Unstable People Quotes & Sayings

Humans - far from being a dominant species, were regarded as one of the most unstable and untrustworthy, being at the mercy of what most of the Unity's people regarded as a dangerously prevalent sex drive. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

The bitterest of ironies is that the people who make us feel the most accepted, secure, and whole are the same people who make us feel the most rejected, unstable, and heart broken. — Gume Laurel III

The economy - and the need to keep it strong and growing - has somehow become the most important aspect of modern life. Nothing else is allowed to rank higher. The economy is suffering; the economy is improving; the economy is stable or unstable - you'd think it was a patient on life support in an intensive-care unit from the way we anxiously await the next pronouncement on its health. But what we call the economy is nothing more than people producing, consuming and exchanging things and services. — David Suzuki

Pride is unstable because other people are absentmindedly or intentionally treating the proud man's ego with less reverence than he thinks it deserves. — Timothy Keller

I don't think I'd have wanted to be around during a dark age. It's odd, though. They had interstellar flight. And data retrieval and everything." Gabe nodded. "None of it matters if you have an unstable society and tin-pot dictators. They had several hundred years of economic collapse. Widespread poverty. A few people at the top had all the money and influence. They had terrible overpopulation, struggles over water and resources. Civil wars. And widespread illiteracy." The thirty-second to the thirty-ninth century. "It's a wonder we survived. — Jack McDevitt

We have to go to war against the people who enable the gun violence, the people who stop us from keeping guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people, of felons, and that means the NRA leadership. — Jerrold Nadler

People with high but unstable self-esteem exhibit the greatest hostility. — Roy Baumeister

The friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves. — Aristotle.

Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It's disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available rewards. It's like being told that atoms are mostly empty and wondering how they can bear weight. Yet the bargaining of interests in a society can produce highly stable institutions; perhaps that's also true of the internal interests created by a person's rewards. — George Ainslie

The religious situation of our people is very unstable. This is because of the lack of religious teachers and other dedicated people. As a result Fiji Indians are like an unsteady boat in a whirlpool. — Totaram Sanadhya

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Winston Churchill, today an idealized hero of history, was in his time variously considered a bombastic blunderer, an unstable politician, an intermittently inspired orator, a reckless self-dramatizer, a voluminous able writer in an old-fashioned vein, and a warmongering drunkard. Through most of his long life he cut an antic, brilliant, occasionally absurd figure in British affairs. He never won the trust of the people until 1940, when he was sixty-six years old, and — Herman Wouk

Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn't exist to accommodate you, which ... is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into their adulthood. It makes you realize how quickly a situation can shift, how danger really is everywhere. But crises when the occur, do not catch you off guard; you have never believed you lived under a shelter of some essential benevolence. And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. — Curtis Sittenfeld

She rounded on him. "You wouldn't, you giant ass." To be honest, she didn't understand, either. But that didn't stop her from putting several days' worth of fear and stress on the table. "I'm scared, okay? I'm lost. I don't know where I am, and everyone here looks at me like they want to eat me or torture me. Maybe both. I want to go home, but then I don't want to go home because everything I thought I knew is one big lie. The people I trusted have turned against me, and even my own brother is afraid to help me." She paused to take a breath, fresh fuel for her tirade. "I should hate you, but instead, I'm attracted to you, which is beyond twisted, especially since I know that after I get Neriya back, I'm probably going to die." She dashed away tears with the back of her hand. "So forgive me if I'm a little emotionally unstable right now." She sniffed. "Ass. — Larissa Ione

To create what it does, Hollywood has to draw young people, often of unstable temperment, from all over the world. It plunges them into exacting work
surrounds them with a sensuous life
and cuts them off from the normal sources of living. — Max Lerner

Out of this unstable mix of technocracy and national security you have a nostalgia developing for colonialism or religion - atavistic in my opinion, but some people want them back. Sadat is the great example of that: he threw out the Russians, as well as everything else that represented Abdel Nasser, ascendant nationalism, and so forth - and said, "Let the Americans come." Then you have a new period of what in Arabic is called an infitah - in other words, an opening of the country to a new imperialism: technocratic management, not production but services - tourism, hotels, banking, etc. That's where we are right now. — Edward W. Said

What was reckless, I decided, was the way people were writing off huge swaths of the world as unsafe, unstable, unfriendly, when all they needed to do was go and see for themselves — Amanda Lindhout

In demonstrating this, the Buddha was making an important example for the ages. For almost no one is exempt from trauma. While some people have it in a much more pronounced way than others, the unpredictable and unstable nature of things makes life inherently traumatic. What the Buddha revealed through his dreams was that, true as this may be, the mind, by its very nature, is capable of holding trauma much the way a mother naturally relates to a baby. One does not have to be helpless and fearful, nor does one have to be hostile and self-referential. The mind knows intuitively how to find a middle path. Its implicit relational capacity is hardwired. — Mark Epstein

Donald Trump is an unstable charlatan who is appealing to the worst instincts in people, and I believe ultimately the American people are going to reject that. — Martin O'Malley

You're trying to find it. You're probably trying to find- the reason that you live- all by yourself. Because ... because, in reality, there aren't any people who are born with reasons to live. I think that ... that everyone has to find their reason to live. A reason to live. A reason to say that it's okay to be here. A reason for being. Everyone must find out and then decide. Maybe in a dream, or in a job, or in a person. "The reason" you find might be unclear, uncertain, and unstable. Even though you may lose it, I want to have a reason for as long as I live. I also want one. And then, if it's possible, I want to find it in somebody's heart. I want to be able to live for someone. I hope that someday, someone would tell me, 'You can think of it that way.' At times I want to give up, but I try my best. That's why ... that's why it's okay, for sure, to be shameless. Because if you lead a bold life, someday you might meet someone with whom you'll want to eat takoyaki together. — Natsuki Takaya

Christine O'Donnell: I think especially in such an unstable economic environment, what people criticized him for in 2008 his consistency , the fact that he was so strong , and I think people will find that appealing going into the 2012. Carol Costello: Well, some people say Mitt Romney isn't the most consistent candidate, because he's changed his minds about big, important issues over the years. Christine O'Donnell: You know, that's one of the things that I like about him because he's been consistent since he changed his mind. — Christine O'Donnell

This is a psychofield, a thoughtspace, essentially unstable. While most people conceptualise thinking as this straightforward linear thing, I see ideas spreading out into alternatives before one is selected. In this place every notion can potentially become reality. — Tade Thompson

When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain ... — Robinson Jeffers

Astronomers had already found the fingerprints of chaos in violence on the sun's surface, gaps in the asteroid belt, and the distribution of galaxies. Levin and her colleagues have found them in the exit from the big bang and in black holes. They predict that light trapped by a black hole can enter unstable chaotic orbits and be reemited-making the black hole visible, if only briefly. Yes, chaos can light up black holes. "There are rational numbers to mine, fractal sets, and all kinds of truly beautiful consequences," she says. "So on the one hand, people are horrified, on the other they're mesmerized." She does chaos in curved space-time. Einstein would be proud. — James Gleick

If you are uncertain or in confusion don't take any decisions. If you feel you can do something just feel it and do it.
you cannot justify your actions that you do for others when you are unstable.
People will feel for something all the time and you cannot make them happy anyway... — Giridhar Alwar

Max dances around in a circle with one leg pulled up, and people move away as if he's mentally unstable. He and I are the only collectors that like to remain visible to the living. The other four roll incognito. Max finishes his dance and brushes his shoulders off.
"What the hell was that?" I ask.
"My new move," he says matter-of-factly.
My fellow collector is six years older than me but acts like he's thirteen. We met a couple of years ago after he kicked the bucket and came onboard. He talks so fast, I have trouble understanding him sometimes. I like to think he was the World's Best Car Salesman before he croaked. — Victoria Scott

I hear there are people who actually enjoy moving. Sounds like a disease to me - they must be unstable. Though it does have it's poetry, I'll allow that. When an old dwelling starts looking desolate, a mixture of regret and anxiety comes over us and we feel like we are leaving a safe harbor for the rolling sea. As for the new place, it looks on us with alien eyes, it has nothing to say to us, it is cold. — Jan Neruda

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractivess will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman "lets herself go" or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart. — Timothy Keller

If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries. — Helen Clark

you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do. — Anonymous

Imagine a world in which people told lies as a matter of principle, where lying was regarded as a good and moral thing to do. In such a world, lying itself would cease to have any meaning. Lying needs a presumption of truth for its very definition. If a moral principle is something we should wish everybody to follow, lying cannot be a moral principle because the principle itself would break down in meaninglessness. Lying, as a rule for life, is inherently unstable. More generally, selfishness, or free-riding parasitism on the goodwill of others, may work for me as a lone selfish individual and give me personal satisfaction. But I cannot wish that everybody would adopt selfish parasitism as a moral principle, if only because then I would have nobody to parasitize. — Richard Dawkins

If Terrell Owens is really depressed or mentally unstable, why do the people I love use it as an excuse to talk badly about him? — Matthew Quick

I'm talking about anyone who hates on people who are gay. Who loves someone of the same sex. Those people might not be quite as unstable as Zach, but they're just as dangerous. Anyone who uses the fact that a person loves another person as some kind of weapon or reason to be a douche bag isn't right in the head. — Cambria Hebert

Like it or not, today we are all pioneers, picking our way through uncharted and unstable territory. The old rules are no longer reliable guides to work out modern gender roles and build a secure foundation for marriage. Wherever it is that people want to end up in their family relations today, even if they are totally committed to creating a so-called traditional marrige, they have to get there by a different route from the past. — Stephanie Coontz

In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed. — George Ryan

Chavez made a compete fool of himself in front of the entire world while giving the U.N. a black eye. But the real losers are the Venezuelan people who have to put up with this unstable character every day. — J. D. Hayworth

As I grow older and meet more and more people, I realise how lucky I am to have had a stable family environment. Both my parents had loving families but unstable upbringings, so they wanted us to have a more stable situation. — Jamie Cullum

Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies,' people at last prefer tyranny to chaos. Equality of power is an unstable condition; men are by nature unequal; and 'he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.' Democracy has still to solve the problem of enlisting the best energies of men while giving to all alike the choice of those, among the trained and fit, by whom they wish to be ruled. — Will Durant

You're probably wondering what the heck I mean by "The Pillars of Your Life", right? Well this is simple. It's the things that make your life what it is. The things or people that make you, you. There's work, family, your hobby, your art, and your traditions. Except, some of us have wonky pillars. Some of us give one pillar too much to hold, and the others not enough. One's too tall, whilst the others are too small. Therefore we become unstable, and sometimes, everything comes crashing down. — S.R. Crawford

They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and color-blind, for whom body and spirit were forever and inevitably opposed.
The Semitic mind was strange and dark full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardor and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. The were unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. — T.E. Lawrence

People think I'm unstable, but I tell you, Rose is ten times worse. Of course, that makes it harder for people to fuck with you, so I'm all for it.
- Christian Ozera to Lissa Dragomir (Vampire Acdemy) — Richelle Mead

Every country has violent, hateful, or mentally unstable people. What's different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns. — Barack Obama

In a world of differing opinions, mentally unstable people and complete psychopaths, it was the type of simplistic notion that some people wouldn't want to follow or ignorance would just simply not allow them to understand. — S.A. Tawks

The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined ... — Carroll Quigley

People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form. They don't realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. — Eckhart Tolle

People always say that digital cameras are much more stable than film cameras, but the truth is that digital cameras, or any kind of digital technology, is one of the most unstable things in the world. A film camera can last decades if you know how to look after it, but digital things can break down instantly. A violent storm, a nuclear bomb, even something as minor as a cracked screen or the releasing of newer models, can make a digital product just a block of useless metal. — Rebecca McNutt

We didn't know if ordinary lunatics or just unstable people on the ground could feel incited to harm me. — Thuli Madonsela

Tiny but determined, I navigated the confusing and unstable path of being what you are while knowing that it's more than people want to see. Back — Hope Jahren

There's a very mean girl down the hall who's trying to get me fired. I'm no good with confrontation, so whenever I say, "Have a wonderful day," to her out loud, I'm really saying, "Be nice to me or I will stab you in the face with a fork," in my head. I wish her a wonderful day at least once an hour. She's starting to get paranoid and jumpy about it, but there's really nothing she can do, because she can't complain about me wishing her a wonderful day without sounding totally insane. This is why you should never mess with nonconfrontational people. Because they're too unstable to second-guess. And because they're totally the kind of people who could suddenly snap, and stab you in the face with a fork. — Jenny Lawson

It is quite as difficult to fit one's practice to one's precepts as to fit one's precepts to one's practice. Most people act in one way and preach in another. When the fact is brought to their notice, they assert that it is their weakness, and that their desire is to act up to their principles. That is pretence. People act according to their inclinations and adopt principles; because these are generally at variance with their inclinations they are ill-at-ease and unstable. But when they force themselves to act up to their principles and suppress their inclinations, there is no hope for them - but in heaven. — W. Somerset Maugham

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed. — Shawn Achor

As soon as enough people in contemporary societies progress beyond adolescence, the entire consumer-driven economy and egocentric lifestyle will implode. The adolescent society is actually quite unstable due to its incongruence with the primary patterns of living systems. The industrial growth society is simply incompatible with collective human maturity. No true adult wants to be a consumer, worker bee, or tycoon, or a soldier in an imperial war, and none would go through these motions if there were other options at hand. The enlivened soul and wild nature are deadly to industrial growth economies - and vice versa. — Bill Plotkin

What people don't appreciate, when they picture Terminator-style automatons striding triumphantly across a mountain of human skulls, is how hard it is to keep your footing on something as unstable as a mountain of human skulls. Most humans probably couldn't manage it, and they've had a lifetime of practice at walking without falling over. — Randall Munroe

As followers of Jesus, we must look beyond people, things, and circumstances to meet our needs. All of these are unstable and inadequate, and if we depend on them, we will fail. — Kenneth D. Boa

You are who God says you are, not who people say you are. Don't try to base your life on the unstable foundation of human opinions, but instead, build on the unshakable truth of God. — Craig Groeschel

A lot of people who get into any art form have some form of mental..something in their head which is unstable — Daniel Johns

The continent did not appeal: France was filled with irritating people; Spain was corrupt and unstable; Russia, impossible; Italy, absurd; Germany, rigid; Portugal, in decline. Holland, thought favorably disposed toward him, was dull. The United States of America, he decided, was a possibility. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Writers just play out their fantasies in their books. They are often very unstable, tricky people, Bertie. Writers are usually very bad at real life and feel that they have to create imaginary lives to make up for it. — Alexander McCall Smith

If the nation is rich but people are poor, the country cannot be strong, and society will be unstable. — Zong Qinghou

In Kinvara, poor as we were, and unstable, we at least had family nearby, people who knew us. We shared traditions and a way of looking at the world. We didn't know until we left how much we took those things for granted. — Christina Baker Kline

But there are times when the little cloud spreads, until it obscures the sky. And those times I look around at my fellow men and I am reminded of some likeness of the beast-people, and I feel as though the animal is surging up in them. And I know they are neither wholly animal nor holy man, but an unstable combination of both. — H.G.Wells

For a moment they stood looking at each other in the firelight, while the old harper still fingered the shining strings and the other man looked on with a gleam of amusement lurking in his watery blue eyes. But Aquila was not looking at him. He was looking only at the dark young man, seeing that he was darker even than he had thought at first, and slightly built in a way that went with the darkness, as though maybe the old blood, the blood of the People of the Hills, ran strong in him. But his eyes, under brows as straight as a raven's flight-pinions, were not the eyes of the little Dark People, which were black and unstable and full of dreams, but a pale clear grey, lit with gold, that gave the effect of flame behind them. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Moammar Gadhafi and the revolt against Gadhafi was not started by the United States. It was started by the Libyan people. And the reason why I argued we needed to get involved is because he was going to go one way or the other. And my argument then was proven true, and that is, the longer that civil war took, the more militias would be formed and the more unstable the country would be after the fact. — Marco Rubio

What we see in a democracy governed by "representatives" is not a government "for the people" but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Because six billion of us are pursuing an evolutionarily unstable strategy, we're fundamentally attacking the very ecological systems that keep us alive. Just like the goat that refuses to suckle its kids, we're in the process of eliminating ourselves. Think about the time line Charles drew in his talk about the boiling frog. For the first six thousand years, the impact of our evolutionarily unstable strategy was minimal and confined to the Near East. Over the next two thousand years, the strategy spread to Eastern Europe and the Far East. In the next fifteen hundred years, the strategy spread throughout the Old World. In the next three hundred years, it became global. By the end of the next two hundred years - which is now - so many people were following the strategy that the impact was becoming catastrophic. We're now about two generations away from finishing the job of making this unstable strategy extinct. — Daniel Quinn

Meh. She's not overly unattractive, but I don't trust cat people. Maybe it's the inside knowledge of growing up with one, but I think they're often like the animals they love - unpredictable and emotionally unstable. You never know when they'll be aloof and distant or senselessly desperate for your affection. — Colleen Oakley

many people do not usually take the time to think about the foundation upon which they are building their lives. When it comes to buying a house, I see that people care a great deal about the foundations of the property they are about to buy. My dad is a realtor, and before he sells a house, before people trust him with the investment of hundreds of thousands of their dollars, he recommends the buyers hire a home inspector to carefully check the structural soundness of the house, and most importantly, the foundation upon which the potential investment is built. My dad would tell you that, no matter how beautiful or decorated it may be, without a strong foundation; it is doomed. If the foundation is cracked or unstable in any way, the house needs to be torn down and rebuilt on a proper base. — Jon Morrison