Pushing Back Quotes

• Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Running, Perseverance, Healing

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• We are still a pioneer culture in some ways. A pioneer culture has to put all of its muscle into surviving on the frontier and pushing back the wilderness. So when you start to talk about imagination, inner space, and the structures of the psyche, that becomes scary.

  Jean Houston

  Space, Imagination, Scary

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• Ronald Reagan reached out to Gorbachev. At the same time, we were pushing back against the Soviets all over the world. He was able to do two things at once, and it worked out very well for us.

  Daniel Fried

  Two, World, Able

  Source: www.politico.com

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• It is the Muslim community that has the best chance of stopping and checking and pushing back on people who are trying to politicize their own faith. So this attack on Islam is an attack on a great faith. It undermines the people who are trying to rescue this faith from these horrible people. It endangers every human being on earth because it accelerates the radicalization of some and emboldens the worst elements of that faith. So this fight is a fight I think that we have to take on.

  Van Jones

  Fighting, Thinking, People

  Source: pen.org

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• I was part of the sort of avant guard tradition of John Cage and music concrete and pushing back the boundaries of avant garde classic pop rhythms. I think everyone brings something completely different to it.

  Anne Dudley

  Thinking, Different, Avant Garde

  Source: www.chaoscontrol.com

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• And do I look like the kind of man that can be intimidated?" barked Uncle Vernon. "Well..." said Moody, pushing back his bowler hat to reveal his sinisterly revolving eye. Uncle Vernon lept backward in horror and collided painfully with a luggage trolley. "Yes, I'd have to say you do, Dursley.

  J. K. Rowling

  Uncles, Eye, Men

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• The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father's face, he's pushing back. He's sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that. So that is punk.

  Henry Rollins

  Father, Kids, Men

  "What is Punk?" by Henry Rollins, bigthink.com. 2017.

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• It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring.

  Henry Rollins

  Teenage, Stupid, School

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• I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have.

  Toni Morrison

  Couple, Writing, Thinking

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• The president is the cuticle of the nail bed of America: one would think pushing back makes him stronger, yet it turns out the opposite is true.

  Warren G. Harding

  Thinking, Opposites, America

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• How ignorant we are! How ignorant everyone is! We can cut across only a small area of the appallingly expanding fields of knowledge. No human being can know more than a tiny fraction of the whole. It must have been satisfactory in ancient times when one's own land seemed to be the universe; when research studies, pamphlets, books did not issue in endless flow; when laboratories and scientists were not so rapidly pushing back frontiers of knowledge that the process of unlearning the old left you gasping for breath.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Book, Knowledge, Cutting

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• What we've done last night is what I call pushing back the risks..If there is a risk in a bank, our first question should be 'Okay, what are you in the bank going to do about that? What can you do to recapitalise yourself? If the bank can't do it, then we'll talk to the shareholders and the bondholders, we'll ask them to contribute in recapitalising the bank, and if necessary the uninsured deposit holders.

  Jeroen Dijsselbloem

  Night, Risk, Investing

  "After Cyprus, eurozone faces tough bank regime - Eurogroup head" by Luke Baker, uk.reuters.com. March 25, 2013.

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• Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue.

  Sally Ride

  Mars, Study, Being Human

  "Tip A Forty Of Tang For Pioneering Astronaut And All-Around Awesome Person Sally Ride" by Caleb Reading, uproxx.com. July 24, 2012.

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• I have always viewed thinking about arguing, about questioning, pushing back with, joking, about sharing and discovering the world and the news as enjoyable, the same way that I view watching basketball.

  Chris Hayes

  Basketball, Thinking, Views

  "Chris Hayes: From 'Up' In The Morning To 'All In' At Night". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, listen.sdpb.org. March 27, 2013.

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• I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, "I'm like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They're going to be okay."

  Jen Kirkman

  Hands, People, Comedian

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Every day you say 'No' to your dreams, you might be pushing back your dreams a whole 6 months

  Eric Thomas

  Dream, Might, Months

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• The generals have a saying: "Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see. Rather than advance an inch it is better to retreat a yard." This is called going forward without advancing, pushing back without using weapons. There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your three treasures and become an enemy yourself. When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield.

  Laozi

  Moving, Mean, Thinking

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• Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back.

  Robert Quillen

  Humorous, Loss, Exercise

  "The Sage of Fountain Inn" by Alexander Woollcott in Cosmopolitan magazine, September 1933.

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• Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Light, Giving, People

  Arthur Conan Doyle, General Press (2016). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels”, p.1557, GENERAL PRESS

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• Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not.

  Robin McKinley

  Onions, Pushing, Doe

  Robin McKinley (2016). “The Blue Sword”, p.16, HarperCollins

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• History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward.

  Han Suyin

  Wall, Ignorance, Past

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