be reminded of the fact that goodness is there inside us. ~ Shari Arison

One who sings with his tongue on fire, gargles in the rat race choir. ~ Bob Dylan

I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat. And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants. ~ Suzy Kassem

The great disadvantage of being in a rat race is that it is humiliating. The competitors in a rat race are by definition rodents. ~ Margaret Halsey

Just because it's a rat race doesn't mean it's okay to be a rat. ~ Linda Ellerbee

Read different to think differently; world is already into rat race. ~ Aman Jassal

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric! ~ John Cleese

Life is not a list of checkboxes that we have to tick off sequentially one after another. Got a degree? Tick. Booked a house under my name? Tick. Got married? Tick. Had Children? Tick. All this sound too cliché, too depressing. These are acts which people do under the influence of peer pressure, mimicking each other, and not willingly as a genuine choice of their own. ~ Abhaidev

My place, your place, slapped face, rat race. ~ Roger Daltrey

Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. ~ Neal Stephenson

Windows were shakin' all night in my dreams/ Everything was exactly the way that it seems/ Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page/ Same ol' rat race/ Life in the same ol' cage. ~ Bob Dylan

I would be a winner because I was a loser! That's right. I dream of failure every night of my life, and that's my secret. To makeit in this rat race you have to dream of failing every day. I mean, that is reality. ~ Donald Freed

TV is the rat race of the century. ~ Groucho Marx

In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent! ~ Bette Davis

Nature shows me incredible beauty standing just beyond the rat race. It's always there if I'm open enough to see it. ~ Dewitt Jones

The human spirit and self-esteem are compromised when you lay down your arms to the pressures of society in a rat race. ~ Mayank Sharma

What makes more sense in today's world?
Thinking about future, she ruined her present?
Or
Thinking about present, she ruined her future? ~ Japneet Kaur

My idea of an actor is to be different persons with different roles. Every time a script interests me, I look for interesting characters because I intend to completely transport myself into it. This happens only because I am a very greedy actor. I am not part of the rat race because I am living a dream. ~ Vidya Balan

Life without knowing your destiny leads to "rat races", depression and frustration, and attempt to commit suicide ~ Sunday Adelaja

It's a rare moment when we take a break from the tribulations of the daily rat race to reflect on assumptions and values that we casually accept as gospel. ~ Graydon Carter

Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans.
Join the Rat Race "just for a while."
Concentrate on your career "just for a while."
Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while."
Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while."
Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while. ~ Christopher Brookmyre

I recommend to young people to seek work for what they will learn, more than what they will earn. Look down the road at what skills they want to acquire before choosing a specific profession and before getting trapped in the Rat Race. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: If you win the rat race, you're still a rat. ~ Anna Quindlen

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don't need to impress people I don't like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don't have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won't last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don't have to seem them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world. ~ Jessica Bruder

People sometimes forget that a rat race can be won only by a rat. ~ Paul Palmer

If you join the rat race - you're in the race of rats. ~ Bertolt Brecht

Today's youth seem finally to have understood that only by freeing woman from her exclusively sexual role can man free himself from his ordained role in the rat-race: that of the rat. ~ Carolyn Heilbrun

The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. ~ Ivan Illich

These hours are numbered, I can't afford to waste any in transit. ~ Dessa

I talk about freedom from the Rat Race, and they focus on toilets. That is the thought pattern that keeps most people poor. They criticize instead of analyze. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. ~ Lily Tomlin

A person who is in a constant rat race seldom has time to think whether or not he is living his life properly ~ Sunday Adelaja

Jiu Jitsu shielded me from all of this. While many were investing in jobs they did not like, or frequenting bars and spending their weekends in front of the television, I pursued something worthy of my choosing. I say this not to slander another, but to show the sincerity with which I appreciate Jiu Jitsu's influence in my life. It saved me from the rat race. I found a reason to eat healthy, to get to bed early. A reason to stay in Friday nights, resulting in fewer beers and more books. I found a medium with which to carve my soul. ~ Chris Matakas

Children need time to become themselves--through play and social interaction. If you overwhelm a child with stuff--with choices and pseudochoices--before they are ready, they will only know one emotional gesture: More! ~ Kim John Payne

Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else - Satan has us just where he wants us. ~ Hugh Nibley

When we practice walking with awareness, our solid peaceful steps cultivate the energy of mindfulness and bring us back to the present moment. When we sit and follow our breathing, aware of our in-breath and out-breath, we are cultivating the energy of mindfulness. When we have a meal in mindfulness, we invest all our being in the present moment and are aware of our food and of those who are eating with us. We can cultivate the energy of mindfulness, whatever we are doing - when we are working, or cleaning up, and even when we are being intimate with our loved one. Just a few days practicing like this can increase our energy of mindfulness, and that energy will help us, protect us, and give us courage to go back to ourselves, to see and embrace what is there in our territory. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

We criticize anyone who tries to break away from the rat race, because the idea that there is a way out scares us more than dying in the state we're in. ~ Cic Mellace

I don't run for trains." Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mould-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Perfection is something we should all strive for. It's a duty and a joy to perfect one's nature ... The most difficult thing is love. A loveless, driving person that just competes in the rat race is far from perfection in my book. ~ R.D. Laing

As far as Robert was concerned, the Book of Life was closed on him a year ago, on Yom Kippur. The next day he dropped out of the race – the political race, the rat race, and in many ways the human race. ~ Jennifer Valoppi

These young-marrying, contemporaries or juniors of the Beat Generation, have often expressed themselves as follows: "My highest aim in life is to achieve a normal healthy marriage and raise healthy [non-neurotic] children." On the face of it, this remark is preposterous. What was always taken as a usual and advantageous life-condition for work in the world and the service of God, is now regarded as an heroic goal to be striven for. Yet we see that it is a hard goal to achieve against the modern obstacles. Also it is a real goal, with objective problems that a man can work at personally, and take responsibility for, and make decisions about - unlike the interpersonal relations of the corporation, or the routine of the factory job for which the worker couldn't care less.
But now, suppose the young man is achieving this goal: he has the wife, the small kids, the suburban home, and the labor-saving domestic devices. How is it that it is the same man who uniformly asserts that he is in a Rat Race? Either the goal does not justify itself, or indeed he is not really achieving it. Perhaps the truth is, if marriage and children are the goal, a man cannot really achieve it. It is not easy to conceive of a strong husband and father who does not justified in his work and independent in the world. Correspondingly, his wife feels justified in the small children, but does she have a man, do the children have a father, if he is running a Rat Race? Into what world do the small children g ~ Paul Goodman

Suppose you want something very much. You think that if you don't get that something, happiness won't be possible. You get caught in that idea. But, in reality, there are people who have that thing who are miserable, and there people who don't have that thing who are perfectly happy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Most people have a price. And they have a price because of human emotions named fear and greed. First, the fear of being without money motivates us to work hard, and then once we get that paycheck, greed or desire starts us thinking about all the wonderful things money can buy. A pattern is then set: get up, go to work, pay bills, get up, go to work, pay bills ... Their lives are then run forever by two emotions, fear and greed. Offer them more money, and they continue the cycle by also increasing their spending. This is what I call the Rat Race. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered
sometimes it seemed to take forever
went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down. ~ Bernard Malamud

Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a give-away. It's more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. ~ Jimmy Reid

In the '80s, I got tired of the rat race. It was a terrible time for music. I wasn't part of that whole MTV craze. I did 'Go Ahead and Rain,' which was Madeleine Stowe's first bit, but felt no connection to it. I went many years where I didn't have to work. ~ J. D. Souther

Financial Freedom is less about Financials and more about FREEDOM ~ Manoj Arora

Disengaging from the rat race Jackson ~ Kate Atkinson

As far back as I can remember, I've utterly destroyed within myself the pride of being human. And I saunter to the periphery of the Race like a timorous monster, lacking the energy to claim kinship with some other band of apes. ~ Emil M. Cioran

The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

Science tore the human race to bits. When anarchy hit, people struggled for community. The politicians chose enemies so that they could bind their followers with hate and terror. Community isn't enough when a thousand new ways of life beckon from every circuit and test tube. ~ Bruce Sterling

I just want to spend the rest of today and tonight with the only girl who makes my heart race."
And that was exactly what Trinity did. She calmed me and excited me all at once. I was a tattooed, buzzed haircut, cop who gave off a badass cocky feel, but inside, this woman made me feel like a lost boy seeking the security only she could give. It was still so unbelievable how one smile or a simple touch from her could make me feel whole.
"Yes," she whispered. "You should definitely spend the night with me."
She tossed me a mischievous smile and I couldn't help but feel relief that my fiery girl had returned. ~ C.A. Harms

It's neither our culture nor our race which
interconnects us. It's Street Photography. ~ Thomas Leuthard

Being of color in America by no means amounts to a constant barrage of negativity. However, unlike being white, being of color means one's race is a constant issue. ~ John Ridley

Eric Holder sees everything through the prism of race. He keeps that mustache because shaving cream is white. ~ Greg Gutfeld

Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn't trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he'd been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
"Stories aren't real," he told me shortly. "They don't feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding 'family' in the nearest gang."
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. "Write down the names of some books," she said. "Maybe we'll read them."
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young live ~ Terri Windling

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one - it's the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky - in the big cities, too, for that matter. ~ Maya Angelou

In many ways, a race is analogous to life itself. Once it is over, it can not be re-created. All that is left are inpressions in the heart, and in the mind. ~ Chris Lear

You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an unfavorable image of a kike because the Jews are ever watchful for that. They never allowed it to be shown on the screen! ~ Marlon Brando

'Human history, ' H.G. Wells once wrote, 'becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.' You and I cannot be indifferent to the outcome of that race. We care deeply about the winner. Because we do care so deeply about the winner, that is why we are all in the East Room of the White House today. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

She spoke Basque, which is a language which rarely makes any impression upon the brains of any other race, so that a man may hear it as often and as long as he likes, but never afterwards be able to recall a single syllable of it. ~ Susanna Clarke

Do I love Black people?
Yes. As much as I love my own race.
Do Black lives matter?
Of course.
Will I oppress my spirit with White Guilt and faulty notions of White Privilege?
Hell no.
Gotta love yourself before you can love anyone else. ~ Jonathan Heatt

The criminal justice system should have the authority to determine the immigration status of all criminals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and report illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal authorities. ~ Susana Martinez

It is not only my heart that is heavy-laden, but the hearts and minds of so many who have been burdened by the tragedies, bloodshed, and woes of our time. ~ Asa Don Brown

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it. ~ Thelonious Monk

Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events, but only for the most part. New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby immposd a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Prayer of Peace
I offer this prayer of peace
Not to the Christian God
Nor to the Buddhist God
Nor to the Islamic God
Nor to the Jewish God
But to the God of all humanity.
For the peace that we wish for
Is Not a Christian peace
Nor a Buddhist peace
Nor an Islamic peace
Nor a Jewish peace
But a human peace
For all of us.
I offer this prayer of peace
To the God that lives within all of us
That fills us with happiness and joy
To make us whole
And help us understand life
As an expression of love for all human beings.
For no religion can be better
Than any other religion
For no truth can be truer
Than any other truth
For no nation can be bigger
Than the earth itself.
Help us all go beyond
Our small limits
And realize that we are one
That we are all from the earth.
That we are all earth people
Before we are Indians, Koreans, or Americans.

God made the earth
We humans have to make it prosper
By realizing that we are of the earth
And not of any nation, race, or religion,
By knowing that we are truly one
In our spiritual heritage.
Let us now apologize
To all humanity
For the hurt that religions have caused,
So that we can heal the hurt
Let us now promise to one another
To go beyond egotism and competition
To come together as one in God.
I offer this prayer of ~ Ilchi Lee

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved - the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn't want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn't going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn't going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as "takers," incapable of making it on their own. The "last person who ever thought that Barack Obama's election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some "end of race" in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person's concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line "And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States." But he couldn't offer up absolution for America's racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years. ~ Ben Rhodes

As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race. ~ Abraham Lincoln

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. ~ William Ellery Channing

You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying you are free to compete with all the others, and still justly believe you have been completely fair ... We seek not just freedom but opportunity ... not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

This is like my dad's race team where we had one Legend car. If we wrecked it, we couldn't race the next week unless we had enough parts to put it back together again. ~ Kurt Busch

Clarity equals victory. Look at successful people. Do you really think they have seven effective habits? Fuck no. Who's got time for that? They have one effective habit: DOING. When you are a 'doer' you lap the rest of the rats in the race. ~ Shane Kuhn