Ken Livingstone Quotes

We have to achieve what we can, and if we haven't yet learned that we are not always going to get our way this could be frustrating.

It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.

As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do

We had to play the hand we were dealt, all of us. Fighting the battles we could win.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.

If you find yourself in a position you would rather was not there, you have to make it work.

Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.

Do the best that can be done and then . . . be resigned.

A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is.

That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and ay, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?'

most of us, as we undergo the growing up process, do not get what we want or even what we should. We get what we have, and no more, and we find out how to make what we have work for us.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.

I've managed to stay alive out here in the Ruin because I'm a realist. I allow the truth to be the truth, no matter how much I might want it to be something else.

The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we've got. Whining isn't a scalable solution.

And I guess that's when it starts to hit me: the whole point is, you do what you can.

if I can't get what I want - well, I'll want what I can get.

Perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Therefore we must always expect to find things not up to our highest ideal. Knowing this, we are bound to make the best of everything.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

I think we ought to take the world as it is and not as we would like to have it.