Challenging People Quotes & Sayings

Sir, no insult intended, but you said to me once that you don't like kiss-asses and that you'd rather work with people challenging your perceptions. — Mario Stinger

The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea. — William O. Douglas

There needs to be a place in the church or just outside - there needs to be a place where people feel free to ask questions without being put upon, where they feel free to ask difficult, challenging questions to voice their skepticism. — D. A. Carson

Every minister worthy of the name has to walk the line between prophetic vision and spiritual sustenance, between telling people the comforting things they want to hear and challenging them with the difficult things they need to hear. In Oxford, Daddy began to feel as though all the members wanted him to do was to marry them and bury them and stay away from their souls. — Timothy B. Tyson

I tell young people to prepare themselves as best they can for a world that grows more challenging every day-get the best education they can, and couple that education with real-life experience in social justice work. — Julian Bond

Most writers stick to what they know. The black experience is our experience, so it's not that challenging for us. That's why sometimes you'll see writers that start off telling black stories, but later branch out into other material. People say they "sell out." No, they evolve as writers. — Lena Waithe

I want to do something challenging and I want to take risks, but above all, I want people to be entertained ... Because the only way of talking about some issues sometimes is through humor. — Shazia Mirza

If you're a manager and you're stuck doing the same thing year after year, you're going to get stale and not know how to motivate people. Part of becoming better at what you do requires challenging yourself on a constant basis. — Art Briles

Everywhere I go, I meet people ready for change. People who are fed up with the exhaustion that comes from devoting one's life to the work-watch-spend treadmill. People who know in their hearts that it's wrong to treat the planet and whole groups of people as disposable. People who are challenging the bogus stories we've been fed for years and are writing their own about hope and love and working together to build a better future for everyone. — Annie Leonard

I believe that as people will look at me, they'll see a person who has dealt with a number of very difficult and challenging circumstances and that I have been able to successfully navigate through those and create greater strength and greater opportunity. I believe that people recognize that I'm someone who has confidence in America's cause. — Mitt Romney

As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that. — Lily Cole

The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up. — Susan Sontag

It often seems easier not to move on; even the muck and mire in which we're stuck seems less fearful and less challenging than the unknown path ahead. Some people use faith as a reason to remain stuck. They often say, "I have faith, so I'm waiting." But faith is not complacent; faith is action. You don't have faith and wait. When you have faith, you move. Complacency actually shows lack of faith. When it's time to move in a new direction in order to progress, the right people will come to us. — Betty Eadie

People will be engaged in your work if it is good, interesting or challenging. — Jillian Mayer

Comedy is much more challenging, because you have to have the same level of belief but you have to make people laugh, and that's definitely a challenge. — Jenna Elfman

Matching sounds in your head is made a lot easier with all the technology. It is the nonelectronic noises that are challenging, as you have to find ways of communicating those to the people you're working with. — Scott Walker

People go through challenging moments of losing people and of having their life threatened from illness and real grief. But they get through it. And that's the testament to the human spirit and it's -we are fragile, but we also are divine. — Sheryl Crow

People think by challenging me they're going to show they're tough. But I'm not tough. Decent drinker. Not such a bad kisser. But not a great fighter. — Johnny Knoxville

A deep and enduring economic crisis like the Great Depression of the 1930s, or a natural disaster that kills tens of thousands of people, might change America's fundamental calculus about economic justice. Until then, the American public will probably continue to refrain from broadly challenging both male and female corporate leaders who compensate themselves far in excess of their value to society. That — Sebastian Junger

I cannot tell you how many times guides have said to me, "Please tell them to stop praying to me. I can't make things happen. I can't protect them from going through challenging experiences. These are experiences their soul has chosen to go through. I'm here to keep them on their path, but I don't want them to give me all this attention or power or focus." Realistically, the guides I work with are really encouraging people to find their inner voice. — Echo Bodine

People change their behavior and thinking not because they are "told to be different" but when the conditions are present that require and empower them to figure out what to do and to act on a plan. Try giving teenagers a lot of advice and see if it changes behavior. They probably don't look at you and say, "Gee, Dad, or Mom, thanks for explaining reality to me. Now I will run out and do it." But if you provide context - by listening, sharing information and positive examples, setting expectations and consequences, creating a healthy emotional climate, and challenging them to do their best - they will figure it out and implement it. That is a lot better than just "telling them what to do. — Henry Cloud

You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alterative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp. — Ryan Holiday

I like to play people that are real, a real person, and then something that's interesting with that person. I think it's a lot more challenging to do that than something that's extremely fantasy-like. — Devon Bostick

Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything. — Will Schwalbe

Playing President Clinton (in Primary Colors) was risky and challenging. Some people thought Saturday Night Fever was risky, because no one had danced in movies for years. — John Travolta

People didn't want to disturb norms. If one looked like they fit into the greater scheme of things, then it took a kind of courage to step away from the herd and stand out, challenging that. — Wildbow

It's easy to become married. Millions of people do it every year. If you want to pressure me to become something, hey, why not pick something a little more challenging - like an astrophysicist. — Karen Salmansohn

Today, a similar debate rages in black communities about the underlying causes of mass incarceration. While some argue that it is attributable primarily to racial bias and discrimination, others maintain that it is due to poor education, unraveling morals, and a lack of thrift and perseverance among the urban poor. Just as former slaves were viewed (even among some African Americans) as unworthy of full citizenship due to their lack of education and good morals, today similar arguments can be heard from black people across the political spectrum who believe that reform efforts should be focused on moral uplift and education for ghetto dwellers, rather than challenging the system of mass incarceration itself. — Michelle Alexander

When we write memoir we are re-creating, sorting through the layer of remembering, to put form and shape to our experience through language. By borrowing from the techniques of fiction and poetry, we are able to make the events of our past come alive, creating detailed pictures of time and place and portraits of the people who have come and gone in our lives. We use scene and dialogue, challenging ourselves to recall how someone talked, what they said (or more accurately, what we remember that they said) and how we felt when moving among the people and events of our past. — Janice Gray

Any actor is happy to be involved with something that's challenging, controversial, and not easily palatable. Things that are too dumbed down or easy to swallow are uninteresting ... It's good when people have such a polarizing response. — Adam Driver

I'm trying to talk about challenging subjects people might not like and trying to find relief as we discuss it. — Mara Brock Akil

I feel like people grow the most when they step outside of the box that they are used to. For me, it's constantly challenging myself to step outside of my comfort zone. As soon as you do that, then you grow, but then you get comfortable again. — Sanaa Lathan

It's effortless to let go of self-absorbed people. It's challenging to let go of someone you care about and it's exceedingly difficult to let go of an ideal and a belief in someone because what exacerbates the disappointment of finding out they weren't who they presented themselves to be, is the betrayal of it. — Donna Lynn Hope

I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not. Your ministry is the way that you love people. And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging. You love people when you call your wife and say, 'I'm going to be late for dinner,' instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime, because you know she's really tired. Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing music. — Rich Mullins

It's exciting to be able to do something completely independent without anybody challenging it, and it's a big part of the reason why I'm enjoying doing the stand-up comedy, is I'm able to go out and interact with people one-on-one after the show. It's very punk-rock. — Tom Green

I think when I first started acting there were different people who I thought, 'I want that person's career or that person's career.' And as time has gone on, it's become really clear to me what is important to me; getting the best roles, the roles that I feel are challenging and scary and that I haven't done yet. — Carla Gugino

Now I've been criticized for advocating that people push their boundaries because sometimes people get caught. Sometimes people get fired. Sometimes people lose their jobs because of pushing the boundaries too far, but it's an interesting experience. They found they didn't want to stay within those limitations that they were pushing. Once people find they can survive outside the limits, they're much happier. They don't want to feel trapped. So I think we can urge people to push the boundaries as far as they can, and if they get in trouble, fine; that's not too bad if that's what they want to do. — Myles Horton

In choosing candidates for this challenging way of life, she emphasised intelligence and good judgment ("GOD PRESERVE US FROM STUPID NUNS !! )

. It was her conviction that intelligent people can better be aware of their faults and, at the same time, see the need to be guided. — St Teresa Of Avila

The built environment is shaped not only by private sector development pratices, but also by the honored and fascinating field of planning. Planners in towns, counties, regional and state government, consulting firms and in economic development agencies translate ideas about human settlements into concrete designs. They can be generalists or specialize in transportation, urban centers, rural land use, economic development and more. At its best, the planning profession aims to mediate tensions between people, social groups, and the natural environment by creating an orderly process for determining common values, shared priorities and elegant principles for transcending conflicts. Therefore planners may find themselves caught in some of the most challenging political crossfire to be found. But they also have the opportunity to educate many sectors and communities. — Melissa Everett

If I'm not comfortable in my own skin or confident in who I am, then I'm going to pick parts based on how people are going to view them, not based on what I find challenging or entertaining. — Mila Kunis

There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past. — Umberto Eco

People who have life-challenging experiences who choose to remain invested in a consistent catastrophic interpretation are not the ones I meet. I have met many more people who have recognized how vital it is to their healing and to the quality of their life to interpret their experiences differently. That is why some of the people I've met who have life-challenging illnesses are much happier than some people I've known who are physically quite healthy and yet who live lives of greater desperation and depression. — Marianne Williamson

I love doing emotional scenes. As I've had a perfect life, I don't really have much to pull from. But it's really fun and not that challenging. It's almost pretty easy. The hardest thing is to try and make people laugh. That's a really hard thing. — Hilary Duff

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people. — Macklemore

It's tricky playing people that you don't like and finding a way to empathise with them. It's challenging and very exciting for an actor. — Carey Mulligan

If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be Spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. — Eckhart Tolle

What can one say about Michael Jackson? He is one of the world's most acclaimed entertainers, an innovative and exciting songwriter whose dancing seems to defy gravity and has been heralded by the likes of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
His public is perhaps unaware of the extent of his dedication to his craft. Restless, seldom satisfied, he is a perfectionist who is constantly challenging himself. To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight. — Jackie Kennedy

I'm really passionate about things I enjoy, and I like to be out there doing things, and learning and challenging myself. So it's just more fun that way, just to get out and try and do and learn and meet people and try to do something new. — Steve Nash

People who work with victims of cults, for example, often observe that the new beliefs are associated with extremely emotional states. Challenging such a belief rationally is difficult if not impossible. The victim not only perceives any such challenge as hostile but refuses to engage in rational debate; the — Kathleen Taylor

In essence, what Innocentive does is it provides a platform where you can post a really challenging problem and offer a reward to anybody who can come and provide a solution. And it's been remarkably effective. People get very challenging problems and get solutions to those problems. — John Hagel III

When kaizen events are designed with the purpose of only improving processes or driving financial savings but not challenging people to develop their skills, kaizen becomes noninfectious. — Jon Miller

regardless of the false nature of racial categories, the concept of race holds great social force. Our society uses race in spite of some people's disavowal and often treats us differentially as a result. Race has truly gotten under our skin, into our psyche, and lingers within the layers of our unconscious. To begin honestly, we must discuss what may be the most challenging aspect of any discussion of race. We must deal with the terms racist, racism, and systemic white supremacy. We must also confront the fact that some people might ask us to associate those words with our speech and actions. — Shelly Tochluk

Most people are looking for a challenging, interesting job. I wanted a boring, undemanding job so that I could forget about it at 5, so that I would have something left over at the end of the day to do my own stuff. — Jerry Spinelli

Since I'm a mother and a wife, I have to have passion or the frustration would win out. But I love managing people. The product is second to managing the people. And marketing to consumers is so challenging because it is evolving constantly. — Andrea Jung

If you are surrounded by people who not only don't believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy. — Chris Prentiss

A lot of the time, people want to hear from someone like myself. They want to give it a shot. It's challenging, and it's driven me more than discouraged me. — Archie Panjabi

There's something very ... spiritual about fighting. It's physically very challenging. It's for killing people, after all, so it's taught me how to look at something head on. It's like living - confronting something. Everything for me came from films. — Rinko Kikuchi

The most challenging thing is how to portray someone that is so well known that people still recall him in a very precise way. — Gaspard Ulliel

Define your own success: If you're going after a million bucks with your own startup, you've already failed yourself. Instead, do something because it's interesting, challenging, it offers you the chance to learn something new or gives you the chance to work with really interesting people. Most startups that are designed to make money, especially in this environment, don't. — Tara Hunt

I know that it's very dispiriting for people in their twenties, who expected to graduate from college, get their own apartments, get a job, and move forward with their lives, and in fact are still now living with Mom and Dad, which is challenging for all involved. — Anna Quindlen

We got up at 6am to go to school for a few years and we found it so challenging. Some people in our country have woken up at 6am every single morning for decades now so that this nation can wake up and see great mornings. I salute all those wonderful super humans who are inspiring a better tomorrow. Thank you, Teachers! — Sharad Vivek Sagar

If you want to make something that's aggressive and challenging and peculiar and strange and trying to step outside of a traditional approach, some people aren't going to like it. — Casey Spooner

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point. — Amanda Palmer

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value. — Greg Graffin

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions. — Steven Rodney McQueen

I enjoy playing other people. It's a great job and it's challenging. I couldn't do a desk job. — Christopher Parker

I don't struggle to forgive people. I find it quite easy to forgive people for the harms that they have inflicted on me. What I do find challenging is to forgive people for the harms they inflict on my daughters and family. So, I find it challenging when I see somebody else experience hurt. I also look at my children and family and then I realize, I don't stand inside their skin and that is for me a forgiveness practice I still need to engage in. — Desmond Tutu

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture. — Mike White

My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me. — Abby Wambach

If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting ... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: "Take a job that will give you security, not adventure." But I say to the young: "Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go. — Hans Berliner

Why does it seem to be more and more challenging to find a perfect mate or maintain a happy and compatible relationship? Was love always this difficult? Haven't we heard stories of people being truly fulfilled and happy in love? Is love a myth? There are more people on the planet than ever before, and traveling the world has never been easier. Not only that; now we can use technologies like the Internet to connect with others. So what is the problem? Why does it seem to be more complicated than ever to meet the right person and live happily ever after? — Pamala Oslie

Globally, proving myself working well with Adidas, showing my work could be globally distributed and loved and appreciated and still be challenging. Maybe I'm one of the first people on a larger scale to make more challenging and more unique items. — Jeremy Scott

For many people, change is more threatening than challenging. They see it as the destroyer of what is familiar and comfortable rather than the creator of what is new and exciting. — Nido R. Qubein

I want to work on projects that I feel passionate about and do things that are fun and challenging. I would love to do a live musical. I'm not interested in doing the same thing over and over or the fame and exposure that comes with it. When people keep doing that, they just end up doing the same dumb stuff again and again. — Holly Madison

INDIAN SILK SAREE WEAR (GOD GIFT) SUGGESTED FOR ENTIRE GLOBAL WOMEN ATTIRE. TO FLASH AND WEIGH EVER EVERY INDIVIDUAL SELFISM.BY ATTRACTED PEOPLE EAGLE EYE IMPRESSION LOOKS FIRST.THEN NOBLE EXCELLENCY SOUNDNESS.FOR ANY PROFESSION TALENT GLOW INCLUDING BUSINESS CHALLENGING FEATS IN THIS MODERN CENTURY NEXT. — Various

The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press. — Colin Powell

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist. You're not going there just to merely observe. You have a purpose, and your purpose is to tell that story, to share that story for the bigger benefit of millions of other people. Your purpose is to create that bridge so you can give that story the dignity and the focus that it deserves, and you can become a part of the amplification that needs to be there. — Annie Lennox

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels. — John Burdett

While there might be some people who were natural diplomats, she wasn't one of them. She was forever butting heads with people, challenging them when she should have been convincing them, raising hackles where she should have been raising support. She had always been in a hurry, without always knowing where she wanted to go; she was too impatient to wait for the right time or the right confluence of events. — Robert Masello

Seeking out people with different views, different perspectives, different ideas is often challenging, because it requires us to set aside judgment and open our minds. But we have to remind ourselves that to get beyond where we are, where I believe most of us are, we would all be be well served to choose our music carefully, to stop talking and listen to one another. — Susan Scott

I've always wanted to be on a show that's well respected and had critical acclaim and that people like to watch, and at the same time find something that, for me, as an actor, is interesting and challenging. — Mike Colter

People know that they're going to see something which is entertaining but challenging as well because of the form it's in. It's dance theatre and it requires you to use your imagination - it's not straight forward. — Matthew Bourne

Nothing is so threatening to conventional values as a man who does not want to work or does not want to work at a challenging job, and most people are disturbed if a man in a well- paying job indicates ambivalence or dislike toward it. — Alice S. Rossi

I directed one of my shorts that did festivals around the world, and that was great. I've got a bit of a bug for that now. I just hope I keep challenging myself and keep doing stuff that interests me with people who I respect and who teach me stuff. If I can keep doing that in anything - acting, writing, directing or whatever - I'll do it because life is short. — Josh Lawson

I find it boring and a waste of time debating other people's opinions, however challenging my own is always intriguing and there is where I inevitably discover growth. — Carl Henegan

The challenge is trying to set people free, and help them be 'successful' in the world, which are almost always opposite objectives. — Bryant McGill

In 1968, America was a wounded nation. The wounds were moral ones; the Vietnam War and three summers of inner-city riots had inflicted them on the national soul, challenging Americans' belief that they were a uniquely noble and honorable people. — Thurston Clarke

But does a growth mindset make people good just at getting their own way? Often negotiations require people to understand and try to serve the other person's interests as well. Ideally, at the end of a negotiation, both parties feel their needs have been met. In a study with a more challenging negotiation task, those with a growth mindset were able to get beyond initial failures by constructing a deal that addressed both parties' underlying interests. So, not only do those with a growth mindset gain more lucrative outcomes for themselves, but, more important, they also come up with more creative solutions that confer benefits all around. — Carol S. Dweck

Learning how to deal with people and their reactions to my life is one of the most challenging things ... people staring at me, people asking rude questions, dealing with media, stuff like that. — Bethany Hamilton

The risk is only in the outcome. You're going on a journey. You're going somewhere to play. And at that time, it felt right to spend that 11 or 12 days exploring this kind of role because it was so different and so challenging for me. It was really exciting to be able to show people, "Look, this is very different. Isn't it interesting?" — Alicia Silverstone

I love a challenge, and I love challenging people's preconceptions. — Owain Yeoman

We all must be mindful that the United States has diplomatic, civilian, and military personnel deployed in other countries with both challenging security environments and active terrorist networks interested in targeting not just our facilities but our people. One of their greatest protections - knowing that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists - has been compromised. — John Boehner

Ironically, the urge to know may be one of the most challenging obstacles to productive thinking. People who "know" can tell you all the things that can't be done and why. People who "know" don't need to learn because they already have the answers. People who "know" are complete - or perhaps just finished. More often than not, people who "know" are also people who "no." But knowingness is not the same as knowledge. Knowingness is sealed; nothing can get in. Knowledge is open. Knowingness sees challenge as threat. Knowledge sees challenge as opportunity. — Tim Hurson

When I was 17, I went to India for six weeks and had what, at the time, was a very challenging trip. You walk down the street and you see lepers and beggars, and there were several of us, a group of Americans. I remember we were just trying to park one night somewhere and people were just sleeping in the parking lot. — Chris Hughes

In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue. — Martin Rees

The only thing I would say is, I think there's a lot of future value in Blackberry, but without experienced people who have run this type of business, and without a strategic plan, it would be really challenging. — John Sculley

One of the things I find extremely challenging about the continent of Africa is that when the immediate needs and the social needs of people are not met, that kills dreams, and it's all about survival. — Djimon Hounsou

Each piano is unique. Each feels different beneath your hand and yields a new geography of sound. Each room or hall accepts that sound in a completely different way, and if, within that room or hall, the piano is moved, the sound will change, as it will if the hall is full of people in thick winter coats, or half full of people in light summer dresses. You must adjust your touch, your tone, your range; you must LISTEN, for even the most familiar passages can become unfamiliar, challenging, strange. — A. Manette Ansay

Historyis nothing other than a collection of the lives of people, some of them great, some of them ordinarynothing other than a collection of what people have done in challenging circumstances and how they have risen to those circumstances. — Artur Davis