Constrain Quotes & Sayings

This is the city of disguises. What you are one day will not constrain you on the next. You may explore yourself freely and, if you have wit or wealth, no one will stand in your way. This city was built on wit and wealth and we have a fondness for both, though they do not have to appear in tandem. — Jeanette Winterson

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment's stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.

And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one--and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born. — Soseki Natsume

The opinion that any Monarch receiveth his Power by Covenant, that is to say on Condition, proceedeth from want of understanding this easie truth, that Covenants being but words, and breath, have no force to oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what it has from the publique Sword; that is, from the untyed hands of that Man, or Assembly of men that hath the Soveraignty, and whose actions are avouched by them all, and performed by the strength of them all, in him united. But when an Assembly of men is made Soveraigne; then no man imagineth any such Covenant to have past in the Institution; for no man is so dull as to say, for example, the People of Rome, made a Covenant with the Romans, to hold the Soveraignty on such or such conditions; which not performed, the Romans might lawfully depose the Roman People. — Thomas Hobbes

This Aristotle knew definitely: the truth has the power to force or constrain men, all men alike, whether it be the great Parmenides and the great Alexander or Parmenides' unknown slave and the least of Alexander's stable-men — Lev Shestov

In a world of businessmen and financial intermediaries who aggressively seek profit, innovators will always outpace regulators; the authorities cannot prevent changes in the structure of portfolios from occurring. What they can do is keep the asset-equity ratio of banks within bounds by setting equity-absorption ratios for various types of assets. If the authorities constrain banks and are aware of the activities of fringe banks and other financial institutions, they are in a better position to attenuate the disruptive expansionary tendencies of our economy. — Hyman Minsky

The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill. — Ai Weiwei

If your souls were not immortal, and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you; but the love of your souls constrains me to speak: methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever. — George Whitefield

You can never get rid of all of your fears. Some are necessary and a part of life. But most of our fears are illusory, based on risks or threats that exist only in our minds. Such fears constrain and make you miserable. The feeling of moving past a particular fear is one of liberation and freedom. — Robert Greene

Were I to personify Justice, instead of presenting her blind, I would denominate her the goddess of fire ... Of unbending integrity Justice should feel, hear and see; but truth alone should be the polar star by which she should shape her movements, and equity only should constrain her determinations. — Judith Sargent Murray

Others may try to feed our ego, but it is up to us to constrain it. — Aesop

Ramp skating has become the most popular televised form of skating because they can constrain it. They can judge it based on what's happening within this box of a ramp. — Jeffrey Deitch

This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights. — Patrick Leahy

For a woman ... to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her ambitions, her emotional and intellectual capacities, her social duties, her tender virtues, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration to the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity - a perversion, if you will. — Louise J. Kaplan

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life. — Thomas Jefferson

astonishing number of senior leaders are systemically incapable of identifying their organization's most glaring and dangerous shortcomings. This is not a function of stupidity, but rather stems from two routine pressures that constrain everybody's thinking and behavior. The first is comprised of cognitive biases, such as mirror imaging, anchoring, and confirmation bias. These unconscious motivations on decision-making under uncertain conditions make it inherently difficult to evaluate one's own judgments and actions. As David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, has shown in countless environments, people who are highly incompetent in terms of their skills or knowledge are also terrible judges of their own performance. For example, people who perform the worst on pop quizzes also have the widest variance between how they thought they performed and the actual score that they earned.22 — Micah Zenko

When we need to find something to blame for a tragedy, mothering becomes the de facto central influence in a child or adult's life. This process almost never goes as far as weighing the social circumstances that constrain a mother's choices. — Anonymous

Buildings designed exclusively on scientific principles will depress their occupants and constrain their creativity. — Robert Evans

In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. — Martin Luther

It occurs to me that what adulthood actually is is the problem of what one wants to constrain oneself to. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, "What do you see in this work?" The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just as much when applied to Scripture. — Dale B. Martin

While sanctions against Iran and Syria are intended to constrain those countries' governments, they have had the unfortunate side effect of constraining activists' access to free online software and services used widely across the Middle East, including browsers, online chat applications, and online storage services. — Rebecca MacKinnon

We've surpassed ourselves now, we're exploring terrain beyond the limits of merely human understanding. Sometimes its contours, even in conventional space, are just too intricate for our brains to track; other times its very axes extend into dimensions inconceivable to minds built to fuck and fight on some prehistoric grassland. So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own. But we're not very good at building them. — Peter Watts

They are for 'freedom' when it is freedom to kill third-term fetuses or engage in same-sex marriages or stuff coke up their noses; they do not define freedom as anything to do with captive peoples around the world having the chance to escape the tyrannies that constrain them. They like Fidel because he is a thorn in America's side and a sort of dime-store existentialist, and they rhapsodize about his spreading of literacy in Cuba without considering the fact that at the same time that he teaches people to read he tortures writers like Armando Valladares whose books he doesn't like. — David Horowitz

I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen - everything I was - against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me. — Jim Butcher

Live a real experience of love is one of the greatest pleasures of life. It feels like the soul, but to express the feelings depends on the ideas of each. Constrain the love of our neurotic needs and we with him. Live a life trying to make others take responsibility for our needs as we recklessly abandon.

We want to be loved and not love, we want to be understood and we do not understand, we want the support of others and we give our them. When we abandon ourselves, we want to find someone who will fill the hole that we dug. The dissatisfaction, emptiness turn on continual search for new relationships, the results will be repeated frustrating.

Each is solely responsible for their own purposes. Only those who can find love in your life One Love Truth
— Zibia Gasparetto

Profound commitment to a dream does not confine or constrain: it liberates.
Even a difficult, winding path can lead to your goal if you follow it to the end. — Paulo Coelho

VIII. Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shall ever constrain thee either to break thy faith, or to lose thy modesty; to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of walls or veils. — Marcus Aurelius

[J]ust because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right ... — Barack Obama

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change - that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. — Robert Louis Stevenson

You could not have evolved a complex system like a city or an organism - with an enormous number of components - without the emergence of laws that constrain their behavior in order for them to be resilient. — Geoffrey West

Nixon tried to wrap the Soviet Union into a web of agreements that would constrain its behavior. What happened is that many people lost faith in that approach, not the least because of how the Soviets handled it. — David Hoffman

In most languages, 'control' is the first synonym for the word 'manage.' Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain. — Gary Hamel

Perhaps we are like cells in the mind of God, contributing to celestial functions beyond our ken, just as our cells unknowingly fashion our thoughts and actions. Perhaps the laws of nature order and constrain even the living and eternal Deity from which they spring, and of which they are a part. — Robert Christian

When you disrupt yourself, you are looking for growth, so if you want to muscle up a curve, you have to push and pull against objects and barriers that would constrain and constrict you. That is how you get stronger. — Whitney Johnson

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. — Henry David Thoreau

The love shown by our God to mankind should constrain all of us who are followers and disciples of Christ, to do all in our power to see to it that the message of salvation is carried to those of our fellows for whom Christ our Savior was sacrificed but who have not had the benefit of hearing the good news. — Haile Selassie

If I am to constrain you by any law, it must be one by which I am also bound. — Immanuel Kant

Through developing trusting and respectful relationships with the boys in our lives, we can help boys to value and acknowledge their relational capabilities, which they may otherwise learn to discount or overlook. We can also offer and model for them definitions of maturity, masculinity, health and success that will enable them to remain grounded in their self-knowledge (e.g. as they encounter societal pressures to conform to group and cultural norms), and to form relationships that will sustain rather than constrain them. — Judy Chu

Contrary to popular belief, we do not face a choice between economy and ecology, It is often said that protecting the environment would constrain or even undermine economic growth. In fact, the opposite is true: unless we protect resources and the earth's natural capital, we shall not be able to sustain economic growth. — Kofi Annan

The names of entities that have the power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed. — Cormac McCarthy

Needless to say, food is used to constrain as well as to unify the members of many faiths. Most religions meddle in the day-to-day culinary habits of their adherents. — Michael Krondl

Conservatives want to eliminate the EPA on the grounds that government should encourage and reward free enterprise, not constrain and punish it. This fits the conservative view of nature as being there to serve private interests. Solutions to as many problems as possible should come out of free enterprise solutions that reward self-discipline and enterprise, rather than out of government-imposed constraints that punish enterprising companies through regulation. Or — George Lakoff

Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. So, — Jared Diamond

It has become obligatory to fulfil a function which shall in some way be regarded as useful to the masses ... Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstition without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants. — Karl Jaspers

We don't constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches. — Nicholas Carr

To be human, at the most profound level, is to encounter honestly the inescapable circumstances that constrain us, yet muster the courage to struggle compassionately for our own unique individualities and for more democratic and free societies. — Cornel West

It would seem that by our sorrows only are we called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides. — Sophie Swetchine

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act. — Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

We invest the moment with meanings it may not necessarily have. We constrain and limit the potential outcomes by imposing external expectations, by imagining and anticipating how others will see things, what they might say...when in reality none of that might matter." ~Jeremy William Carling — Stephanie Laurens

In an age of widespread communication and accountability, people expect political participation and accountability much more than they did in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. The only way the demand for meaningful political participation and choice can be suppressed is to constrain liberty - Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Chapter 1 ('Defining and Developing Democracy'). p. 4 — Larry Diamond

The moral sentiments that constrain economic life also promote it. — Ted Malloch

We need open minds and open hearts when we wrestle with the past and ask questions of it, and the answers it will provide are in nobody's pocket ... We should let nobody tell us that they know all that it contains, or try to prescribe or constrain in advance what it has to tell us. — Eamon Duffy

The one thing that I want every single child to have experienced at some point in their life, as part of their education, is to have some idea they hold to be true, and at the very basis of their being, proved to be wrong.
Because that opens your mind to the realization that the world is different than you thought it would be, and you have to begin to open your mind to the possibilities of existence.
And opening your mind frees you, it doesn't constrain you. It makes the world more wonderful, more exciting, and more worth living in. — Lawrence M. Krauss

War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will. — George Washington

All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good. — John Stuart Mill

To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding — George Steiner

The environment most realistically capable of giving rise to life, whether here or anywhere else in the universe, is alkaline hydrothermal vents. Such vents constrain cells to make use of natural proton gradients, and ultimately to generate their own. — Nick Lane

Anarchists generally make use if the word "State" to mean all the collection of institutions, political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, etc., by means of which management of their own affairs, the guidance of their personal conduct, and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the people and confided to certain individuals, and these, whether by usurpation or delegation, are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of the community to this end. — Errico Malatesta

And as far as possible for sickness or fatigue, constrain yourself to eat in the hall before your people, for this shall bring great benefit and honour to you. — Robert Grosseteste

When war transcends all boundaries, do the legal and moral categories we have relied upon to channel and constrain violence and coercion lose all value? Do we lose the checks and balances essential to preserving individual liberty and the rule of law? Or — Rosa Brooks

Constrain the user's expectations to match the abilities of the software. — Bruce Tognazzini

One of the more fascinating things about human behavior is the degree to which we conceive of countless boundaries that constrain and inhibit us in extraordinary ways, even though they are nothing but mental constructs that, in reality, do not exist. — Dee Hock

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. — John Locke

For market discipline to constrain risk effectively, financial institutions must be allowed to fail. Under optimal financial regulatory and financial system infrastructures, such a failure would not threaten the overall system. — Henry Paulson

But nothing external to God can possibly constrain him. If he chooses to restore a broken universe, it is because he "wants" to, because, for example, he loves it and wants the best for it. But he is free to do as he wills, and his character (Who He Is) controls his will. — James W. Sire

All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good. — John Stuart Mill

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference. — Jared Diamond

Others' jealousies or opinions are not her problem, and she will not allow them to constrain her. — Sejal Badani

I know that some of those plans [of the North Korea] could very well lead to a missile that might reach Hawaii, if not the West Coast. We do have to try to get the countries in the region to work with us to do everything we can to confine, and constrain them. — Hillary Clinton

Love will not be constrain'd by mastery.
When mast'ry comes, the god of love anon
Beateth his wings, and, farewell, he is gone.
Love is a thing as any spirit free. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Afflictions quicken us to prayer. It is a pity it should be so; but experience testifies, that a long course of ease and prosperity, without painful changes - has an unhappy tendency to make us cold and formal in our secret worship. But troubles rouse our spirits, and constrain us to call upon the Lord in good earnest - when we feel a need of that help which we only can have from his almighty arm. Afflictions are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us - a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world, and all its enjoyments; to remind us that this world is not our rest, and to call our thoughts upwards, where our true treasure is, and where our heart ought to be. When things go on much to our wish, our hearts are too prone to say, It is good to be here! — John Newton

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think." — Jonathan Safran Foer

We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden. — Jostein Gaarder

Those people who formerly had been half wilde, and civiliz'd but by degrees, made their laws but according to the incommodities which their crimes and their quarrels constrain'd them to, could not be so wel pollic'd, as those who from the beginning of their association, observ'd the constitutions of some prudent Legislator. — Rene Descartes

In our youths, many of us suspected that being tied down to a partner and family might constrain us. But after 40, even that landscape starts to shift. Many singletons turn inward and start longing for the things so many of us longed to be free of in our 20s. — Sandra Tsing Loh

You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults - and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex - are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. — Sam Harris

When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul. — Louis Pasteur

After a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as-I-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronomotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged. What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it. — Isaac Asimov

The reasoning throughout is straightforward, and is in full accord with what Bush calls "new thinking in the law of war," which takes international law and treaties to be "private contractual rules" that the more powerful party "is free to apply or disregard as it sees fit": sternly enforced to ensure a safer world for investors, but quaint and obsolete when they constrain Washington's resort to aggression and other crimes. — Noam Chomsky

All I know is that the hours are long ... and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which ... may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit. — Samuel Beckett

I see myself as someone who makes things. Definitions have never done anything but constrain. — Jonathan Safran Foer

At a minimum, solidarity in this current struggle dictates that we do not constrain the choices of those who are most affected by police killings (though I think the label of "most affected" in this case excludes not only whites but also economically mobile activists of color who fly in from across the country). One way that white people might fail at that is by starting a riot every time locals were trying to organize a vigil. — Anonymous

[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that philosophical framework. — George Lakoff

Judgments that constrain your giving are the very demons that are keeping you from receiving. — Martha Beck

One afternoon ... I was seized and put into jail, because ... I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. — Henry David Thoreau

beliefs create or constrain possibilities, desires lead to preferences among them, and intentions represent commitments to specific courses of action. Each of the primitive elements can evolve in time, which is why mental models have momentum. — Venkatesh G. Rao

Instability mostly comes from the interface between the fact that the banks (or shadow banks) can create credit, money, and purchasing power in infinite quantities if we don't constrain them, and the fact that credit is primarily created to fund the purchase of urban real estate and land, which is somewhat fixed in supply. — Adair Turner

We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him. — Joseph Joubert

Don't be a slave to history. Don't let existing code dictate future code. All code can be replaced if it is no longer appropriate. Even within one program, don't let what you've already done constrain what you do next -- be ready to refactor... This decision may impact the project schedule. The assumption is that the impact will be less than the cost of /not/ making the change. — Andrew Hunt

So many things constrain us, from so many directions. — Peter Watts

Happiness is gained by complying with the duties of whatever condition of life one is in, and you must constrain yourself to rise to that exalted station in which destiny has placed you. — Giacomo Casanova

A photo app is a utility. It's like comparing 'Twitter' to Microsoft Word. If you want to be an author, you're not always going to constrain yourself to 140 characters. — Kevin Systrom

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future. — Alan Greenspan

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment. — Galileo Galilei

According to the Shuos," Jedao said, "games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invested with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work. — Yoon Ha Lee

Raise from your bed of languor
Raise from your bed of dismay
Your friends will not come tomorrow
As they did not come today
You must rely on yourself, they said,
You must rely on yourself,
Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man
As he took it from the shelf
Crying, O sweet Death come to me
Come to me for company,
Sweet Death it is only you I can
Constrain for company. — Stevie Smith

Keep in mind that imagination is at the heart of all innovation. Crush or constrain it and the fun will vanish. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Too much horsing around with unrealistic stances and classic forms and rituals is just too artificial and mechanical, and doesn't really prepare the student for actual combat. A guy could get clobbered while getting into this classical mess. Classical methods like these, which I consider a form of paralysis, only solidify and constrain what was once fluid. Their practitioners are merely blindly rehearsing routines and stunts that will lead nowhere. — Bruce Lee