Embarrassing Quotes - page 12

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand. (G. K. Chesterton)
It wasn't, he swore, that he picked up so many women. Compared to Ivan, he was practically celibate. It was just that he never put any down. The accumulation could become downright embarrassing, over a long enough time-span.
Lois McMaster Bujold
It is also a truly embarrassing indictment of what's considered "center" politics in the US that objecting to the appointment of an official who helped cover up the murder of a Black child is deemed the "progressive, far left" position...What is so hard to understand about this? Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership. This is not about the "visibility" of a post. It is shameful and concerning that he is even being considered.
Rahm Emanuel
The main Tory supporter on our side [during the 1975 EEC referendum] was Enoch Powell. It could have been politically embarrassing, but Enoch played it straight down the line, scrupulously keeping party politics out of it. He also revealed old-world courtesy. When, for instance, we found that a press conference we had arranged for him clashed with one I had been hoping to hold, he insisted on giving way to me, postponing his own. In fact, he showed more sense of solidarity than Tony Benn, who like so many politicians with exceptional talents did not like working in a team.
Enoch Powell
"Not everyone is concerned with the deep future,” Manfred interrupts. "It's important! If we live or die, that doesn't matter-that's not the big picture. The big question is whether information originating in our light cone is preserved, or whether we're stuck in a lossy medium where our very existence counts for nothing. It's downright embarrassing to be a member of a species with such a profound lack of curiosity about its own future, especially when it affects us all personally! I mean, if there's going to come a time when there's nobody or nothing to remember us then what does –” "Manfred?” He stops in midsentence, his mouth open, staring dumbly.
Charles Stross
...The proposal to think the determination of the elements of a whole by the structure of the whole posed an absolutely new problem in the most theoretically embarrassing circumstances, for there were no philosophical concepts available for its resolution. The only theoretician who had had the unprecedented daring to pose this problem and outline a first solution to it was Spinoza. But, as we know, history had buried him in impenetrable darkness. Only through Marx, who, however, had little knowledge of him, do we even begin to guess at the features of that trampled face.
Baruch Spinoza
See I don't drink, I smoke. I used to drink, I did, I had to quit. Man, I was an embarrassing drunk. I'd get pulled over by the cops, I'd be so drunk I'd be out dancing to their lights thinking I'd made it to another club. [starts dancing, mimics being handcuffed and walked to police car] Hey what is this, a leather bar? Hey I'm not into this, you faggots, oh SHIT!
Bill Hicks
You testified this morning, in response to Senator Biden, that the most embarrassing question involved - and this is not too bad - women's large breasts. That is a word we use all the time.
Arlen Specter
But when I went back to him with her acceptance, the PM looked sheepish and informed me that he had already agreed to appoint Syeda Hameed, a Muslim writer and social activist, and so, I was told, there was no place left for Anu. Clearly, the ‘gender' and ‘minority' boxes had been filled up with Syeda's appointment. I was left with the embarrassing task of explaining away the confusion to Anu. What I obviously could not say to her was that the political benefits of rewarding a Muslim may well have trumped those of appointing a Parsi! To my dismay, even Dr Singh seemed to take this embarrassment lightly.
Manmohan Singh
Now that I, and those with me, are working to rebuild the work of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as a means of reforming our people and transforming their lives into lives of service and usefulness to themselves and others, the same fear of the government that was seen in times past, is now seen again in the work of members of the FBI's anti-terrorist task force and the organized crime racketeering task force, that have been working night and day to cripple and destroy the Nation of Islam, culminating in an attack on Louis Farrakhan, with the purpose of discrediting, embarrassing and ultimately causing the death of Louis Farrakhan, preferably by heightening tensions within the movement exacerbated by government agents posing as Muslims. This is the aim of the United States government, and it appears to be the aim of the President of the United States President George Bush.
Louis Farrakhan
Never let a woman put a condom on ya. Do it yourself fellas. It's embarrassing. "Oh look, oh look there's still more room! Ha Ha Ha! We could tie it off and use it again and again. 'Cause you've got a small penis. And I know, 'cause I work with children.”. (Dave Attell)
Why were there an infinite number of ways to feel awkward? He believed this was a theological question having to do with man's place in the universe. But when he felt the true force of the question, he was always in the middle of an embarrassing emergency of some kind that paralyzed reflection.
Marilynne Robinson
When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure...
Ingmar Bergman
Nixon appeared to have only two options left: Option One: He could boldly remain as president and defend himself in the now-inevitable impeachment proceedings. Option Two: He could spare the country further trauma by resigning in a dignified manner. Those of you who are well-schooled students of "Dick" Nixon will not be surprised to learn that, after carefully weighing the alternatives, he decided to go with Option Three: to stand in the Rose Garden and make a semicoherent speech about his mother that may well rank as the single most embarrassing moment in American history. Thoroughly humiliated, Nixon then went off to live in a state of utter disgrace (New Jersey). This was widely believed to be the end of his career.
Richard Nixon
Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers' Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said.
Daniel Hannan