Swimming Against Current Quotes & Sayings

Things take care of themselves as long as you trust and don't try to control too much. Things will happen. Things tend to occur. Why resist what's inevitable? That's like swimming against the current, salmon notwithstanding. Go with the flow, you know? Glide with the glow, man. It's easier. — Tony Vigorito

As you go through life, the might current of society is bound to get in your way and there will certainly be times that things don't go as you'd hoped. When this happens, don't look to society for a cause. Do not renounce society. Frankly, you'd be wasting your time. Instead just say, "That's life!" and muddle your way through with frustration. Once you're past it, consider: If society's swift current is tossing you around, how should you be swimming there in it's midst. You should have learned how, here in the E class, in this assassination classroom. You don't always have to stand and face it head-on. You can run and you can hide. If it's not against the rules, you can try a sneak attack. You can use unconventional weapons. Stay determined - not impatient nor discouraged - and with repeated trial and error, you're bound to reach a splendid outcome eventually. — Yusei Matsui

Author compares the impact of biases to his experience as an average swimmer who overcame a considerable fear of water. While the swimming was easy in one particular experience, he was internally congratulating himself on his acquired skill. But when he realized he was swimming with a current he would now have to fight against, he realized just how definite his limits were. — Shankar Vedantam

Swimming against the current is easier if what is on the other side is greater than your pain. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Who do you see
when you think of you?
Are you an outsider,
Cool, distant, angry,
swimming against the current,
or are you in the flow?
When they tell you,
This is who you are,
do you say yes or no?
Who do you see
when you look beyond
the skin and the surface,
when you drift to sleep,
when you are the person
no one else knows? Who
are you on the inside?
Don't answer these questions.
Not yet. First, open your eyes,
your mind, your heart.
See. — James Howe

I can't control life for my grandchildren, so how could I control a story? Sometimes I try to force something, and after working and working on that chapter, I realise that I am swimming against the current. I will never get there. So I have to let go of whatever previous idea I had about it and let the characters decide. — Isabel Allende

It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. — George Orwell

I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home. — Joanne Harris

It's much more powerful and exciting to be grounded in the present moment. Then life is like flowing down a river at the same velocity as the current. We become the flow surrounded by everything we need, and all we have to do is to choose to use what is provided, or choose not to. Life becomes effortless and we expend minimal energy achieving things. When we start thinking or trying to control things, it's like swimming against the current. And the more we think, or try to control things, the more isolated we become from reality. Living in the thinking mode requires so much more energy than resting in this present moment. — Greg Hopkinson

I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn't seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind. — Russell Hoban

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Unconscious bias influences our lives in exactly the same manner as that undercurrent that took me out so far that day. When undercurrents aid us ... we are invariably unconscious of them. We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills. I was completely sure that it was my swimming ability that was carrying me out so swiftly that day. It did not matter that I knew in my heart that I was a very average swimmer, it did not matter that I knew that I should have worn a life jacket and flippers. On the way out, the idea of humility never occurred to me. It was only at the moment I turned back, when I had to go against the current, that I even realized the current existed. — Shankar Vedantam