Quotes About Adversity

At times, I felt like the fisherman in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, sharks gnawing at my catch as I tried to tow it to shore. But as the weeks passed, the core of our reforms survived the amendment process remarkably intact.

You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.

That was the best of the American spirit, I thought--having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control--and therefore responsibility--over our own fate.

The responsibility of tackling these problems didn't scare me. In fact, I relished the chance. But from everything I was learning, things were likely to get significantly worse before they got better.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won't promise that now. Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer – but we travel it together. We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes...

I know what it's like to be in a system that's unfair. I know what it's like to start behind and to be asked to do more, to act like the injustice didn't happen. But I can't let that shape my choices, and neither should you.

My mother-in-law never complained about anything. Whenever I interacted with her, I'd remember that, no matter what kind of mess I was dealing with, no one had forced me to be the president and that I needed to just suck it up and do my job.

If you are living life to its fullest, you will fail.

Given the strong odor of imminent failure

The fact that they were still engaged in the fight and, despite setbacks and sorrow, hadn't succumbed to bitterness showed me that I had no cause to be tired. I felt renewed in my conviction that I was where I was supposed to be and doing what needed to be done

And gosh, I wasn't a great athlete. I wasn't big and strong. But I had two things going for me. I could take a punch. And I didn't give up.

The work remained arduous and sometimes monotonous, made tougher by the need to patch leaks and bail water. Maintaining speed and course in the constantly shifting winds and currents required patience, skill, and attention. But for a span of time, we had in us the thankfulness of survivors, propelled in our daily tasks by a renewed belief that we might make it to port after all.

She taught me to marry passion with reason, to not get overly excited when life was going well, and to not get too down when it went badly.

War might be hell and still the right thing to do. Economies could collapse despite the best-laid plans. People could work hard all their lives and still lose everything.

Il y a des moments dans un combat électoral, comme dans la vie, où tous les chemins possible qui s'ouvraient à vous se ferment soudain, à l'exception d'un seul ; des moments où le large éventail de probabilités qui semblait se déployer se réduit à une seule issue, inévitable.

Sometimes it didn't matter how good your process was. Sometimes you were just screwed, and the best you could do was have a stiff drink—and light up a cigarette.

Easier isn't always best.

At ten, she learned that no address was permanent, at twelve, that no promise was sacred, and at sixteen, that there was no such thing as safe.

She'd grown up hard and fast, the way most children of addicts did, and had learned a thing or two along the way. At ten, she learned that no address was permanent, at twelve, that no promise was sacred, and at sixteen, that there was no such thing as safe. There were other lessons too. Lessons that were still etched in her mind—and her flesh.

The flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must because you didn't try hard enough, didn't believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success.

If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.

Quienes están haciendo las reestructuraciones despiden a una persona de cada tres y luego ponen un póster inspiracional en el pasillo para tapar la herida psicológica.

Por ahora, no puedes sino cambiar tu percepción de la realidad: que de negativa y amarga pase a positiva y afirmadora. Y este fue el gran regalo que le hizo el mundo de la empresa a sus empleados despedidos y a los que se quedaron trabajando el doble: el pensamiento positivo.

No one ever said that you could work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.