Quotes & Sayings About Stalemate

I assumed it was a matter of time. One day I'd meet someone who counteracted my chemical structure. We would compete for supremacy, collide until one of us was forced to yield, or else go forth together, suspended in eternal stalemate. But my model is inaccurate. The poets are wrong. The opposite of ice isn't fire. It's water. — Brenna Yovanoff

So sing, you birds
for the fever is about to rise
and the empty stalemate is over
let the colors bleed back into you
and let the dead be buried for another year.
from let the colors bleed — K.R. Albers

Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam? Is the United States facing another stalemate on the other side of the world? Premature the questions may be, three weeks after the fighting began. Unreasonable they are not, given the scars scoured into the national psyche by defeat in Southeast Asia. For all the differences between the two conflicts, and there are many, echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable. — R. W. Apple

They sat as if the weight of the world had in this minute been lifted from them both and left them dumb with surprise. But this lasted only for the moment. Arthur held her murderously tight, as if to vanquish her spirit even in the first short contest. But she responded to him, as if she would break him first. It was stalemate, and they sought relief from the great decision they had just brought upon themselves. He spoke to her softly, and she nodded her head to his words without knowing what they meant. Neither did Arthur know what he was saying; both transmission and reception were drowned, and they broke through to the opened furrows of the earth. — Alan Sillitoe

To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion ... It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. — Walter Cronkite

Money no longer has any meaning. Civilization is coming to an end. If not the destruction of the world, it's an endless stalemate. — Stephen Fry

Iraq's government is at a stalemate. — Mowaffak Al-Rubaie

If no one can stalemate God in a game of chess, no one should ever think of winning. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A Mrs. Hipp said vehemently that I had insulted her by implying that she, along with other white members of the committee, had come to the meeting with a closed mind. I tried to make it clear that my statement applied only to those people whose public pronouncements were antiNegro, and not to the committee as a whole, but to no avail. They continued to look at me as though I were the cause of the stalemate. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs. — Robert Frost

In 1953, after the armistice ending the Korean War, South Korea lay in ruins. President Eisenhower was eager to put an end to hostilities that had left his predecessor deeply unpopular, and the war ended in an uneasy stalemate. — Noah Feldman

If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal. — John F. Kennedy

If you look at the democratic process as a game of chess, there have to be many, many moves before you get to checkmate. And simply because you do not make any checkmate in three moves does not mean it's stalemate. There's a vast difference between no checkmate and stalemate. This is what the democratic process is like. — Aung San Suu Kyi

For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness - should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception - that can compensate us for life's hurt. As a worst-case example, a pessimist might refer to the hurt caused by some natural or human-made cataclysm. To adduce a hedonic counterpart to the horrors that attach to such cataclysms would require a degree of ingenuity from an optimist, but it could be done. And the reason it could be done, the reason for the eternal stalemate between optimists and pessimists, is that no possible formula can be established to measure proportions and types of hurt and happiness in the world. If such a formula could be established, then either pessimists or optimists would have to give in to their adversaries. — Thomas Ligotti

The echo of two boys playing in a pool testing each other to see who could hold their breath the longest.
... Whadda ya wanna do now? - I know, we could wrestle like the Roman gladiators - Okay - What do we fight for? - Loser has to do the victor's homework for a week - Nah, raise the stakes. Loser has to suck the victor's johnny - Trenton recalled the long ago memory of two boys wrestling, butt naked in the back yard and the battle went on forever locked in each other's grip. A stalemate tangle in each other's arm. And they kissed finding each other's tongue. The taste of it so good and frightening at the same time and they pulled apart fearfully - Deez - Yeah Trent - I don't think we should tell anyone about this, okay? - Yeah okay - — Talon P.S.

His fingers slide into my hair, and I hold on to his arms to stay steady as we press together like two blades at a stalemate. He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep for the rest of my life. — Veronica Roth

Well, I would - if they realized that we - again if - if we led them back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off. — Ronald Reagan

At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security. — William J. Clinton

It was a stalemate Silas was willing to live with, and apparently, so was his mother. They both knew it wasn't about the hem on a pair of pants. One of them was mourning, the other was not, and their individual reactions to Amos's disappearance created a powerful tension. The air in the house was charged with it. — Ari Berk

It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices. — Eric Hoffer

At some point you do not need to talk to have a conversation. The conversation exists whether you have it or not. It continues silently in a parallel dimension of the marriage. They both pause to let it run its course toward another stalemate. — Chris Bachelder

I must do something, Elentiya," Nehemia said, using the name she'd given her on the night Celaena admitted that she was an assassin. "I must find a way to help my people. When does gathering information become a stalemate? When do we act?" Celaena — Sarah J. Maas

The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate — Isaac Asimov

Technically, the last number of years, partially from the injury, it's been difficult to push forward but I felt even before the injury that I still could do more and was sort of at a stalemate. — Elvis Stojko

-Hardly knowing what i was doing, i began to hit the table with one hand as i sang in a low voice. Big cows" -thump- "lumps of meat" -thump. His widened. "Give me milk" -thump- "warm and sweet."
I stopped abruptly, pressing my lips together as I realized what I had just sung. The ridiculousness of it struck me forcibly and I knew I could not goon without laughing. We stared at each other,locked in a stalemate, his eyes brimming with laughter, his lips trembling. My chin quivered. Against my will, a sound burst from me. It was a very unladylike snort.- — Julianne Donaldson

Truman left in the middle of an unpopular war, a war of choice. Truman didn't have to go into South Korea. And he was reviled and ridiculed for the stalemate that resulted. Now, he's seen as one of the great presidents of the 20th century. — Charles Krauthammer

The draw by stalemate looks like a spot of discontinuity in the otherwise harmonious universe of values. To save a game by letting yourself be so completely humiliated as not being able to make a move looks rather undeserved. — Mihail Marin

She had known for months now that something or someone would have to break to end this painful stalemate they were locked in. She had never guessed it would be Dominic. She had never guessed Dominic could be broken. — Laura Andersen

I will not vote to send my sons, or your sons, daughters, brothers, sisters or friends to fight for a stalemate. — Rand Paul

Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee in 1952, made a strong public commitment to ending the war in Korea, where fighting had reached a stalemate. — Robert Dallek

The cause of these great extinctions, the most extensive in the seventy-million-year record for mammals, is a mystery. The two prevailing guesses, climatic environmental pressure or the destruction caused by human immigration in these regions, are at a stalemate. Nearly all regions of extinction were briefly inhabited by early humans, which is why some feel they played roles. I was not there at the time, so I can only speculate, but surely a global catastrophe of some sort triggered the cataclysm. — Stephen J. O'Brien

Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. — William Faulkner

Finally Doug broke the stalemate and looked at Megan.
"Thanks a lot," he said sarcastically. Then he yanked off his plastic gloves, tossed them at her feet, and stormed away.
Finn let out a sigh as he gazed after his brother. "You know, my parents really should have stopped with me. — Kate Brian

One must drop all presuppositions and dogmas and rules - for there only lead to stalemate or disaster; one must cease to regard all patients as replicas, and honor each one with individual reactions and propensities; and, in this way, with the patient as one's equal, one's co-explorer, not one's puppet, one may find therapeutic ways which are better than other ways, tactics which can be modified as occasion requires. — Oliver Sacks

I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try. — Steven Spielberg

It smells terrible in here.'
Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate. — John Kennedy Toole

First Lord of the Admiralty, long enough to engineer what an anti-Churchillian would say was an epic and unparalleled military disaster - a feat of incompetent generalship that made the Charge of the Light Brigade look positively slick. It was an attempt to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front that not only ended in humiliation for the British armed forces; it cost the lives of so many Australians and New Zealanders that to this day their 1915 expedition to Turkey is the number-one source of pom-bashing and general anti-British feeling among Antipodeans. — Boris Johnson

Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries. — Elizabeth Peters

I have noticed that in books this sort of stalemate never seems to occur; the authors are so anxious to move their stories forward (however wooden they may be, advancing like market carts with squeaking wheels that are never still, though they go only to dusty villages where the charm of the country is lost and the pleasures of the city will never be found) that there are no such misunderstandings, no refusals to negotiate. The assassin who holds a dagger to his victim's neck is eager to discuss the whole matter, and at any length the victim or the author may wish. — Gene Wolfe

This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end. — George W. Bush