Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

You can and you can't You will and you won't You'll be damned if you do You'll be damned if you don't

If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical. If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical.

A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma. It requires you to obey two mutually exclusive commands: Anything you do to fulfill one violates the other.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

predicament, n. The wage of consistency.

Drama if I sing, drama if I don't sing. What do you do?

It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.

The petitioner's problem is to avoid Scylla without being drawn into Charybdis.

The trickiest thing about the double bind is that it operates imperceptibly, like shots from a gun with a silencer.

I'm in a Catch-22. If I don't go after a ball, I'm lazy, I'm not giving it 100 percent. If I do dive for the ball - which I did, and blew out my shoulder - it's, Why did I play it so hard?

If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!

This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight.

That's another fine mess you've gotten me into.

The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

I don't believe that anyone is not bothered by critics. I think that everybody cares.

Don't get me wrong. I don't take anything for granted. But it seems like the better I play, the more attention I get. And I can't get away from it. You play great, you get attention. But I hate attention. It is weird. I'm in a bind. The more you win, the more they come.

Critics have a job to do. They do not criticise you without reason.

Another fine mess you've gotten me into.

Ultimately, it's a pretty confusing moment.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent, then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see, there is simply no escape.

Your either accused of being dictatorial or of being weak—occasionally both at the same time. You just have to take your pick.

We were caught in a hell of a trap.