Odds Quotes - Page 26

• Love is fragile. And we're not always its best caretakers. We just muddle through and do the best we can. And hope this fragile thing survives against all odds.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Song, Love Is, Fragile Things

  FaceBook post by Nicholas Sparks from Jun 05, 2011

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• When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.

  Paul Hawken

  Optimistic, Order, Data

  "Paul Hawken: programming a new operating system for civilization" by James Epstein-Reeves and Ellen Weinreb, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2013.

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• ... the human soul, beaten down, overwhelmed, faced by complete failure and ruin, can still rise up against unbearable odds and triumph.

  Harold Russell

  Soul, Triumph, Ruins

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• Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say.Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- "No, YOU move.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Country, Jobs, Believe

  "Amazing Spider-Man". Comics by J. Michael Straczynski,

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• It's never the differences between people that suprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, we have in common.

  Jodi Picoult

  Differences, People, Common

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.1191, Simon and Schuster

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• There's often a distressing disconnect between the good words we speak and the way we live our lives. In personal relations and politics, the mass media, the academy and organized religion, our good words tend to float away even as they leave our lips, ascending to an altitude where they neither reflect nor connect with the human condition. We long for words like love, truth, and justice to become flesh and dwell among us. But in our violent world, it's risky business to wrap our frail flesh around words like those, and we don't like the odds.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Media, Like Love, Long

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• Happy people are not their own enemies, do not carry on an endless war with their souls. We may be fiercely at odds with the wrongs of the world around us. But inside ourselves, near the core, if we are happy, we are at peace.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Happiness, Peace, War

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• I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.

  Jodi Picoult

  Powerful, Believe, People

  Jodi Picoult (2013). “The Storyteller”, p.412, Simon and Schuster

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• . . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is instirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize That the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Dream, Real, Distance

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, p.11, Vintage

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• Marriage is a lot of things-an alliance, a sacrament, a comedy, or a mistake; but it is definitely not a partnership because that implies equal gain. And every right-thinking woman knows the profit in matrimony is by all odds hers.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Marriage, Mistake, Thinking

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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• Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Home, White, Racism

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• The longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds that you will never actually do it.

  John C. Maxwell

  Waiting, Should, Greater

  FaceBook post by John C. Maxwell from Aug 17, 2016

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• Creating a family in this turbulent world is an act of faith, a wager that against all odds there will be a future, that love can last, that the heart can triumph against all adversities and even against the grinding wheel of time.

  Dean Koontz

  Family, Heart, Adversity

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• one of my earliest joys as a parent lay in knowing that at the end of the day I had once again ushered three babies back to their beds, against the odds, unscathed and peaceful. Happiness was a houseful of safe, inert bodies. Actually, it still is.

  Phyllis Grissim-Theroux

  Baby, Knowing, Joy

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• Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

  Anne Lamott

  Prayer, Past, Talking

  Anne Lamott (2013). “Help, Thanks, Wow”, p.8, Hachette UK

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• Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.

  Edna O'Brien

  Country, Philosophy, Punishment

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• The cultural wars of the sixties are over. I've reconciled with those who were my critics and opponents years ago. I was at odds with some those who were Black nationalists. Yet when feminists attempted to end my career and leave me as literary road kill, it was the Black nationalists who came to my rescue.

  Ishmael Reed

  War, Years, Careers

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• ... the consensus of the scientific community has shifted from skepticism to near-unanimous acceptance of the evidence of an artificial greenhouse effect. Second, while artificial climate change may have some beneficial effects, the odds are we're not going to like it. Third, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may turn out to be much more practical and affordable than currently assumed.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Acceptance, Community, Climate

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• I realize that idealism is out of sync with the cynicism of our age. Skepticism has come to be synonymous with sophistication, and glibness is mistaken for intelligence. In such an atmosphere, why bother aiming high? Far too many people don't. I just want to reassure people to have the courage to persevere, to keep following their hearts even when others scoff. Don't be beaten down by naysayers. Don't let the odds scare you from even trying.

  Howard Schultz

  Courage, Heart, People

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• In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Play, Age

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• As actors, if you get a pilot on HBO or on USA, your odds are good that it's going to get picked up.

  Tim DeKay

  Hbo, Usa, Actors

  "A Roundtable With Tim DeKay, Carla Gugino, and Gabriel Macht". Interview with Mark Peikert, www.backstage.com. June 27, 2012.

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• Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day; and even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to prevail against all odds.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Minorities, Gains, Sincerity

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1677, Manonmani Publishers

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• In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Art, Russia, Ideas

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

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• Nothing is more inspiring than a person with seemingly mediocre talent rising against the odds to become a champion by way of hard work, effort, and perseverance toward their goals.

  Zig Ziglar

  Perseverance, Hard Work, Goal

  Zig Ziglar, Tom Ziglar (2012). “Born to Win: Find Your Success Code”, p.27, AudioInk

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• We lawyers are always curious, always inquisitive, always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing when and where they may fit into some corner.

  Charles Dickens

  Knowing, Mind, May

  Charles Dickens (1872). “A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens”, p.267

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