Quotes About Ambivalence

#1. More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.

Michel De Certeau

#2. Some people call it self-confidence, I call it ambivalence to failure.

L.M. Long

#3. We really have to do something about you ambivalence toward civic duty, kid."
"I already overthrew one government," Vin said. "I figure that takes care of my 'civic duty' for a while.

Brandon Sanderson

#4. Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.

Joyce Carol Oates

#5. I think Farmer taps into a universal anxiety and also into a fundamental place in some troubled consciences, into what he calls "ambivalence," the often unacknowledged uneasiness that some of the fortunate feel about their place in the world, the thing he once told me he designed his life to avoid.

Tracy Kidder

#6. The base of artistic pursuit is ambivalence and complexity. And that's what I try to do.

Fernando Perez

#7. They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.

David Mamet

#8. Whether outside work is done by choice or not, whether women seek their identity through work, whether women are searching for pleasure or survival through work, the integration of motherhood and the world of work is a source of ambivalence, struggle, and conflict for the great majority of women.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

#9. I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.

Faye Wattleton

#10. I love the sort of ambivalence of this, the ambiguity of something being, for instance, in a quite busy Mexican restaurant with one of these very gentle tracks playing I remember as being particularly nice.

Brian Eno

#11. So I do have this ambivalence. Obviously I'm against militaries, because of what militaries do. In many ways though, the air force was unmilitary-like. They dropped bombs on people, but ... they had a golf course.

George Carlin

#12. Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.

Annette Bening

#13. Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety.

John Ortberg

#14. Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.

Louise Bourgeois

#15. Whatever ambivalence I felt about my own career, Frankie more than made up for it with his ambition and tenacity.

Annette Funicello

#16. She was so wicked. Such a classic case of resentment and ambivalence bumping and brushing up against all that maternal instinct. The love and hate in her was as vast as space- all meteors, no atmosphere.

Laura Kasischke

#17. The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama's previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign.

Charles Krauthammer

#18. When divorces meant marriage no longer provided security for a lifetime, women adjusted by focusing on careers as empowerment. But when the sacrifice of a career met the sacrifices in a career, the fantasy of a career became the reality of trade-offs. Women developed career ambivalence.

Warren Farrell

#19. The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Paul De Man

#20. Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work. This is just a use of space and form: it's an ambivalence of forms and space.

Joan Mitchell

#21. Often, people want both to live and to die; ambivalence saturates the suicidal act.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#22. Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#23. I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it.

Amy Poehler

#24. The sulker is a complicated creature, giving off messages of deep ambivalence, crying out for help and attention, while at the same time rejecting it should it be offered, wanting to be understood without needing to speak.

Alain De Botton

#25. It is the discrepancy between the promise implicit in his touch and his daily interactions with her that generates so much confusion and ambivalence for Martha.
from Lo Siento

Marcy Sheiner

#26. Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

David Seabury

#27. Until recently, most environmental organizations offered only token attention to children. Perhaps their lack of zeal stems from an unconscious ambivalence about children, who symbolize or represent overpopulation. So goes the unspoken mantra: We have met the enemy and it is our progeny.

Richard Louv

#28. I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.

Garth Greenwell

#29. The black middle class displays a torn ambivalence toward the situation of the black poor. They sympathetically recognize the harms of racism and targeted inequality while simultaneously pointing an accusatory finger at the individual faults of their poor friends, relatives, and neighbors.

Mary Pattillo

#30. under the surface there is often ambivalence about women at work that makes their position vulnerable.

Geraldine Brooks

#31. Magneto has a whole lot of complexity to him. Emotionally, he's coming from a very damaged place. I like the ambivalence of it. I want the audience leaving the theater wondering, asking the questions themselves rather than being spoon-fed like a lot of these super-villain characters.

Michael Fassbender

#32. I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

Penelope Lively

#33. My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.

Rob Bell

#34. Ambivalence is one of the biggest enemies of change. If you aren't sure that you really want to take action on something such as your weight, ambivalence will usually win.

Linda Spangle

#35. You won't ever have everyone love you, just as you won't have everyone hate you. find the right people to love you and return the hatred of others with ambivalence or hatred of your own.

Elise Kova

#36. Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Ellen Goodman

#37. I thought I knew what evil was, but I was wrong." "Then what is it?" she asked. "Ambivalence. Standing by and watching people suffer and die when you know you can help them.

Lincoln Cole

#38. I used to loathe ambivalence; now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend.

Suzanne Finnamore

#39. I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.

Jennifer Egan

#40. I was toying with the idea of ambivalence a lot. It's something I work on, not being so invested in outcomes and being more engaged in the process of my life.

Lissie

#41. Ambivalence about family responsibilities has a long history in the corporate world.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

#42. I think the proper attitude toward fighting sports is one of ambivalence. You can be drawn to them, but you should also be repelled by them.

Jonathan Gottschall

#43. The moral ambivalence of the great mother goddesses has been conveniently forgotten by those American feminists who have resurrected them. We cannot grasp nature's bare blade without shedding our own blood.

Camille Paglia

#44. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness

Adrienne Rich

#45. nevermore will i lie in the wake of your ambivalence

A.P. Sweet

#46. Since time out of mind, a considered act of heroism has been the cure for stultifying ambivalence.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

#47. Never to be outdone, my wife, who also happens to be a psychoanalyst and therefore a specialist in ambivalence, wrote the following to me: 'Dear Simon, Break a leg, or all your legs. I better brake fast. With all my love-hate, Jamieson (who is about to drive us off a cliff)

Simon Critchley

#48. Nothing is so threatening to conventional values as a man who does not want to work or does not want to work at a challenging job, and most people are disturbed if a man in a well- paying job indicates ambivalence or dislike toward it.

Alice S. Rossi

#49. I think if a poet wanted to lead, he or she would want the message to be unequivocally clear and free of ambiguity. Whereas poetry is actually the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.

Billy Collins

#50. 'The Simpsons' is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.

Matt Groening

#51. Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women

Lillian B. Rubin

#52. [W]earisome as it may seem, women must realize that, in making a commitment to a man, they have merged in his unconscious with his mother and have therefore inherited the ambivalence of that relationship.

Camille Paglia

#53. It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty, and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It's probably this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.

John Scott

#54. My mother had demonstrated that the best way to defeat the numbing ambivalence of middle age is to surprise yourself - by pulling off some cartwheel of thought or action never even imagined at a younger age.

Gail Sheehy

#55. I worked with fantastic actors, fantastic directors. People I would never otherwise have met. Was I limited? Yes. Did I use it as I could have? No. But I was always ambivalent about Hollywood and what I wanted. And ambivalence in our business is no good for success.

Valeria Golino

#56. Ambivalence is like carbon monoxide - undetectable yet deadly.

Cherie Carter-Scott

#57. Buddhism cannot be true to itself until Buddhists resolve their ambivalence toward nonhuman animals and extend the full protection of their compassion to the most harmless and helpless of those who live at our mercy in the visible realms.

Norm Phelps

#58. For the only therapy is life. The patient must learn to live, to live with his split, his conflict, his ambivalence, which no therapy can take away, for if it could, it would take with it the actual spring of life.

Otto Rank

#59. Most human things are full of conflict and ambivalence, not ease and simplicity. The world has grown increasingly fundamentalist, and the parameters of discussion have become narrowed. People, when they're fearful, are vulnerable to certainty in rhetoric.

Dana Spiotta

#60. We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

Anna Quindlen

#61. Caution is an important quality in a leader, but it has to be caution followed by decision. Caution followed by ambivalence can be a weakness.

Leon Panetta

#62. I've always had a lot of ambivalence about fame and celebrity.

Jane Pauley

#63. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, a traumatic shock to me, ended any ambivalence I had about the Soviet Union, and all cooperation with Communists in united fronts.

Roger Nash Baldwin

#64. Vichy emerged not only from what divided the French but also what united them: pacifism, fear of population decline, loss of confidence in national identity, anti-Semitism, discontent with existing political institutions, ambivalence about modernity. The existence of this common

Julian T. Jackson

#65. In fact, I suspect they prefer flawed certainty to faultless ambivalence.

Bobby Adair

#66. Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

Martha Beck

#67. We British play an important role in Europe, even if we have a traditional and historical ambivalence towards the continent.

Lionel Barber

#68. The mental mist of ambiguity and the fog of ambivalence hamper human existence.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#69. Those who advocate euthanasia have capitalized on people's confusion, ambivalence and even fear about the use of modern life-prolonging technologies. Being able to choose the time and manner of one's death, without regard to what is chosen is presented as the ultimate freedom.

Pope John Paul II

#70. Another basic feature of a Gestalt model of intervention is the special definition of resistance and the way of dealing with it. The Gestalt-oriented consultant assumes as a working hypothesis that there is a great deal of ambivalence regarding change in any system.

Edwin C. Nevis

#71. Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict, contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 - confusion even. And I think that's hard to capture in journalism.

Amy Waldman

#72. Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.

Will Self

#73. From the beginning, there have been some religious leaders who greeted the funding of faith-based social services by government with ambivalence.

Tony Campolo

#74. I have never been much at nonverbal communication. Additionally, I don't have much of an attention span, and what I lack in patience I make up for in ambivalence and an inability to sleep.

Carrie Fisher

#75. I'm still ambivalent about Hollywood. I think that's why I made 'Star 80.' To deal with the ambivalence. I really wanted to succeed Gene Kelly, and I thought it was a fair bet.

Bob Fosse

#76. Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Erica Jong

#77. What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times.

Charles Dickens

#78. He had to pause for his usual misgivings.

Paul C. Nagel

#79. Author says he suffered from both "a craving to be famous" and "a horror of being known to like being known.

T.E. Lawrence

#80. A pensive personality and ambivalent attitude towards power and money can cause other people to take a high production or creative person for granted.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#81. Dad scowls. "Phen." He says the name like it's a swear word. "Disgusting, cowardly creatures, the ambivalent. Worse than the fallen, in many ways." His eyes are so fierce it's a tad scary. "They have no conviction at all.

Cynthia Hand

#82. In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.

Marsilio Ficino

#83. Don Bradman will bat no more against England, and two contrary feelings dispute within us: relief, that our bowlers will no longer be oppressed by this phenomenon; regret, that a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal.

R.C. Robertson-Glasgow

#84. As many have discovered, it is entirely possible (although not particularly desirable) to love two people with all your heart. It is entirely possible to long for two lives, to feel that one life can't come close to containing it all.

Gabrielle Zevin

#85. There she was, the mother of me, like a lit plinth,
Heavenly, though I was reared to find this kind
Of visitation impractical; she was an unbearable detail
Of the supreme celestial map,
Of which I had been taught that there was
No such thing.

Lucie Brock-Broido

#86. I slide to my knees and say, "Please let this be over." Then, I'm not ready for it to be over.

Andre Agassi

#87. And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

J.D. Salinger

#88. The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism - an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own.

Kathryn Schulz