Harsh Conditions Quotes & Sayings

The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be ruthlessly supressed. — Eugene V. Debs

The sea's only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head ... — Primo Levi

Do you really believe what you do in the service of your country, for the men you fight beside, is something you need to explain to me?" My voice was just above a whisper, my face a breath from his.

"You think you have to justify yourself to me? Me? Someone who's never had to march umpteen miles with 150 pounds on her back, or been shot at, or gone days on little to no sleep? Someone who hasn't spent the last ten years in harsh conditions, with few comforts, someone who's never been asked to do incredibly difficult things to keep people safe?" I kissed him again, the tips of my wet fingers resting lightly on his jaw. "Where would we all be without people like you? — Amy Harmon

Lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; — David Mitchell

Despite very harsh living conditions and the trauma of what they went through, they [Sudanese refugees] had a lot of dignity — Julien Clerc

Twenty two year old Connie Jones, who had boarded in the home of charismatic Methodist and pacifist Ormond Burton, was a member of the No More War movement and the Christian Pacifist Society. She first attended the Friday night public meetings at which the pacifists argued their case in 1941. She stepped onto the podium, stating, "the Lord Jesus Christ tells us to love one another," and was promptly arrested by Wellington's chief inspector of police. Charged with obstruction under the Emergency Regulations, she was sentenced to three months' hard labour with harsh conditions at the Point Halswell Reformatory - an experience that did nothing to dampen her commitment to pacifism. — Barbara Brookes

Lots of times I'm not crazy about the writing, but I keep moving ahead and somehow it gets better. The important thing is to move forward. — Janet Evanovich

Only with severe need did the hyphae curl around the alga; only when the alga was stressed did it welcome the advances. When times are easy and there's plenty to go around, individual species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going forward. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Everything is sweetened by risk. — Alexander Smith

We're constantly re-evaluating the potential for life. We're finding it where we didn't think it could exist, such as volcanic vents and other extreme conditions like under arctic ice. We're finding life in these incredibly harsh and dynamic conditions, so we're having to re-evaluate our own ideas of what's possible on this planet alone. — Joe Rogan

Perhaps life is rare, either because the precise conditions necessary for it to occur are uncommon or because the chances of it arising are so vanishingly improbable that the Universe just hasn't been around for long enough. Some scientists argue that the Earth may be a rather exceptional planet after all, with its large, stabilising moon and uncommonly well-behaved sun. We may even lie in a peculiarly habitable part of the galaxy, central enough to benefit from the chemical enrichment of previous generations of stars but safely distant from the harsh radiation of the galactic core. In this case we might not be the only life forms in the Universe, but we could be among the first. — Ian Whates

Once I had thought I was whole -- had seemed to be able to love a man, to bear a child, to heal the sick--and know that all these things were natural parts of me, not the difficult, troubled fragments into which my life had now disintegrated. But that had been in the past, the man I had loved was Jamie, and for a time, I had been part of something greater than myself. — Diana Gabaldon

Tal accepted absolutely all the world champion's conditions with a smile, taking away a very important psychological trump card from him - the harsh, prickly relations with his opponent that were characteristic of all Botvinnik's matches. — Gennadi Sosonko

Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change. — Pat Riley

I fell in love with the boy next door, and my own flesh became a thing I'd never really worn before. Sometimes, pressing my palms together, I thought I felt a magnetic field between them- something invisible but shaped, like sound, or heat, an egg of light, and it was thought I could hold the life force itself in my hands. — Laura Kasischke

People are really excited about robotic exploration. I understand the feeling there because, in fact, robots can do things humans can't. They can survive harsh conditions, they can explore places we would never go, plus you never actually have to bring them back. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being. — Jacques Maritain

Conditions in Chinese factories are harsh. They're much harsher than they are in, for instance, the United States or any Western nation. — Charles Duhigg

Now this is a most satisfactory and important thing to think about, for brutality will not, - cannot, - accomplish what a kindly disposition will; and, if folks could only know how quickly a "balky" child will, through loving and cuddling, grow into a charming, happy youth, much childish gloom and sorrow would vanish; for a man or woman who is ugly to a child is too low to rank as highly as a wild animal; for no animal will stand, for an instant, anything approaching an attack, or any form of harm to its young. But what a lot of tots find slaps, yanks and hard words for conditions which do not call for such harsh tactics! No child is naturally ugly or "cranky." And big, gulping sobs, or sad, unhappy young minds, in a tiny body should not occur in any community of civilization. Adulthood holds many an opportunity for such conditions. Childhood should not. — Ernest Vincent Wright

The major sighed. "It's a cultural thing, Madam. Something to do with the embattled mentality they developed in the first centuries here when conditions were so harsh and they had no other way than the exoskeletal-mutations route. The only ones who think of full connection as essential are the ones who've gone to university on Pleth and had the visible exoskeletal mutations removed and acquired internal reinforcements - which, as I understand it, serves as a sort of rite of passage to adulthood. — L. Timmel Duchamp

Without suffering, we never wishes to be free. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Fiction about mining has a long tradition - Emile Zola's 'Germinal' and Upton Sinclair's 'King Coal' come to mind - and most readers will be aware of the industry's harsh conditions. — Floyd Skloot

You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them - for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions. — Dalai Lama XIV

For humans, the Arctic is a harshly inhospitable place, but the conditions there are precisely what polar bears require to survive - and thrive. 'Harsh' to us is 'home' for them. Take away the ice and snow, increase the temperature by even a little, and the realm that makes their lives possible literally melts away. — Sylvia Earle

You know what I want, above all things? I want people who are aware of my music right now, to believe in change. — Lizzo

Never regret on something you can fix. — Sam Houssami

The best lesson we can teach our children is to have fun. It's infectious, it's contagious. — Vince Poscente

Think your way through difficulties: harsh conditions can be softened, restricted ones can be widened, and heavy ones can weigh less on those who know how to bear them. — Seneca.

And so this added consideration - that she never get pregnant - contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers — John Irving

I like having associations with locations beyond their meaning for the specific movie. — Noah Baumbach

When trying to explain the violent path of some Islamists, Western commentators sometimes blame harsh economic conditions, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males, a failure to integrate into the larger society, mental illness, and so on. Some on the Left insist that the real fault lies with the mistakes of American foreign policy.
None of this is convincing. Jihad in the twenty-first century is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education, or any other social precondition. (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was earning more than $90,000 a year working for a drilling company in British Columbia, where he also reportedly proclaimed his support of the Taliban and joked about suicide bombing vests, with no repercussions.) We must move beyond such facile explanations. The imperative for jihad is embedded in Islam itself. It is a religious obligation. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali