Quotes & Sayings About Racket

If I listened to all the noise in the world
I would have many standards to conform to But the zeal to succeed
Cuts through the racket — Priscilla Koranteng

My goodness, if you think of all the folks in the world who'd give all they've got to be out of the racket and in a place like this, only they can't get out! Are we in the prison or are they? — James Hilton

Maybe you aren't wrong. Maybe she is inside of you. But I don't think she's making a racket because she's trying to get out. I think she just wants to make sure you know that she's there. — Autumn Doughton

To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen
this is the same as lying to the holy spirit. — Anton Chekhov

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old ... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. — Jorge Luis Borges

And beeping, obviously sure that I was either too stupid or too deaf to hear the racket. — Mary Higgins Clark

I don't think there is a good reason for an abortion, but Dr. Jasper made me really realize it was just a racket. He was just doing it for the money. He didn't care about the women. — Norma McCorvey

I don't think I'm one of those guys who won't pick up a racket for three years ... I love hitting tennis balls. — Andy Roddick

What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed.

From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenary. — Milan Kundera

A dozen families had declared themselves before Jamie finished his conversation with Gerald Forbes, and rose himself. He handed me the baby, who was sleeping soundly in spite of all the racket around him, and bent to light a brand from our fire. The shouts came from far below, thin but audible on the clear autumn air. "The MacNeills of Barra are here!" "The Lachlans of Glen Linnhe are here!" And after a little, Jamie's voice, loud and strong on the dark air. "The Frasers of the Ridge are here!" There was a brief spatter of applause from those around me - whoops and yelps from the tenants who had come with us, just as there had been from the followers of the other heads of families. — Diana Gabaldon

I follow the teachings of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps. He won two Congressional Medals of Honor, and he wrote the highly controversial antiwar book 'War is a Racket.' — Jesse Ventura

house and our'n. That old barn 'ud soak up a lotta racket 'fore it reached us. And did you ever think of this? Him that done it, he must've knowed we wouldn't hear. Else he wouldn't have took the chance - shootin' off a shotgun four times in the middle of the night! Why, he'd be crazy. Course, you might say he must be crazy anyhow. To go doing what he did. But my opinion, him that done it had it figured out to the final T. He knowed. And there's one thing I know, too. Me and the Missis, — Truman Capote

To the extent that threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves commonly timulate, or even fabricate threats of external war, and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers. — Charles Tilly

Frankness and courage are luxuries confined to the more comic varieties of runners-up at national conventions. Thus it is pleasant to remember Cleveland, and to speak of him from time to time. He was the last of the Romans. If pedagogy were anything save the puerile racket that it is he would loom large in the schoolbooks. As it is, he is subordinated to Lincoln, Roosevelt I and Wilson. This is one of the things that are the matter with the United States. — H.L. Mencken

Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually. — Matt Labash

A ball feels different off every player's racket-there are minute but concrete subtleties of force and spin. Now, hitting with her (Steffi Graf), I feel her subtleties. It's like touching her, though we're forty feet apart. Every forehand is foreplay. — Andre Agassi

Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing. — C. Terry Warner

Are we talking a white dress and reception? Because I've been to loads of weddings, and I've had it. Friends resent the plane tickets and hotel bills; the happy couple resents the catering. Both parties think they're doing the other a huge favor. The hoo-ha is over before you know it, and all anyone's got to show for it is a hangover. Weddings are a racket, and the only people who profit are florists and bartenders. — Lionel Shriver

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape. — Susan Griffin

I killed a squirrel once with a car. Twice with a tennis racket. — Anthony Jeselnik

Wherever there's a system, there's a racket to beat it. — Jerome Ravetz

Mangling my racket and an odd swearword on the court is not something I am proud of and it shouldn't happen, but even my coaches have told me that it's sometimes better to let it all out, the anger inside you, because keeping it bottled would just eat you up in the long term. — Novak Djokovic

Oh Freddy don't talk like that! she said, and her big eyes filled with tears. When Mrs. Wiggins cried, she made almost as much racket as when she laughed. You could hear her for miles. — Walter R. Brooks

Poetry requires deliberate movement in its direction, a filament of faith in its persistence, receptivity to its fundamental worthwhileness. Within its unanesthetized heart there is quite a racket going on. Choices have to be made with respect to every mark. Not every mistake should be erased. Nor shall the unintelligible be left out. Order is there to be wrenched from the tangles of words. Results are impossible to measure. A clearing is drawn around the perimeter as if by a stick with a nail on the end. — C.D. Wright

I had one good racket, a Wilson Javelin. It was my favorite racket, and I made the mistake of putting it next to the heater. It just got so hot that it melted. — Stefan Edberg

To me, anyone with an Australian accent wielding a tennis racket is cool. — Adrian Smith

War's a racket. No doubt. But war is a racket for the politicians, not the soldiers. — Sean Beaudoin

Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket ... the least understood and the least noticed. — Frank Capra

The racket reverberates down the second staircase and spills out into the kitchen, and the two screeching, running kids who are making it do laps around the island like a fucked-up Hunger Games version of ring-around-the-rosy. — Emma Chase

Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters. — Simon Heffer

Let's take my truck," Jim said as he hit the gravel. "Less noise."
And it has a radio, right?" With tragic concentration Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a chesse grater.
Jim shook his head at Eddie as the doors opened "How can you stand that racket?"
Selective deafness"
Teach me,master. — J.R. Ward

With tennis, you can go pick up a racket, take a lesson, and understand how much talent and skill it takes to be as good as the top pros. Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour. — Mario Andretti

Maybe the raising of millions of dollars of funds for charitable projects has become 'a racket', and the longer they remain in the test-tube stage of development, the longer patronage and job payrollers remain in their soft berths. — Roland V. Libonati

Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world. — Harry Reasoner

Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they'll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television. — Donald Trump

Because I live and work in Washington, D.C., I have a ringside seat at the world capital of The Persuasive Arts, or, as I like to call it, The Opinions Racket. — Gene Weingarten

Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too. — Jimmy Hoffa

You seem a lot like me," he said. "You don't gawk at me like I'm a freak."
"I'll kick anyone who does."
"I think you already did. Or at least smacked him with a tennis racket."
-Alexander and Raven, Vampire Kisses, Pg.127, The Beginning — Ellen Schreiber

Thou shalt not horn in on thy husbands racket — Homer

When I was a freelancer, I thought this journalism thing was a racket, and now that I'm where I am now, I know it's a racket. — Tabitha Soren

The wind from the Caribbean blew in the windows along with the racket made by the birds, and Fermina Daza felt in her blood the wild beating of her free will. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph. — Henry Miller

When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I lay there steeping myself into silence when, out of nowhere, I thought of the time Kizuki and I took a motorcycle trip. That had been autumn too, I realized. Autumn how many years ago? Yes, four years ago. I recalled the small of Kizuki's leather jacket and the racket made by that red Yamaha 125cc bike. We went to a spot far down the coast, and came back the same evening, exhausted. Nothing special happened on that trip, but I remembered it well. the sharp autumn wind moaned in my ears, and looking up at the sky, my hands clutching Kizuki's jacket, I felt as if I might be swept into outer space. — Haruki Murakami

Manners are manners. Jimmy Connors and Ilie Nastase have no respect. I don't want my kid seeing Nastase play. The demeanor you show on the court is important to tennis ... Maybe we (yesterday's stars) were too stereotyped. But we were told to behave or they'd take our racket away. — Rod Laver

History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting. — Sarah Vowell

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning. — David Hackworth

He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance. — Ogden Nash

All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women. — Thomas Beecham

We lived in a small house, so there was no escape from the goddamn racket of her loneliness. — Sherman Alexie

Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything's a racket. — Nick Tosches

The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste. — Philip Glass

Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into. — Lee Child

Basically I started playing double handed on both my forehand and backhand side because my first racket was very heavy. — Bjorn Borg

Where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter — Sojourner Truth

Growing up I wasn't the richest, but I had a rich family in spirit. Standing here with 19 championships is something I never thought would happen. I went on a court just with a ball and a racket and with a hope. — Serena Williams

You know just because the majority thinks something is right, doesn't make it right. So, that is up to us, the people that see the wrong, that see the injustice, that stay educated, stay informed, stay involved. And there's an old phrase 'the squeaky wheel, gets the oil.' Right now, our wheels aren't very squeaky; the other side, they're the ones making all the racket ... We just have to get up, stand up, speak out, and don't be silent. — Otep Shamaya

I watch the ball fiercely to see its height and speed off my opponent's racket so I can decide how I want to hit it. — Sloane Stephens

Lyrics are my racket; music is play - the fluff stuff. — Cass McCombs

Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening. — Walter Lippmann

Like many men who play tennis, when I hit a ball into the net, I tend to look daggers at my racket, reproaching it for playing so badly when I myself have been trying so hard. — Craig Brown

One day when a linesman starts to laugh I swear I will hit the guy over the head with my racket. I think it will be the end of my career, but I will be happy. — Ilie Nastase

When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn't believe what a racket they make in my room. — Karl Kraus

It's frustrating when you want to play but can't. I didn't touch a racket for three weeks and when I started playing again last week, I still felt some pain in my wrist. — Marat Safin

I'm one injury away from hanging up the racket at any time. — Lleyton Hewitt

The first time at age 5 and a half, when I took a racket in my hands and my father fed me some balls, I made 50 backhands in a row - didn't miss a single one. — Marion Bartoli

For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. — Ayn Rand

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. — Smedley Butler

I have to give my family credit for putting up with the racket, because as some of you may know, its not the easiest thing in the world to live with a kid who's trying to become a rock and roll drummer. — Max Weinberg

War is just a racket ... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. — Smedley Butler

It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'In the mind, not the gun. — Philip K. Dick

Your madness is silent and your sanity makes a racket. — C.D. Reiss

Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket. — Sara Sheridan

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. — Smedley Butler

First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket. — Eric Hoffer

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness ... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. — Henry Ward Beecher

What we have to do now is to make the public at large aware that what we're looking at is not a historical event but - and I have to be brutal and I am going to say it - a racket. — Ernst Zundel

Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish — Wallace Thurman

I don't think I've ever held a racket in my hand ... There's got to be somebody in the US who isn't trying to play tennis and stinking up the court. — Isaac Asimov

Standing at the bathroom mirror, toweling off, I stare at my face. Red eyes, gray stubble - a face totally different from the one with which I started. But also different from the one I saw last year in this same mirror. Whoever I might be, I'm not the boy who started this odyssey, and I'm not even the man who announced three months ago that the odyssey was coming to an end. I'm like a tennis racket on which I've replaced the grip four times and the strings seven times - is it accurate to call it the same racket? — Andre Agassi

A miracle happened. Right there and then, in amongst the lunchtime diners and tourists, with the sweeping views of San Francisco Bay outside the window and the sea lions making a racket on the wharf below, a miracle happened. And Samuel lost any hope of recovery. Lily laughed. — Lexxie Couper

I used to cut guitars out of a piece of cardboard to copy the Strat look. I used a backwards tennis racket for a while and graduated to the cardboard cutout. — Rick Springfield

Trash bags are among my favorite consumer products. I wish I had invented them. What a racket. People buy them, take them home, and throw them away. Let's see Bill Gates top that. — Gary Reilly

Neighbours complaining about someone's dog making an awful racket. You could hardly blame the poor beast, its owner had died in her bed at least a fortnight before and there hadn't been much left of the old girl worth eating. — James Oswald

[S]tart at the turn of the last century, in 1901, with the celebration of Detroit's bicentennial. That was the Detroit that came before--before all the racket that attended the making of the modern world, which happened here first and faster than anywhere else on this planet. — Jerry Herron

Sure. I'd like to live regular. Go home to a good looking wife, a hot dinner, and a husky kid. But I guess I got film in my blood. I love this racket. It's exciting. It's dangerous. It's funny. It's tough. It's heartbreaking. — Weegee

The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer
please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you
an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. — Anne Lamott

In the case of Obamacare, leading members of the intellectual class produced the appropriately rigged studies to promote the racket. Then members of the Obama administration and liberal Democrats in Congress took up these studies as an irrefutable demonstration of the wonders of Obamacare. Finally anchorpeople and reporters lined up to amplify the falsehoods and complete the sale to the American people. Despite all this, the American people remained unconvinced. Even so, the con men generated enough support that Democratic legislators, on a straight-party vote, got Obamacare through. — Dinesh D'Souza

This whole celebrity racket, it's not really my bag. I don't really do that stuff, and I am not looking to get famous myself. I would love it if my characters get famous, my work was well known and appreciated. But I'm an actor, not a spokes model or a celebrity or whatever that is. I don't know how to be that. — John C. Reilly

Jazz. Here in Germany it become something worse than a virus. We was all of us damn fleas, us Negroes and Jews and low-life hoodlums, set on playing that vulgar racket, seducing sweet blond kids into corruption and sex. It was a plague sent out by the dread black hordes, engineered by the Jews. Us Negroes, see, we was only half to blame - we just can't help it. Savages just got a natural feel for filthy rhythms, no self-control to speak of. But the Jews, brother, now they cooked up this jungle music on purpose. All part of their master plan to weaken Aryan youth, corrupt its janes, dilute its bloodlines. — Esi Edugyan

I don't mind being called tough, since I find in this racket it's the tough guys who lead the survivors. — Curtis LeMay

What is all the racket about? Did you put red pepper on the lollypops? — Johnny Gruelle

War is a lie. War is a racket. War is hell. War is waste. War is a crime. War is terrorism. War is not the answer. — Coleen Rowley

I grip very close to the butt of the racket. This allows me to get a lot of wrist action to create more spin and whip. — Sloane Stephens

We arranged to spend the next day, a Sunday, looking at apartments together, followed by a round of tennis, since we both played. Before Nancy left the Pilot that night, I said to her lasciviously - I don't know what possessed me - "Have you ever tried a comedian before?" Which was either very sexy or very creepy, depending on your opinion of me. She just stared at me, betraying no emotion, and said, "I hope you have a racket. I'm pretty good." Our — Martin Short

The "Florida bail bond racket" was, according to a former Orlando newspaper editor, the "most lucrative business in the state." The bondsmen worked hand in glove with employers to secure labor in exchange for fines and bond costs. Citrus grove foremen informed bondsmen how many men were needed, and workers were "secured from the stockades." If workers attempted to flee across state lines, they could be recaptured "without the formality of extradition proceedings." They had no choice but to work to pay off their fines at whatever grove or camp they were taken to, and they often worked under the supervision of armed guards, as they might on a chain gang. — Gilbert King

The day I'm not improving will be the day I hang up the racket. — Venus Williams

He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn't understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased - for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason - without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually - every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept - and those he assimilated at once. — Dezso Kosztolanyi

War Is A Racket : I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service — Smedley Butler

As for the tank, not only is it unAmerican and probably subversive to eat without watching stereo but also the racket from it would interfere even with a directional mike aimed at us from a distance . . . — Robert A. Heinlein