Exertion Quotes - Page 4

• If I hold a twenty pound weight, I cannot detect a fly landing on it because the least detectable difference in the stimulus is half a pound. On the other hand, if i hold a feather, a fly landing on it makes a great difference. Obviously then, in order to be able to tell the differences in exertion one must first reduce the exertion. Finer and finer performance is possible only if the sensitivity, that is, the ability to feel the difference is improved.

  Moshe Feldenkrais

  Hands, Order, Differences

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• Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And, it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance. Even in play, to affirm that the exertion of power over powerlessness is erotic, is empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially, and economically.

  Audre Lorde

  Emotional, Play, Empowering

  Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.4, Courier Dover Publications

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• It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means.

  Peter Medawar

  Mean, Thinking, Worry

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.

  Hannah More

  Exercise, Affliction, Moral

  Hannah More (1840). “The Miscellaneous Works of Hannah More”, p.770

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• The power of hope upon human exertion, and happiness, is wonderful.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Hope, Wonderful, Humans

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.160, Fordham Univ Press

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• There are at the present time two great nations in the world--the Russians and the Americans. The American relies upon his personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the people. The Russian centers all his authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Destiny, Two, Rely Upon

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• The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sleep, Men, Expectations

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.142

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• Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Laborwas toil, distress, trouble, fatigue--an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.

  Shoshana Zuboff

  Struggle, Fall, Sacrifice

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• I would be the last to deny that the greatest scientific pioneers belonged to an aristocracy of the spirit and were exceptionally intelligent, something that we as modest investigators will never attain, no matter how much we exert ourselves. Nevertheless ... I continue to believe that there is always room for anyone with average intelligence ... to utilize his energy and ... any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well-cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Believe, Intelligent, Men

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• All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor in all its forms, but also for every variety of calisthenics, so that I still begrudge the trifling exertion needed to climb in and out of a bathtub, and hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense. If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Sports, Horse

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• How melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories "Are shadows, not substantial things." Truly said the sayer, "disappointment is the salt of life" a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double value to the prize.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Disappointment, Giving, Mind

  Sir Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, William C. Barker (1856). “First Footsteps in East Africa: Or, An Exploration of Harar”, p.364

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• The loss of fortune to a true man is but the trumpet challenge to renewed exertion, not the thunder stroke of destruction.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Loss, Men, Challenges

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• The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Mean, Mind, Gains

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• It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity, and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel-reading.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Reading, Effort, Curiosity

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1849). “The works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.369

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• Laughter is a most healthful exertion; it is one of the greatest helps to digestion with which I am acquainted.

  Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

  Laughter, Digestion, Helping

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• The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.

  John Adams

  People, Effort, Understanding

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.185, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as or the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.

  Adam Smith

  Wall, Communication, Party

  Adam Smith (1801). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.323

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• The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family.

  John Adams

  Art, Philosophy, Character

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.210, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The art of being agreeable frequently miscarries through the ambition which accompanies it. Wit, learning, wisdom,--what can more effectually conduce to the profit and delight of society? Yet I am sensible that a man may be too invariably wise, learned, or witty to be agreeable; and I take the reason of this to be, that pleasure cannot be bestowed by the simple and unmixed exertion of any one faculty or accomplishment.

  Richard Cumberland

  Wise, Witty, Art

  Richard Cumberland (1822). “The observer”, p.220

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• Because the utopian's worldview was framed around moving toward this perfected future, it helped stimulate the private exertions that add up to social progress. Progress is work. People need to build things and sacrifice and have a harder life for things to get better. On its own, I don't think even the most brilliant critique stimulates that kind of effort as well as an appealing vision of the future.

  Christine Jennings

  Moving, Sacrifice, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it's not. It's for the consumption of other people. But in terms of creative outlets and expressing yourself, it's just the most extreme version of that that I've ever found. It's like running, it's exertion.

  Kristen Stewart

  Running, People, Creative

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• He who by an exertion of mind or body, adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness - he is, in the larger meaning of the words, a " producer," a " working man," a " laborer," and is honestly earning honest wages.

  Henry George

  Honesty, Men, Giving

  Henry George (2006). “Protection Or Free Trade”, p.68, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it, for it is a faculty of the psyche.

  Germaine Greer

  Energy, Lost, Faculty

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

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• It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the ad-vancing years, and that, too with sur-prising strides. Brain-work comes as easily to the old as physical exertion to the child. One is moving, it is true, towards the end of life, but that end is now a goal, and not a reef in which the vessel may be dashed.

  George Sand

  Children, Moving, Thinking

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• We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before, and it has changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise, we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.

  George Washington

  Giving Up, Hard Times, Effort

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