96 Pressure Quotes

The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.

For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me.

We're supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don't practice this glorious act.

Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral.

I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans.

White collar conservative flashin' down the street, Pointing that plastic finger at me, Hoping soon my kind will drop and die, But I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.

I am walking over hot coals suspended over a deep pit at the bottom of which are a large number of vipers baring their fangs.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

'I've never believed anyone could put more pressure on me than I put on myself. People expect great things from me. I expect great things from myself.'

Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. And you must have a judge who is detached, who is independent, who is fair, who is committed only to those principles, and not public pressures of other sort.

I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it... You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.

Says a writer whom few know, 'Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to act.'

I am not gonna die because some network executive thought I was fat! It's so wrong! It's so wrong that women are asked to live up to this skinny ideal that is totally unattainable. For me to be ten pounds thinner is a full-time job, and I am handing in my notice and walking out the door!!

When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent. Train diligently to attain this spirit.

What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail ? The undertaking is none of mine, if they want me to succeed I'll fail, and vise versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.

LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time. He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely connected with the letter that had come along with his latest mental-disability check, reminding him that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits. He groaned out of bed.

What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies?- How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape?

...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.

We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.

Well I know what's right, I got just one life. In a world that keeps on pushin' me around, but I'll stand my ground and I won't back down.

'I think the music business will eventually crush me, but I [smiles]... I'm ready.' - in Strange Parallel

There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating grad student.

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications - a temptation to superficiality.

Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry: All her maidens, watching, said, 'She must weep or she will die.'

I worked under conditions of the highest security and under great pressure, first in Moscow and subsequently in a special secret research centre. At the time we were all convinced that this work was of vital significance for the balance of power in the world and we were fascinated by the grandeur of the task.

My heart was beating. I got sick in my stomach and my hands were sweating - everything you feel when you are under pressure. I've been nervous before, but nothing like this.

I'm ready to take the blame for all the problems of English football if that is what he wants.

We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment.

It's like taking a five hour final examination.

It is other people who want me to win medals.

'We're gonna stay together until we fucking well die, I'm sure we will. I keep wanting to leave, but they won't let me!'

As he comes along the drive from the house with Mrs Whitefield he is sedulously making himself agreeable and entertaining, and thereby placing on her slender wit a burden it is unable to bear.

His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million.

Aspettate fino alla sera prima del giorno fissato per la rappresentazione. Nessuna cosa eccita piu l'estro come la necessita, la presenza d'un copista, che aspetta il vostro lavoro e la ressa d'un impresario in angustie, che si strappa a ciocche i capelli. A tempo mio in Italia tutti gli impresari erano calvi a trent'anni.

With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, And storms are formed behind the storm we feel: The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

I want to get this shit over with and get these damn people out of here.

My Voices have since told me that I did a great evil in declaring that what I had done was wrong. All that I said and revoked that Thursday, I did for fear of the fire!

Hold their noses to grindstone.

Well, me too, at times, I have to admit, I'm a victim of the pressures of modern life. I know that one of these days something's going to snap in my head and I'll start imagining that I'm a two and a half mile section of the East Lancs Road or something - or Phil Collins, whichever is the least interesting. (after playing 'Rat Race' by Sizzler)

The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment - social, political, or ethical - can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.

'To tread down the sword' is a principle often used in strategy. First, in large-scale strategy, when the enemy first discharges bows and guns and then attacks, it is difficult for us to attack if we are busy loading powder into our guns or notching our arrows. The spirit is to attack quickly while the enemy is still shooting with bows or guns. The spirit is to win by 'treading down' as we receive the enemy's attack. In single combat, we cannot get a decisive victory by cutting, with a 'tee-dum tee-dum' feeling, in the wake of the enemy's attacking long sword. We must defeat him at the start of his attack, in the spirit of treading him down with the feet, so that he cannot rise again to the attack.

Oh well it's only the fate of the world.

Whenever I hear you saying, rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!

The audition definitely went well. They (Def Jam) locked me into the office - till 3am. And Jay Z said, 'There's only two ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal. Or through this window...' and we were on the 29th floor. Very flattering.

How many times are we going let George Bush and Dick Cheney say, 'You guys don't support the troops. You're not patriotic,' and let them push us around? We have to stand up to them.

'He's got what I call personality under pressure.'

No, I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire.

I have nightmares about Metallica.

they got me stressed out on Death Row/i've seen money but baby I got to gets mo'

'Ric Flair will never retire! I like that. Well you will never retire as long as you keep on winning! You understand what I'm saying? As long as you keep on winning. The next time you lose a match your career is over!' (Talking to Ric Flair about is career threatening matches)

If a multiracial citizen's coalition were in place, it would have the muscle to pressure national public officials to consider seriously the interests of ordinary citizens when such issues are debated.

Without pressure, the work doesn't get done at all.

It gets late awfully early around here.

Give a soldier an anvil, just a hunk of metal, and drive him out into the desert and leave him. In two weeks - when you go to get him, the anvil will be broken.

A buzzard took the monkey for a ride in the air The monkey thought that everything was on the square The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back But the monkey grabbed his neck and said - 'Now listen, Jack...' 'Straighten up and fly right Straighten up and fly right Straighten up and fly right Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.'

When everybody thinks you are nuts you finally just give into their pressure and go nuts.

Reporter: What will it take to beat Duke decisively? Edwards: For me to stay alive.

Can I quit now? Can I come home?

Here abandoned in my fame Armageddon of the brain KGB was doggin' me Take my name and just let me be ~ Stranger In Moscow

Stop pressuring me ~ Scream

People's beliefs don't exist in isolation. Everyone's firmly held beliefs exert an enormous pressure on everyone else

Menacin' Methodz/Label Me a Lethal Weapon/Witnessing Breathless Imperfectionz

ni**a it's a god damn shame, somebody explain/why they sent a Bad Boy to play a grown man's game

you put the money in the benz, cause bitch I'm barely broke

They're dusting the hot-seat off for me!

They're dusting off the hot-seat for me!

[The conference call] expanded because more members of Congress wanted to get in on it. They wanted to sound off on Hillary Clinton's inclination to stretch this out, to wait until she heard those emails from her supporters, to give herself space and time. She wanted to use leverage, and she thought she would have more leverage if she waited. In fact her leverage was dissipating day by day because these members of Congress ... were telling us that Senators were coming up [to Charlie Rangle, asking to join a conference call], I want to switch over but I can't without her releasing us. So there was a lot of frustration and embarassment and anger among her supporters on the Hill. ... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issuing that letter saying it had to be done by Friday. ... I'm persuaded that this was pressure from her supporters, that Barack Obama really did respect her desire for the time to unwind this. I think there was a lot of discomfort and displeasure with the way she addressed her supporters last night. They were not happy about [Clinton campaign chairman] Terry McAuliffe announcing ... , 'This is the next president of the United States.' That really rubbed them the wrong way. And Charlie Rangle said openly and on the record ... , 'I didn't like what I heard. It was not gracious. Once he hit the magic number, she should have conceded and endorsed, and it put us in a terrible spot.'

A strong pursuit, give no time for the enemy to think, take advantage of victory, uproot him, cut off his escape route.

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so.

'The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.'

I'm beginning to feel like a microwaved egg that will explode if anybody so much as breathes onto the surface.

I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

He's walking around with a $40 million plus film on his shoulders like he's been doing it all his life.

The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don't have no down time.

During [Edward Scissorhands] I got the phone call saying I was out of [21 Jump Street]. I felt like, 'Ah, possibilities.' I was freed up. I swore to myself that I would never again compromise to the degree that I had. I swore that I wouldn't just follow the commercial road. I wouldn't do what was expected of me or what was necessary to maintain whatever it is - a popular or financially rewarding career. I promised myself that I wouldn't do that. (2004)

Especially in the beginning, they have to be able to label the product. So they just go -'Rebel. This one's a rebel.' Wow, I had no idea! There's that hideous pressure they hit you with initially, based on your image and how you look, and I never tended that garden. I was always scared shitless of that - it's really limiting and very dangerous. (2003)

If you're squeezed for information, that's when you've got to play it dumb: You just say you're out there waiting for the miracle to come.

The ordinary society is like a paperweight on you: it won't allow you to fly.

Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.

We don't have much time here to talk about Ron Paul because the time is dwindling. Let's see, I have seven seconds, six seconds. What can I say? Uh... Ron Paul. Republican candidate for president, Ron Paul.

Susan Brooks was one of those girls who never say anything unless called upon, the ones the teachers always have to ask to speak up, please. A very studious, very serious girl. A rather pretty but not terribly bright girl - the kind who isn't allowed to give up and take the general or the commercial courses, because she had a terribly bright older brother or older sister, and the teachers expect comparable things from her. In fine, one of those girls who are holding the dirty end of the stick with as much good grace and manners as they can muster. Usually they marry truck drivers and move to the West Coast, where they have kitchen nooks with Formica counters - and they write letters to the Folks Back East as seldom as they can get away with. They make quiet, successful lives for themselves and grow prettier as the shadow of the bright older brother or sister falls away from them.

'Like I say, it's almost embarrassing to talk about. I don't know if Michael Jordan or Bill Gates or Alexander the Great or anyone is worth this type of money, but that's the market we're in today. That's what Mr. Hicks decided to pay me, and now it's time to pay him back and win a couple championships.' -