Insurmountable Quotes - Page 2

• I never feel more alive than when I'm in great pain, struggling against insurmountable odds and untold adversity. Hardship? Suffering? Bring it!

  Dean Karnazes

  Running, Pain, Struggle

  Dean Karnazes (2012). “Run!: 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss”, p.25, Rodale

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• No obstacles are insurmountable when God commands and we obey.

  Heber J. Grant

  Obstacles, Command

  "Semi-annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day", vol.70, p. 18, 1899.

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• In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

  Ian Mcewan

  Stress, Believe, Opportunity

  Ian McEwan (1999). “Amsterdam”

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• Man's will, sustained by an indominable conviction, is much more powerful than material forces that seem insurmountable.

  Albert Einstein

  Powerful, Men, Conviction

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• When virtues are pointed out first, flaws seem less insurmountable.

  Judith Martin

  Criticism, Firsts, Flaws

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• It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Running, Men, Skeletons

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• The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.

  Mao Zedong

  Party, Struggle, Self Reliance

  Zedong Mao (1954). “Selected Works”

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• Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

  James Madison

  Ambition, Simple, Government

  James Madison, John Jay (1847). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.192

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• Time is invincible, impregnable, insurmountable, invulnerable, unstoppable and time is invisible.

  Jon Jones

  Time, Invisible, Unstoppable

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• its not in my nature to go down without a fight even when things seem insurmountable

  Suzanne Collins

  Fighting, Seems

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• The impulse to think, to philosophize and spin beauty and brilliance out of mind and soul, is somehow the offspring of resistance of an effort to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Hence cultural creativeness is more likely to flourish in an atmosphere of restriction, of an imposed pattern of thought and behavior, than in one of total freedom.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thinking, Effort, Soul

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• In the closed world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyong the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavillions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other to the point of madness? Why did they loathe one another so vehemently, and why did sworn enemies feel such horror and fascination for one another? Why should furious hate become obsession, then intoxication and the very reason to live?Because love and hate were the two heads of the demon.

  Shan Sa

  Wall, Hate, Fate

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• What barrier is so insurmountable as silence?

  Marcel Proust

  Silence, Barriers

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way”, p.151, Modern Library

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• How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it.

  Vivian Gornick

  Moving, Roots, People

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• Passion is the engagement of our soul with something beyond us, something that helps us put up with or fight against insurmountable odds, even at high risks, because it is all worth it.

  Janet Hagberg

  Passion, Fighting, Odds

  Janet O. Hagberg (2002). “Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations, Third Edition”, p.300, Sheffield Publishing

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• Any man, you'll soon learn, has an insurmountable need to blame someone else when he is made to look a fool.

  Julia Quinn

  Men, Blame Someone, Needs

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• I've always been attracted to characters with insurmountable odds and obstacles, because innately, however inarticulately I've always believed that my dreams and my desires can command and bend time and space to be the things that I want them to be.

  Will Smith

  Dream, Character, Odds

  Source: movieweb.com

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• The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man's encounter with God is how he shall make the experience--which is both natural and supernatural--understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today's audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Religious, Writing, Men

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• It has been said that genius is only the power of making continuous effort. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it. We are told that there is no failure, except in no longer trying - no defeat, except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own weakness of purpose.

  Kate Smith

  Effort, Trying, Lines

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• I have yet to encounter that common myth of weak men, an insurmountable barrier.

  James Lane Allen

  Power, Men, Weak Man

  James Lane Allen (2005). “The Choir Invisible”, p.30, 1st World Publishing

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• If we use resources productively and take to heart the lessons learned from coping with the energy crisis, we face a future confronted only, as Pogo, once said, by insurmountable opportunities. The many crises facing us should be seen, then, not as threats, but as chances to remake the future so it serves all beings.

  Hunter Lovins

  Learning, Heart, Science

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• Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Desire, Wish

  "The Story of My Life". Book by Clarence Darrow, 1932.

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• It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Management, Collective Bargaining, Personnel

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• And while I'm sure you feel that your particular mistake is extraordinarily big, insurmountable even, contrary to what you might think, these types of things can always be undone, and oftentimes aren't nearily as lethal as we think—or, should I say, as we allow them to be.

  Alyson Noel

  Mistake, Thinking, Might

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• Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Life, Distance, Journey

  Charles Caleb Colton (1849). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Address--to Those who Think”, p.460

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