Embarrassment Quotes - Page 10

• The failure to invest in our public transportation and public life, I think, is a scandal and a shame, and it should be a national embarrassment.

  Mark Shields

  Thinking, Scandal, Shame

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Height, Too Much

  "The war on drugs and alcohol is a war against human nature" by Lewis Lapham, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2012.

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• I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.

  Peter Straub

  Wish, Kind, First Time

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• It is a big embarrassment that a leader can say on the eve of an election that he cannot hand over power to an opponent, that he can only hand over power to a member of his political party.

  Raila Odinga

  Party, Hands, Leader

  "Kenya's leader urges peacekeepers in Zimbabwe". www.cnn.com. June 24, 2008.

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• It is my view that it is a big embarrassment for Africa . It is hypocritical for African leaders to talk about democracy and human rights and to be silent when these things are happening in Zimbabwe .

  Raila Odinga

  Rights, Views, Zimbabwe

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• I certainly do believe that a lot of comedy comes from awkwardness and embarrassment - pointing out the ways things are uncomfortable. Definitely the stuff that interests me. I don't necessarily think that comedy comes from a dark place, like you have to be a strung-out heroin addict. But I don't think it comes from happiness, that's for sure. It comes from frustration and suppressed rage, and wishing the world were different.

  Christian Finnegan

  Happiness, Believe, Dark

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, tv.avclub.com. June 17, 2009.

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• In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Mistake, War, Exercise

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• To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm-a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.

  Roger Scruton

  Beautiful, Religious, People

  Roger Scruton (2009). “Beauty: A Very Short Introduction”, p.14, OUP Oxford

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• The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Black, Causes, Facts

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Patrick Renshaw (1998). “Democracy in America”, p.140, Wordsworth Editions

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• I loved Latin -- the grammar, the difficult tenses, the history -- but for some reason I was very bad at it, shamefully and blushingly bad at it. ... In moments of stress the embarrassment of how bad I was at Latin -- a subject I loved -- really hit me. It was like being laughed at by someone you desperately loved.

  Peter Greenaway

  Stress, Latin, Moments

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

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• I like to eat alone in restaurants, with a book, particularly if I am out of town, alone, on business. It's relaxing. I feel not even a twinge of embarrassment. Is this gender-related? Is there a lingering feeling among women that if they are alone in public, they will be judged to be spinsters or spinsters-to-be?

  Gene Weingarten

  Book, Feelings, Towns

  "Chatological Humor: The Big Fat Debate, Part 2". Live Q&A, www.washingtonpost.com. February 17, 2009.

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• Knapsack of the Metaphysicians.- Those who boast so mightily of the scientificality of their metaphysics should receive no answer; it is enough to pluck at the bundle which, with a certain degree of embarrassment, they keep concealed behind their back; if one succeeds in opening it, the products of that scientificality come to light, attended by their blushes: a dear little Lord God, a nice little immortality, perhaps a certain quantity of spiritualism, and in any event a whole tangled heap of 'wretched poor sinner' and Pharisee arrogance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Nice, Light

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• The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to take risks and look silly. Race car drivers get paid to risk their lives in a more concrete way; we get paid to risk our lives in an emotional way.

  Paul Schrader

  Silly, Dirty, Emotional

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• In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.

  Helen Keller

  Sweet, Book, Here I Am

  Helen Keller (2012). “The Story of My Life”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six years and yet exhausted. They're pale, tired, and unready. Too bad, since it's their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment.

  Peggy Noonan

  Jobs, Party, Tired

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• Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment.

  Colin Firth

  Life, Awkward, Feelings

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• All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Shapes, May

  "Twenty-four Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems: Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981-1983". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1984.

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• If you need more than 10 rounds to hunt, and some argue they hunt with that many rounds, you shouldn't be hunting. If you can't get the deer in 3 shots, you shouldn't be hunting. You are an embarrassment.

  Joe Biden

  Hunting, Archery, Needs

  Interview With Melissa Block, www.npr.org. March 20, 2013.

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• Most people with good jobs, middle-class occupations, what have you, are only one pitfall away from social embarrassment and destitution. It's so precarious. Even salaried people in the West now feel this sense of being trapped, not having the freedom to strike out.

  Irvine Welsh

  Jobs, Class, People

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Summits [World Summit on the Information Society] are meant to help governments reach a global consensus on major issues which has proved elusive in established fora. They do so through the embarrassment associated with failing to sign a summit's final agreement.

  David Souter

  Government, Agreement, Issues

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• It was a good script [Something New]. We have not seen an interracial issue dealt with from a black woman and white man's perspective in this way. And, usually, it's a black man, white woman. I loved the fact that it wasn't about the couple being against the world or the couple against the family. I loved the fact that it was her dealing with her own prejudices that came up, her own guilt, her own shame and embarrassment about what her peers thought.

  Sanaa Lathan

  Couple, Men, White Man

  Source: www.today.com

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• At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.

  Edward Snowden

  Genuine Concern, Government, Information

  Source: www.thenation.com

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• It is a complete embarrassment and literally shameful that the country that first of all invented environmentalism and gave it to the world, and second of all did all the science originally around climate and global warming and presented that to the world, has been the country that has refused to participate in a constructive way to the solution.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, Climate, World

  Source: theotherjournal.com

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• Comedy has traditionally been about fear of embarrassment.

  Marco Roth

  Comedy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• [Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Winning, Thinking, Symbolism

  Source: www.npr.org

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