Trouble Quotes - page 93
Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick - you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power.
Theodore Roosevelt
Having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line. For I stopped being half-witted and became sly, whenever I took the trouble ... and if I did not go in a rigorously straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something.
Samuel Beckett
Well, it was just-it seemed like it was violence, and, like, 'cause I went by some of the stores that, like, I don't really eat at McDonald's, y'know, but a lot of people do, and so there are these people who want, y'know, they're-they're socialists but they hate people, y'know, so they go trash the McDonald's, and I just think it was just reckless violence, and they weren't tryin'a accomplish anything, and they said-he was writing something on the wall, some kind of graffiti that was just stupid and cliché, and I said, "Hey, how would you like if someone did that to your house?" and he yelled back, "Fuck you!" and these other people started yelling "Fuck you!" at me; I'm, like, "Oh," like "I'm in trouble."
Krist Novoselic