Quotes & Sayings About Stakes

Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins. — Camille Paglia

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever truly done
For Heaven and the future's sakes — Robert Frost

Baseball is a little bigger gamble than most, and the stakes are pretty high. — Jacob Ruppert

Not much of what he said was original. What made him unique was the fact
that he had no sense of detachment at all. He was like the fanatical football fan who
runs onto the field and tackles a player. He saw life as the Big Game, and the whole
of mankind was divided into two teams
Sala's Boys, and The Others. The stakes
were fantastic and every play was vital
and although he watched with a nearly
obsessive interest, he was very much the fan, shouting unheard advice in a crowd of
unheard advisors and knowing all the while that nobody was paying any attention to
him because he was not running the team and never would be. And like all fans he
was frustrated by the knowledge that the best he could do, even in a pinch, would be
to run onto the field and cause some kind of illegal trouble, then be hauled off by
guards while the crowd laughed. — Hunter S. Thompson

Kids not only understand [a dark story] but appreciate it ... Because in the real world there's fear, and dark things happen no matter how young you are. People lose parents, people lose friends ... There's darkness in the world. So I think when kids are talked to in that way, they appreciate it. They're not being given some candy-coated, 'Oh, this is a world where there are no stakes.' I think that actually insults their intelligence. — America Ferrera

The stakes were suddenly so high that we wanted out of the game. When you're playing poker with the devil, however, no one leaves the table before he does. — Dean Koontz

People tend to think astronauts have the courage of a superhero - or maybe the emotional range of a robot. But in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge. Sure, you might still feel a little nervous or stressed or hyper-alert. But what you won't feel is terrified. — Chris Hadfield

Upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die; another's life, another's death, I stake my whole eternity. — Horatius Bonar

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me. — Ernest Hemingway,

[Before being burned at the stake for her faith:] Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames. — Joan Of Arc

Bit burrs. Tongue-tying. Saddling for exercise and saddling for races. There was shoeing and bandaging, conditioning and equipment. I had to learn to read track surfaces and stakes sheets, and calculate weight allowances. I had to know the diseases and ailments forward and back - bowed tendons and splints, foundering, bucked shins, bone chips, slab fractures, and quarter cracks. Thoroughbreds were glorious and also fragile in very specific ways. They often had small hearts, and the exertion of racing also made them susceptible to haemorrhaging in the lungs. Undetected colic could kill them - and — Paula McLain

What about stakes in the heart?" I asked now.
He frowned, the center of his mouth pursed while its corners curled downward. "Anyone will die from a stake in the heart," he said. "And anyone will die if they're severely burned, including vampires. — Susan Hubbard

It was my proudest moment as a manager when England drew 0-0 with Italy in Rome to qualify for the World Cup finals. Fifteen years later, the stakes are equally high for both countries as they go head-to-head for a semi-final place at the European Championship. — Glenn Hoddle

I remember an incident overseas about five years ago where a player punched a referee and knocked him cold. I don't think anything like that will ever happen in the NBA. Emotions run rampant. The games are so intense, and the stakes are so high. (But) At the end of the day, players and coaches really respect officials and really appreciate that they try to do a good job. — Jalen Rose

When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. — Barack Obama

After illuminating the work of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Balthus, and other modern artists, Mieke Bal again demonstrates her extraordinary flair for cultural criticism in taking on the work of Doris Salcedo, exploring the philosophical and aesthetic stakes of this committed political art and the relation between beauty, violence, and memory. A tour de force. — Jonathan Culler

Jamie, when the stakes are high, I never cheat. I consider myself too important to do that. — E.L. Konigsburg

I love the gothic literature. It always has such great stories with characters bigger than life and the stakes are always high. And because there's always a wolf at the door, the emotions are high; the romance, the sexuality, friendships, and relationships. You don't know if the guy kissing you one minute is going to bite you the next. This heightens all of the sensibilities and emotions, and therefore, it sings to me. And that's where the music comes from. — Frank Wildhorn

I would die at the stake rather than change a semi-colon! — Edmond Rostand

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition. — Ian Fleming

The tax code is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people. — Steve Forbes

And it wasn't just the subjugation of human beings that distressed her but the level of daily, almost casual brutality. Even for routine punishments there were blood-stained stakes, lead-tipped whips. She's always rather admired the Romans, for their literacy, their order, their engineering, their respect for the law. Now, she was finding, she'd never fully imagined this side of their civilisation. — Stephen Baxter

Directing first film was terrified, it was really very scary because there is a lot of responsibility. I think I was terrified because I wanted it to work so much. A lot of actors direct movies but I thought the stakes were kind of higher for me because I really, really cared. I just worked as hard as I possibly could on every single thing, every single day. I said that if this failed it would not be because I didn't work as hard as I possibly could ... every day. — Ben Affleck

Technology enables frequent, low-stakes testing, an activity that powerfully promotes memory for material. — Michelle D. Miller

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. — Terry Pratchett

I feel like, in a lot of shows where the woman is in charge, the woman is this ball buster and the guy is sort of weak and spineless. And that's never been my experience in a relationship. I think it's much more interesting that the guy is the boss. And there are stakes. — Whitney Cummings

When politicians began to see that every last thing that they did in public could be broadcast to a mass audience, the fact that the stakes were so much higher now that every moment became fraught caused them to become more cautious, and the consultants very gradually but inevitably became literal reactionaries. — Joe Klein

When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental - far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns. — Franz Grillparzer

The real stakes in the theater are high - they are life stakes. That's what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that's a gamble worth taking. — Lauren Bacall

People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless. — Amy Sherman-Palladino

We're reducing the number of high-stakes tests from fifteen to five. — Ken Robinson

Beat me, hurt me, fight me and I'll bounce back, but be nice to me? I folded quicker than a banker in a high-stakes poker game. — Pippa DaCosta

He loved that anxiety, that terrible and oppressive anxiety which he experienced during the game of dice, during the suspense of high stakes. — Hermann Hesse

Thrillers provide the reader with a safe escape into a dangerous world where the stakes are as high as can be imagined with unpredictable outcomes. It's a perfect genre in which to explore hard issues of good and evil, a mirror that allows the reader to see both the good and not so good in themselves. — Ted Dekker

The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away. — Frosty Wooldridge

Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams. — James M. Lang

Some reviewers call my stories dark - and yes, there is violence and angst, and the stakes are high - but I like to think that the endings are satisfying and hopeful. — Carol Berg

Are you armed?" Oliver asked her. She glanced down at her backpack and instantly, instinctively held back. "No." "Lie to me again and I'll put you out on the street and do this myself." Claire swallowed. "Uh, yeah." "With what?" "Silver-coated stakes, wooden stakes, a crossbow, about ten bolts ... oh, and a squirt gun with some silver-nitrate solution." He smiled grimly at the dark windshield. "What, no grenade launchers?" "Would they work?" "I choose not to comment. — Rachel Caine

Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small. — Laurence J. Peter

I think the perception of wealth and power is that things just become easier and easier when in reality as you raise the stakes things become more stressful. — Sean Parker

We know everything about what you know and how you learn best because we get so much data. And education is the highest-stakes media product in your life. It's infinitely more important than your Facebook friends' status updates or your Google search results because it's your future. — Jose Ferreira

The rules I go by are: Always keep your villains bad, and keep the plot grounded and real. If you keep those stakes, the comedy will bounce off that and work. — Peter Segal

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character. — F. Paul Wilson

Hey where are the old stakes for the beans? Where did we put em? Jasper's ears came up and his mouth opened in his version of a smile. He didn't know. He didn't give a fuck. — Peter Heller

Percy smiled. He knew the stakes were high. He knew this day could go horribly wrong. But he also knew that Annabeth was on that ship.If things went right, this would be the best day of his life.
He threw one arm around Hazel and one arm around Frank.
"Come on," he said. "Let me introduce you to my other family. — Rick Riordan

Power and wealth are not two of my main stakes. — Ratan Tata

Sadness and anger aren't vampiric. If you let them, they'll follow you around the world, sunshine and stakes be damned. — Karina Halle

The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their films. — Vidya Balan

We are living through the most exciting, challenging and most critical time in human history. Never before has so much been possible; and never before has so much been at stake. — Peter Russell

Raise the stakes! Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you. — Terry Pratchett

The stakes involved in Washington policy debates are often so high
whether we send our young men and women to war; whether we allow stem cell research to go forward
that even small differences in perspective are magnified. The demands of party loyalty, the imperative of campaigns, and the amplification of conflict by the media all contribute to an atmosphere of suspicion. Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives
professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems. I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values
indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people. — Barack Obama

But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress. — Caitlin Moran

Thanks to the nation's testing mania (which I like to call 'No Child Left Untested' rather than 'No Child Left Behind'), children are being barraged with a nonstop volley of standardized tests. From kindergarten to graduate school, students are subjected to an unprecedented number of high-stakes tests — Laurie E. Rozakis

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him. — Albert Einstein

Courtrooms are battlegrounds where society's bullies and the oppressed clash, where the victims of abusers seek recompense, and where parties cheated by scalawags seek retribution. Because of the high stakes involved, the parties are not always honest, and justice depends upon an array of factors including the prevailing case precedent, the skills of the legal advocates, and the merits of each party's claims and counterclaims. — Kilroy J. Oldster

God will never tempt you. It's not in His nature. In fact, He promises to provide an escape route for every tempting situation. But I can promise you this: God will test your faith. And those tests won't get easier. They will get progressively harder as the stakes get higher. And those tests will undoubtedly revolve around what is most important to you...

God will test you to make sure your identity and your security are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. And God will go after anything you trust in more than Him until you put it on the altar. — Mark Batterson

You will live in the midst of economic, political, and spiritual instability. When you see these signs
unmistakable evidences that his coming is nigh
be not troubled, but, "stand ... in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come" (D&C 87:8). Holy men and holy women stand in holy places, and these holy places include our temples, our chapels, our homes, and the stakes of Zion ...
"This preparation must consist of more than just casual membership in the Church. You must learn to be guided by personal revelation and the counsel of the living prophet so you will not be deceived. — Ezra Taft Benson

habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accepts no excuses 10. The professional plays it as it lays 11. The professional is prepared 12. The professional does not show off 13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique 14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help 15. The professional does not take failure or success personally 16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument 17. The professional endures adversity 18. The professional self-validates 19. The professional reinvents herself 20. The professional is recognized by other professionals — Steven Pressfield

The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn't willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. — Peter Benchley

That's one of the difficult things of being an actor that I'm still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski. — John C. Reilly

I want karma to drive stakes into the dark hearts that keep me bitter. — Corey Taylor

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. — Yann Martel

Etiquette is about all of human social behavior. Behavior is regulated by law when etiquette breaks down or when the stakes are high - violations of life, limb, property and so on. Barring that, etiquette is a little social contract we make that we will restrain some of our more provocative impulses in return for living more or less harmoniously in a community. — Judith Martin

You are a powerhouse of creativity; you were born magnificently expressive, available and aware. Before you had the words for it, you had an intrinsic sense of urgency because you knew down in your bones that the stakes are high. — Larry Silverberg

Temptation is temptation." Lucy flipped another
page, her reading intent and steady. "No matter what the stakes. — Luke Taylor

When you are 15, everything is such high stakes, even tiny things. I think because of that, it is funny but sad at the same time. — Sophie Wu

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes. — David O. Russell

I honestly think vulnerability is a beautiful thing: it's tenderness, authenticity, and risk-taking. It means you're living a life where the stakes are high and you are continuing to push your own boundaries and learn new things. It keeps you flexible and young. — Jaime Murray

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. — Jake Vander Ark

Calling home a close finish - And the judge has called for a photo, appropriately for the Bonusprint Sirenia Stakes. — Graham Goode

There was also a sense that if he [Obama] did not win in Iowa, that it was very unlikely that he would be able to come back and win the Democratic nomination and win the general election. It was sort of an all-or-nothing bet. The stakes were that high. — Josh Earnest

In a weird way, it's not different from any other kind of joke-telling. You make those calculations about jokes about celebrities: is this a fair hit or not? The stakes were higher because the whole world was crumbling around us, but in terms of joke-telling, it's all about feel. — Michael Schur

Xenophobia doesn't benefit anybody unless you're playing high-stakes Scrabble. — Dennis Miller

I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes. — Abigail Thomas

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do. — Buzz Aldrin

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Your happiness in a relationship depends greatly on your ability to get your needs heard and taken seriously. If these decisions are taken over by an abusive or controlling partner, you experience disappointment after disappointment, the constant sacrificing of your needs. He, on the other hand, enjoys the luxury of a relationship where he rarely has to compromise, gets to do the things he enjoys, and skips the rest. He shows off his generosity when the stakes are low, so that friends will see what a swell guy he is. — Lundy Bancroft

I blame Doctor Who. Mr Spock. The Scooby Gang: both the ones in the Mystery Machine and the ones with the stakes. I've spent my life with stories of people who don't walk away, who go back for their friends, who make that last stand. I've been brainwashed by Samwise Gamgee. — Andrea K. Host

When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands. — Charles Kimbrough

Play not for gain, but sport. Who plays for more
Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart;
Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore. — George Herbert

It is my belief ... that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the success-stakes. — Doris Lessing

Became clear that there were no high-stakes life-insurance — Jan-Philipp Sendker

The stakes are nary a problem to me, as I do not abide by Sir Isaac's law! — Evan Bourne

Alas, the world turned out so very different from the noble battleground she had led me to expect. The stakes were puny, the people gray and gutless; my Amazon arts were futile here. — Anne Fortier

We don't like checklists. They can be painstaking. They're not much fun. But I don't think the issue here is mere laziness. There's something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us - those we aspire to be - handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. — Atul Gawande

Somehow, when ownership interests are divided into shares that bounce around with Mr. Market's moods, individuals and professionals start to think about and measure risk in strange ways. When short-term thinking and overly complicated statistics get involved, owning many companies that you know very little about starts to sound safer than owning stakes in five to eight companies that have good businesses, predictable futures, and bargain prices. — Joel Greenblatt

But everything was so instantly, remarkably different. I was shocked. Literally incapable of comprehending what I'd seen. I felt stabbed, like the air was forced out of my chest, and I looked at him aghast, hurt, shut behind walls. It was unfathomable to me. The game didn't matter. The stakes were so low. There was no part of me that would - could - ever consider doing what he did. But it was so easy for him. The easiest thing. And that, I realized, had been there all along. — Marina Keegan

The stakes ... are too high for government to be a spectator sport. — Barbara Jordan

At twenty-one, Richard Wright was not the world-famous author he would eventually be. But poor and black, he decided he would read and no one could stop him. Did he storm the library and make a scene? No, not in the Jim Crow South he didn't. Instead, he forged a note that said, "Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?" (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else. With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy. To thumb your nose at the authorities and say: What? This is not a bridge. I don't know what you're talking about. Or, in some cases, giving the middle finger to the people trying to hold you down and blowing right through their evil, disgusting rules. Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. — Ryan Holiday

If you take real-life circumstances and take out all the pauses then you have a thriller. It has to be non-stop, high stakes and fascinating all the time. Real life is like that from time to time. — Hank Phillippi Ryan

Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high. Stephen — Carrie Brownstein

Success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity. — Cynthia Heimel

Hundreds of prayer cloths were tied around rocks and stakes all the way up the mountain, but God had failed here. — Alwyn Hamilton

Don't think about the odds," Bobbie said. "Think about the stakes. Think how much we lose if we take the risk and it goes wrong. — James S.A. Corey

I don't care what the situation was, how high the stakes were - the bases could be loaded and the pennant riding on every pitch, it never bothered Whitey. He pitched his game. Cool. Craft. Nerves of steel. — Mickey Mantle

Most of us are going through life without interrogating whether our decision-making processes are fit for purpose. And that's something we need to change - especially when the stakes are high and the decisions are of real import. — Noreena Hertz

I have no time for people who sigh about how quickly children grow up nowadays (my grandparents, after all, were working full-time by sixteen, which I think trumps any number of body piercings in the adulthood stakes), — Tana French

Each of us is under a divinely spoken obligation to reach out with pardon and mercy and to forgive one another. There is a great need for this Christlike attribute in our families, in our marriages, in our wards and stakes, in our communities, and in our nations.
We will receive the joy of forgiveness in our own lives when we are willing to extend that joy freely to others. Lip service is not enough. We need to purge our hearts and minds of feelings and thoughts of bitterness and let the light and the love of Christ enter in. As a result, the Spirit of the Lord will fill our souls with the joy accompanying divine peace of conscience. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

I love things where I can be physical and I so love high stakes, and you usually don't get that unless you're doing a play or an action movie. — Will Patton