Top 275 Problematic Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

To be feminist doesn't mean simply to do nothing, to reduce yourself to total impotence under the pretext of refusing masculine values. There is a problematic, a very difficult dialectic between accepting power and refusing it, accepting certain masculine values, and wanting to transform them. I think it's worth a try.

In order to maintain American democracy we need to tackle the problematic influence of big money donors, corporate political action committees and dark money contributions. We must put an end to partisan gerrymandering and the blatant attempts at voter suppression being pushed in Republican-led states across the country.

The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.

To be open to inspiration, one must cultivate a leaning for the problematic, a chronic attraction to things that do not totally fit, agree, or make sense. Inspired ideas are less often solutions to old problems than newly discovered or totally reformulated problems - problems 'created' like brilliant works of art.

Even though we still don't know any precise details, we're already making it clear that some proposals like a border tax or "buy-American" regulations are heading in a protectionist direction. The Americans' sudden proposal to classify certain steel products as national security-related is also something that we find highly problematic.

To deal with someone from other infinites is problematic at times, to deal with a true master of all the realms of the yogas. We call them someone with the seven seals of enlightenment, meaning that their gradated perception has past through all the realms.

I asked the former director James Comey about the FBI's intersections with Jeff Sessions prior to his stepping aside from the Russia investigation. Mr. Comey said his continued engagement with the Russian investigation was "problematic " and he said he could not discuss it in public.

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.

I see the main problem as a spiritual one, not a resource problem, or a problem with this or that government, but a larger problem centered around human beliefs, the troublesome elements founded in our mythology. Our problematic mythology is collapsing all around us. It is a mythology that is predatory.

[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.

I do believe it's possible to play a lot without overplaying. It's when a musician becomes too self-centred that it becomes problematic. You need to be aware of how what you're doing is affecting everyone else, and that's something young musicians often forget. Playing in a band is a shared experience. It's about what everyone is doing together.

The more and more I got into writing, the harder and harder it became for me. I still love it, but it became much more problematic than I thought it would be.

Look at this Judith Miller thing. Isn't that problematic? Like, she's getting fed information from the White House and she's feeding it to her editors and then it's in the Times and then the people at the White House can quote themselves? And it's the New York Times!

He paused, twisting his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. "Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from," he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. "Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.

Outlets are turning away from phone polling, which can be problematic. For example, we did a poll for NBC around the Ebola crisis; we provided results in 24 hours. Their traditional phone poll would have taken a week to turn around. We're showing people we can do high-quality work: we've proved that with the work we do with the media.

No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.

When I know who is speaking, I see that there is a commitment. I need to know there is some commitment. I need to find an author. "I" can also be polyphonic, fictional, inhabited by a multitude of characters, be right or wrong or at fault or corrupted. But that's more "the self" than "me, me, me." It's problematic. There are times to say "we."

..why is it that in problematic situations almost everyone resorts to axioms and societal remedies that in actuality almost nobody believes in?...ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker?

I think overtly political novels - those that never transcend or contest their author's conscious intentions and prejudices - are problematic. This is not just true of the innumerable unread books in the socialist realist tradition, but also of novels that carry the burden of conservative ideologies, like Guerrillas, Naipaul's worst book, where the author's disgust for a certain kind of black activist and white liberal is overpowering.

Perhaps you went to bed last night thinking about the overdue bills, the lack of finances, the problematic people and situations you have to face. This morning you woke up. Did you give thanks? If you didn't, it is probably because you forgot that when praise goes up, the blessings come down. That should be enough to inspire you to be thankful.

Every time that a man who is not an absolute fool presents you with a question he considers very problematic after giving it careful thought, distrust those quick answers that come to the mind of someone who has considered it only briefly or not at all. These answers are usually simplistic views lacking in consistency, which explain nothing, or which do not bear examination.

I think a lot of people trying to follow Buddhism these days are getting confused about sex and they don't understand what's going on. They've been exposed to a contemporary Christian idea that sex itself is evil and bad, which I'm not so sure was Jesus' idea. For me, the Buddhist approach isn't that sex itself is evil or bad but that sex is neutral. It's the way you do it that can problematic.

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.

What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is - to use a word scholars love - problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

I don't see any Stoic practice as problematic or risky, but I would advise to engage in extreme versions of the negative visualization exercise only if you are an advanced practitioner. The negative visualization is a meditation during which you visualize, slowly and deliberately, something bad or discomforting happening to you.

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I'm not sure if we have an alternative political model.

You can understand why the original framers of judicial ethics thought it would be undignified and would call into question the legitimacy of the judicial decision-making process to have mudslinging by judges, but the way that we hobble people of enormous integrity from defending themselves is, I think, deeply problematic in states where you have an elected judiciary, or a judge is subject to recall.

One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change.

For me becoming a filmmaker was about taking back my voice - crafting stories that would move away from the problematic narratives that the studio system would put out about Latinos. I think this is why people like my films. They're refreshing. They feel more real.

In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.

One can't be a successful investor without a healthy dose of confidence. To commit your own and others' hard-earned capital requires conviction, and conviction requires confidence. But as with fine brandy or coffee ice cream, too much of a good thing can be problematic.

For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

Social media itself is not protest. To tweet is not to protest physically. To do a Facebook post, and though it's critical and crucial, is not to show up and embody the anger you feel, to embody the righteous outrage you feel, to embody the concern you feel. This is about putting feet to pavement and to register in the consciousness of America that this is something that's problematic.

The thing about a real economy is that it actually is like the game of Monopoly in the sense that when one person has all the money, the game is over. And in a game of Monopoly, of course, that's quite charming, but in a real economy, it's much more problematic.

I really like to have a coffee shop next door and be able to smoke a cigarette. I'm a city person; I regard nature as something hostile and problematic. I do enjoy it when I get out there, but it is mostly against my will. It's a bit of an awkward thing to say - people really don't like it when you say that.

I think you can be politically incorrect, but there's some responsibility with that. You've got to make sure that you are not condoning or bolstering any racial or other stereotypes. You've got to be free to make jokes, but just make sure...you don't want to go and black face somewhere to just prove a point. If it's insulting and offensive just for the sake of it that's problematic.

I write what I want to write, and then, when it's finished, I use my judgment to see whether or not I think it's intrusive. If it is problematic, then I ask those involved. I won't necessarily do what they say. But I do consult. I haven't had too many problems. Nobody's really gotten angry at me. Nobody, as far as I know, has felt betrayed.

Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families.

Girls will go out and spend $200 or $300 dollars on a pair of shoes, but you should also be taking care of your skin. That's the first thing people see. I think it's an investment. It's a lot cheaper to use really great products now, rather than trying to fix problematic skin later on in life. That's always been my motto.

I'll tell you one thing about me, and that is that I'm not to keen on being bossed around. If, say, my Mom tells me to empty the dishwasher, I like to wait a little bit, you know, not hop up and do it right away, because then it feels more like my own idea. That's a little problematic when you have an actual boss.

What is problematic about Obamacare is that it is killing millions of jobs in this country and has killed millions of jobs. It has forced millions of people into part time work. It has caused millions of people to lose their insurance, to lose their doctors, and to face skyrocketing insurance premiums. That is unacceptable.

I do think the whole question of judicial accountability is a complicated one. On the one hand, you want to encourage judicial independence. And it's always, I think, problematic when an unpopular decision triggers a recall election. Because it sends a disempowering message to judges. On the other hand, it's the only way that voters have to rein in someone whose views are really so out of the mainstream of public opinion that they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judicial process.

Sexual energy becomes problematic if you use to enslave someone, to demoralize them, to hurt them, to wrap them up. The way most people use sexual energy is to hook somebody, to wrap them.

The desert ... may serve better as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes ... both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself.

Every indication is that the Sudanese government will be defining it as an Arab, Muslim country. But there are also a lot of Christians and a lot of people, like the Nuba, who are not Arab. And that is why it is going to be problematic that Sudan will be defined in this way.

It happens that there are a lot of people who are very talented who also happen to have a mental disorder. A lot of the mental disorders are initially things that are adaptive. Like even OCD, it's good to sort of have structure and have certain rituals but when it gets to be extreme then it becomes problematic.

Several national tests have revealed the following startling statistics about why salespeople fail...15% Improper training both product and sales skills. 20% Poor verbal and written communication skills. 15% Poor or problematic boss or management. 50% Attitude.

One thing that's important to point out is that this kind of populism has a long and mixed history. It's part of this tradition of problematic anti-elitism where the elites are always the liberal class - the intellectuals, the professors, the artists - and not the economic elites. Why are we so mad and aggrieved at newspaper editors but not at corporate executives? I think we need to look more at the latter, at economic elites.

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

To encounter such a being is considered the ultimate karmic blessing in the sense that your life will be so configured that every single variant problematic karma will surface, which means you have the opportunity of passing through them all correctly, going over the ocean of the samsara and reaching nirvana yourself.

You ought not to accept the claim that this is a religious practice. I think that's, frankly, problematic for Islam, for well-intentioned Liberals like you to say that this is a religious practice when the overwhelming consensus of Islamic scholars around the world, and the overwhelming majority of Canadian Muslims, believe this has absolutely - that the niqab as face covering, that this symbol of misogyny has nothing to do with Islam.

If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy.

I feel like the downfall of any person is the second an artist starts celebrating their work themselves, that becomes problematic. And you know, I don't sit there, I don't bask in the awards I've won, you know, read my bank statements, I refuse. To me, that's how you start losing the hunger. So for me personally, I just don't celebrate it. I'm happy, right now.

Peacekeeping there is still just totally ineffective. The UN is now saying they are sending reinforcements in the area, but I have no particular reason to believe that they will be any stronger than the force there. In Southern Kordofan, it's mostly an Egyptian battalion, and that's really problematic because the population already doesn't trust the Egyptians; they think they're on payroll of the north. So we already have a force that is seen as compromised.

I am transgender, so 'he' is not appropriate and 'she' is problematic. I haven't been one to wage war with society to force people to address me a certain way. I let people make that decision for themselves. I don't identify as a man, so 'he' is silly in a way. Being called 'she' as a trans person, trans in the sense that I'm trans, is to be honoured in an aspect of yourself.

But, in fact, materialism is among the most problematic of philosophical standpoints, the most impoverished in its explanatory range, and among the most willful and (for want of a better word) magical in its logic, even if it has been in fashion for a couple of centuries or more.

Going around not fully believing that you're going to die is really problematic because it affects how you think about the future of the planet, about the future of your own life, about the decisions you're making.

She needs a new journal. The one she has is problematic. To get to the present, she needs to page through the past, and when she does, she remembers things, and her new journal entries become, for the most part, reactions to the days she regrets, wants to correct, rewrite.

Since the most important element of any concept is that its originating question be appropriately framed, any theory demanding an explanation for homosexuality is a problematic one because it maintains our existence as a category of deviance. I mean, no one is running around trying to figure out why some people like sports, for example.

Y'know, I think, inherently, when you hear something like a teenage narrative come into play, even the idea that it's being called 'teenage' is a notion that it's being reduced to a problem that's not quite adult. That's a problematic thing to say about a narrative that could actually be dangerous, could be hurtful, could be upsetting.