Ambivalent Quotes

• It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.

  Anna Freud

  Mother, Children, Feelings

  Anna Freud, Dorothy T. Burlingham (1967). “The Writings of Anna Freud: Indications for child analysis and other papers, 1945-1956”

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• Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral.

  Vernon A. Walters

  Attitude, Want, Feels

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• The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate.

  Elia Kazan

  Uncertain, Anticipate

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• Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

  Etgar Keret

  Mean, Anything Goes, Life Is

  "Parables of anarchy". Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2005.

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• We all have ambivalent feelings toward work ... We try to avoid it, and yet we seem to require it for our emotional well-being.

  Samuel Florman

  Work, Emotional, Feelings

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• Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself; in fact, confused.

  James McGreevey

  Children, Confused, Who I Am

  "McGreevey Describes 'Intensely Personal Decision' in Speech". James McGreevey's speech televised live from Trenton, www.nytimes.com. August 12, 2004.

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• Although I'm certainly glad cartoons are finally getting some respect as an art, I'm fairly ambivalent to see cartooning as a legitimate academic offering. If comics need to be deconstructed and explained, something is really wrong with them.

  Bill Watterson

  Art, Offering, Needs

  Source: www.annistonstar.com

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• I don't know that I've ever been completely comfortable with anything.

  Shannon Elizabeth

  Knows, Comfortable

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• Plenty of people who survive tragedies end up ambivalent about danger--frightened by it, yet strangely drawn to it.

  Keith Ablow

  Fear, People, Tragedy

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• I've always been profoundly ambivalent about fame. I think it just eats the reality out of you and it can be intoxicating because I like some of it.

  Jane Pauley

  Thinking, Reality, Fame

  "Jane Pauley Says Goodbye". Interview with Barbara Walters, abcnews.go.com. May 30.

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• Siblings may be ambivalent about their relationships in life, but in death the power of their bond strangles the surviving heart. Death reminds us that we are part of the same river, the same flow from the same source, rushing towards the same destiny. Were you close? Yes, but we didn't know it then.

  Barbara Ascher

  Sibling, Heart, Destiny

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• It's time to "stop being ambivalent." ... They (groups like the Islamic State) have no ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people.

  Barack Obama

  Islamic, People, Groups

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• His version of 'real' love isn't sufficient for me, I don't think anyone should settle for so little. It wasn't love - not in the true sense. On my part, it was neediness, insecurity, dependence, habit - desperate to feel loved by a man who was often ambivalent towards me. 

  Freya North

  Real, Men, Thinking

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• Visiting is a pleasure; being visited is usually a mixed or ambivalent joy. ... The visitor can always go home; the visitee is already home, trapped like a rat in a drainpipe.

  Barbara Holland

  Home, Joy, Rats

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• What does it mean then to live with one another? It can be unhappy, it can be wretched, it can be ambivalent, it can even be full of antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation, to stay in the sphere with whatever murderous rage we have, without acting on it.

  Judith Butler

  Mean, Play, Political

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

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• If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.

  Edward Albee

  Writing, Play, Numbers

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.57, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Real love isn't ever ambivalent.

  Tony Kushner

  Real, Love Is, Angels In America

  "Angels in America". www.imdb.com. 2003.

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• I am ambivalent about London because I am so ambivalent about England in general.

  Jane Jacobs

  London, England

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

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• Pro-choice supporters are often heard using the cool language of the courts and the vocabulary of rights. Americans who are deeply ambivalent about abortion often miss the sound of caring.

  Ellen Goodman

  Caring, Vocabulary, Rights

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• I'm very ambivalent in my feelings about marriage. I think it promises a lot to people... sort of like saying, once you get married you are on the highway to heaven, and quite often it isn't that. I think marriage has always been based on a combination of religious and legal reasons.

  Mick Jagger

  Religious, Thinking, People

  "Pop Music: 10 Questions: Mick Jagger". Interview with Robert Hilburn, articles.latimes.com. March 31, 1991.

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• I'm real ambivalent about [working mothers]. Those of use who have been in the women's movement for a long time know that we've talked a good game of "go out and fulfill your dreams" and "be everything you were meant to be." But by the same token, we want daughters-in-law who are going to stay home and raise our grandchildren.

  Erma Bombeck

  Daughter, Mother, Dream

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• There is scarcely room for doubt that something in the psychological relation of a mother-in-law to a son-in-law breeds hostility between them and makes it hard for them to live together. But the fact that in civilized societies mothers-in-law are such a favourite subject for jokes seems to me to suggest that the emotional relation involved includes sharply contrasted components. I believe, that is, that this relation is in fact an 'ambivalent' one, composed of conflicting affectionate and hostile impulses.

  Sigmund Freud

  Mother, Believe, Son

  Sigmund Freud (2003). “Totem and Taboo”, p.17, Routledge

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• Skilled workers historically have been ambivalent toward automation, knowing that the bodies it would augment or replace were theoccasion for both their pain and their power.

  Shoshana Zuboff

  Pain, Work, Knowing

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• Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue, but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.

  C. S. Lewis

  School, Men, Good Man

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• It is perverse that a nation so rich should neglect its children so shamefully. Our attitude toward them is cruelly ambivalent. Weare sentimental about children but in our actions do not value them. We say we love them but give them little honor.

  Richard Stolley

  Attitude, Children, Giving

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