Forced Quotations

Both 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report,' you're working with the best. When you work with the best, you have to raise your game. If you're working with people who are sub par, you're not forced to give 100 percent because you can get by on 80 percent.

I was divorced when my children were young, so I was a single mother for a while. It's so hard to have to do every little thing yourself and be forced to navigate the rocky emotions of motherhood alone.

We have arrived at that point of time in which we are forced to see our own humiliation, as a nation, and that a progression in this line cannot be a productive of happiness, private or public.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

I'm not practising, I don't go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren't the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you're different.

I was never forced to go to church, and there is a lot of beauty in Christianity that I take in my life as a gift, and there is a lot of beauty in other religions. I'm kind of a spiritual mutt.

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.

My books often involve characters who began in some form of mental isolation, with a feeling of having died to the world. Then they become involved in some kind of action where by necessity they're forced to reengage, to get back into the game of life, as it were. You could say that about 'Chance.'

Some Western demographers have posited, due to the female shortage created by the one-child policy, that China will be forced to field a vast force - as in tens of millions strong - of wifeless men who'll gladly wage wars around the planet to burn off all those unrequited hormones.

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka.

I don't like waiting around for work, and sometimes as an actor you're forced into that position, so that's sort of how I got into writing, producing and directing.

We believe in funding family planning because it helps to prevent unintended pregnancy. We believe that a woman considering an abortion should not be forced to have an ultrasound against her will.

I think everybody has their pain. For me, the time that I really had to grow up was when I was 15 and I had my best friend die of leukemia. Watching somebody so strong go through that is definitely something that will give you a little bit of depth. There have been a lot of things that have happened in my life that has forced me to grow up.

For the longest time, neuroscientists were forced to be passive observers of brain activity.

I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States, travelling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step.

It is important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.

When coffee prices fall below production costs, farmers are often forced off their land, and they lose their homes, everything. With fair trade, farmers get a fair price for their harvest with a guaranteed minimum, so they can invest in their crops.

Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.

In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow managed to get the role.

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.

I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.

I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.

When I began working in Yahoo, my family moved with me. Despite our efforts, our kids wanted to study in Los Angeles, and I was forced to see my family and friends only on weekends. In the beginning I even enjoyed it, but knew that at some stage I'd want to go back home.

President Obama's respect for the Constitution does not extend to freedom of religion - his administration has forced religious businessowners to pay for insurance plans that cover activities in violation of religious precepts.

On a Tuesday, September 11th, 1973, we had the military coup in Chile that forced me to leave my country eventually. And then, on a Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, we had the terrorist attack in the United States.

Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness.

My first performance was in AP Calculus when they forced me up into the front of the classroom and made me sing a song, which was really scary, but it was fun.

The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.

What you can show using physics, forces this universe to continue to exist. As long as you're using general relativity and quantum mechanics you are forced to conclude that God exists.

No one should be forced to violate one's conscience, nor should anyone be forced out of service of the common good because there are some things their conscience tells them they cannot do.

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy.

'Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.

Simon Monjack had nothing to do with 'Factory Girl.' He filed a frivolous lawsuit against us... making bogus claims that we had stolen his script. He held us literally to hostage and we were forced to settle with him as he held our production over a barrel.

The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language.

I never staged a coup. They picked me up. Like I say, they forced me to become premier, maybe hoping that by that way, they send me to the electric chair.

The whole concept behind 'Forty Chances' is really a mindset: If everybody thought they had to put themselves out of business in 40 years, you had 40 chances to succeed in what your primary goals are, you would probably be more urgent and you would be forced to change quicker.

I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people.

If you wait to see how much money you have left at the end of the month to put toward savings, the answer may be zero. So, set up an automated monthly transfer from your checking to savings account. Once you lock into that commitment, you'll be forced to scale back spending to make ends meet.

For me 'Oliver Twist' is a political novel. It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions.

I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a student, you were, in a way, forced to choose which cohort you were going with.

You are forced to have the best data capture, the best information, when you have goods in hundreds of factories around the world, and the question is: 'Where is everything?' And how do you bring it all together?

My poor sister was forced to be in the plays that I would write. We would go to my grandma's retirement building and perform 'Phantom of the Opera.'

I was born in Brazil and grew up in the '70s under a climate of political distress, and I was forced to learn to communicate in a very specific way - in a sort of a semiotic black market. You couldn't really say what you wanted to say; you had to invent ways of doing it. You didn't trust information very much.

I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team.

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.

I think George R. R. Martin made fantasy grow up. He brought a level of reality into the storytelling where you realize the good guys don't always win and anyone can die, because that's how life works. Bringing that level of reality into the story I think forced the genre to mature in a lot of ways that it hadn't prior.

We have people working for us full-time because they were forced to retire at 65. I know that I never want to stop working, and I am glad that I can offer positions to others who feel the same way.

I'm a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve. I guess if I'm forced to find a good side, I'm glad that people are talking about an issue that hasn't really been discussed all that much. I'm glad that people are talking about it from the black perspective and the white perspective.

I started doing stand up when I was 19. Because I was underage at the time, at certain clubs I would be forced to wait outside until it was my time to go on stage. Then I would do my set, walk off, and be kicked out again.

The claim that SpongeBob makes your child dumber is a causal claim. If you do X, Y will happen. To prove that, you'd have to show that if you forced the children in the no-TV households to watch SpongeBob and changed nothing else about their lives, they would do worse in school.

I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow's boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren't any men in it, so they'd be forced to identify with the women.

Middle class families should not be forced to scrape by with less while oil companies get away with more.

I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit.

Arab youth are taught to wonder, 'Since the Holocaust was a European affair, why are the Palestinians being forced to pay for the creation of Israel?'

My father never forced me, but chemistry was my best subject.

Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.

I was forced to come into politics because Saakashvili had destroyed the opposition. I had a choice either to leave the country, because it was dangerous to live here, or to go into politics.

The September 11th tragedy forced us all to look at the world in a different way, and it reminds us all of the importance of living every moment.

I've had to work by myself at combines before and forced myself to work out alone all the way back to high school. You have to be self-motivated.

I've always been much more of a guitar picker, but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock & roll guitarist. Originally, TYA wanted to make it without having to compromise to pop. It worked for a while, but after five or six years, the fun went out of it for me; a lot of the music went out of it.

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too.

When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack.

Anne Boleyn was a warrior forced to use the only tools available to a woman in her position at that time. She was bold and ambitious, and had she had a son, history would have been very different.

Amadu is all about the family. I've never known love like that before, and it made me think, 'I want a bit of that'. It kind of forced me to get to know my family again. Another reason why he's so lovely.

My long struggles as a soldier of the Chinese Revolution have forced me to realize the necessity of facing hard facts. There will be neither peace, nor hope, nor future for any of us unless we honestly aim at political, social and economic justice for all peoples of the world, great and small.

I often have the impression that the book I've just finished isn't satisfied: that it rejects me because I haven't successfully completed it. Because there is no going back, I'm forced to begin a new book so I can finally complete the previous one.

Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.

In the early 1800s, religion was often used as a way to keep slavery in place. Slaves were forced to attend the church of their owners, listen to selective dogma that kept them obedient and subservient.

The first outbreak of America's 11-year skyjacking epidemic occurred in the summer of 1961, when four planes were seized in the nation's airspace. The last of these incidents, involving 16-year-old Cody Bearden and his father, Leon, is the one that finally forced the federal government to pay attention to the escalating crisis.

The constant movement of a military life can be tough on children. My father was an officer in the army, and I was forced to change elementary schools six times.

It did not prepare me for writing or "Power of Attorney." However, what it did is that it forced me out of the DA's office. I stopped getting that county check.

One of the best essays I've seen in recent years was by a young woman who wrote about how being chosen to choreograph a high school musical forced her to assume a leadership role she wasn't sure she was ready for - but of course she was.

Americans generally associate boats with leisure. Vastly less prosperous, Egyptians associate them with nothing but labour. Rowing a boat is something a fisherman is forced to do to make a living; how could such an activity bring me - a woman no less - pleasure?

With one decision, Judge Sotomayor changed the entire dispute. Her ruling rescued the 1995 baseball season and forced the parties to resume real negotiations.

I think about 'The Simpsons,' which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30's. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won't lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age.

The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations.

When I was a kid, my dad kind of forced me to sing the third harmony for our little family group, and I just kind of hated it. I just felt so uncomfortable on stage, too shy.

I had given a presentation on design and happiness for quite a long while at design conferences. I had found thinking about the topic helpful for my own practice, as it forced me to consider the fundamentals, and the feedback from the audience was always enthusiastic.

I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.

Chefs are artists, and I couldn't be happy with my art if I was forced to use cheap ingredients.

We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways.

Working on 'Laguna' was great because just being in production and shooting stuff and having to go back and relive some things, and there were some lines here and there that the producers would want us to say, and just kind of, you're forced to recreate moments, and just working on the show was so much fun.

Of all the writers I have read, Vladimir Nabokov has made the biggest impression on me because he, despite living through the 1917 February Revolution, forced exile amidst the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the two World Wars and quite a lot of controversy, was an author who never gave up.

In its truest manifestation, where it gives judgments, poetry is super-luxury. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a High Court judge if he were forced to follow the true poetic formula, doing the job for love, being forced into pubs for relief.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Thousands of Americans are forced to join unions as a condition of employment, with little to no chance of ever having their voices heard.

It's no longer possible to simply build English country houses out of words, because they've already been so thoroughly described that all the applicable words have been used up, and one is forced to build them instead out of words recycled and scavenged from other descriptions of other country houses.

Technology forced me to divorce a pixie and remarry a pixel.

One of the things my success as an author has forced me to face is how dysfunctional... Maybe that's a strong word, but how obsessive I am.

As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.'

I always just wanted to write and maybe direct. I'm really only interested in that. And yet the business that I'm in has forced me into being a salesman - that's the last thing that 17-year-old me would imagine I'd end up being. I'm uncomfortable trying to sell anything, but that's what you're doing every time you walk into a pitch.

The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.

Every day is a learning experience for city kids, and they are really sort of forced to interact with everyone around them and develop into social beings.

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

'm just going to be a good friend to my kid. One thing I definitely want to change is that whole 'I don't want you to make the same mistakes' mentality. My dad didn't have much money growing up; he didn't have much of an education. He forced that on me, and I didn't want it.

My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own.

The English prison system is altogether mediaeval and outworn. In some of its details, the system has improved since they began to send the Suffragettes to Holloway. I may say that we, by our public denunciation of the system, have forced these slight improvements.

People are generally forced to change. We don't want to change, and then something absolutely forces us to realize that what we are doing isn't working or that our picture of the world is wrong. We fail. So we change.

What happens in the media is the cult of personality. The brands who have been forced to cut their staff have been forced to take on the brands of journalists.

I hate receiving compliments; I hate being told I'm talented or people think I'm going to be a movie star. I always feel that it's forced and fake.