Challenge Quotes - page 68
The primary challenge of this cosmological transformation of consciousness is the awareness that each being in the universe is an origin of the universe. "The center of the cosmos" refers to that place where the great birth of the universe happened at the beginning of time, but it also refers to the upwelling of the universe as river, as star, as raven, as you, the universe surging into existence anew. The consciousness that learns it is at the origin point of the universe is itself an origin of the universe. The awareness that bubbles up each moment that we identify as ourselves is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.
Brian Swimme
John F. Kennedy's death was as personal a body blow to most of the nation's young people. Why? It seems to me that the answer is simple: He was the symbol of the new generation grasping the tiller of the ship of state for the first time, and finding it exhilarating, exciting, challenging. He knew that there is an element of danger in accepting a challenge - in taking a risk that is beyond what is expected of you, beyond what you may expect of yourself.
Leo Ryan
Although the '60s counterculture has been much maligned and discredited, it attempted to provide what we still desperately need: a spirited culture of refusal, a counter-life to the reigning corporate culture of death. We don't need to return to that counterculture, but we do need to take up its challenge again. If the work we do produces mostly bad, ugly, and destructive things, those things in turn will tend to re-create us in their image. We need to turn to good, useful, and beautiful work. We need to ask, as Thoreau and Ruskin did, What are the life-giving things? Such important questions are answered for us in the present by the corporate state, while we are left with the most trivial decisions: what programs to watch on TV and what model car to buy.
Curtis White
Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.
Dana Gioia
Financial hardship has a way of keeping people sober. The challenge I see at such times is simple: Will we face reality or deny it? In the past I have done both. But when it comes down to really doing something about a problem, I'm learning that it's prudent to address it head on with those who are closest to you and work at it together.
Danny Yamashiro
I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.
David Bowie
I continue to believe that we can fight this overreach from within the existing system and framework. If I have to, I will use one challenge after another to dismantle governmental operations that I consider violations of the Constitution. During my time as a judge, as a justice, and as attorney general, I've had one overarching goal, and that is a strict interpretation and application of the laws and the Constitution. I would be Madisonian.
Greg Abbott
We worked together for seven years. Tenniel and other artists declared I would not work with Carroll for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got on splendidly.
Harry Furniss
Dicko: Yeah, you're a fantastic lesson in persistence, actually. You came and were rejected, and then came again and have got this far. That was an absolutely fantastic song for you and I think we're beginning to see which songs are your comfort zone. I guess the question is, how are you gonna do with more up-tempo stuff? I don't recall hearing you sing too many up-tempo songs so far and if you get to the next round, that's something which you will be tested on. But that was, I thought, one of the performances of the night. I think you're doing exactly what a contestant should do in this competition and that's to rise to the occasion, rise to the challenge and grow. And that's what you're doing. You're growing on me too. I thought that was tremendous, I really do. Well done.
Hayley Jensen
Mark: Um. I don't know Hayley. I don't know. Because I admire the fact that you keep challenging yourself. You know, last week was an enormous challenge for you and you keep doing that and I don't want to discourage that because it's a fantastic thing about you. But honestly, I just really don't think that you totally connected with that at the level that Anastacia actually bought the meaning of that song and what it meant to her. I didn't feel it from you. It didn't connect for me like some of the others that you've done have.
Hayley Jensen
