130 Tension Quotes
Following is our list of tension quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about life tension.
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Famous Tension Quotes
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. — Chinese Proverbs
A good life is like a weaving. Energy is created in the tension. The struggle, the pull and tug are everything. — Joan Erikson
In one of our concert grand pianos, 243 taut strings exert a pull of 40,000 pounds on an iron frame. It is proof that out of great tension may come great harmony. — Theodore E. Steinway
The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We call this gap creative tension. — Peter Senge
Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers? — James Hilton
The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. — Carl Jung
Pressure is what you feel when you don't know what's going on. — Chuck Noll
The tension between what is, and what we dream of, is important. Not to discount what we have, but to hold onto that middle ground, because it's in there that the magic happens. — Susan Branch
Disharmony that comes from circumstances that are valid has tension, poignancy, quality, and beauty. — Robert Venturi
One way to break up any kind of tension is good deep breathing. — Byron Nelson
Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence. — Louise Bourgeois
There's always a tension in me between my urge to destroy and my will to live... Every morning I wake up with a new wrath, a new suspiciousness, a new desire to live. — Ingmar Bergman
No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not. — Sayings
You must not only learn to live with tension, you must seek it out. You must learn to thrive on stress. — J. Paul Getty
The sensation of energy expands with increasing relaxation. — Ilchi Lee
Short Tension Quotes
- Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it. — Woody Allen
- Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving. — Denis Waitley
- Just a reminder - a guidebook is no substitute for skill, experience, judgment and lots of tension. — Charlie Fowler
- True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
- ... While nervous tension may be a component of stress, one can be stressed without feeling tension. — Gabor Mate
- Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change. — James C. Collins
- So what does a good teacher do? Create tension - but just the right amount. — Donald Norman
- The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. — Carl Jung
- Truly embracing the fragility and tensions of life...brings with it the possibility of true joy. — Peter Rollins
- Tension is the great integrity. — Richard Buckminster Fuller
Result Tension Quotes
We are now at the point where we must decide whether we are to honour the concept of a plural society which gains strength through diversity, or whether we are to have bitter fragmentation that will result in perpetual tension and strife. — Earl Warren
Pressure on nerves causes irriatation and tension with deranged functions as a result. Why not release the pressure? Why not adjust the cause instead of treating the effects? Why not? — Daniel D. Palmer
To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you. — Byron Katie
What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa. — Michael Moorcock
My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul. — Paulo Coelho
You know how some people say that they can only read one story a day from this or that collection? If that's simply the result of the great tension and power condensed into each piece, all well and good. — Roy Kesey
Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it. — Seth Godin
I believe that one of the great problems for us as individuals is the depression and the tension resulting from existence in a world which is increasingly less pleasing to the eye. — Lady Bird Johnson
Find moments in your life in which you had communication with people. You will see that most of our tensions, disappointments , sorrows, pain, and anxiety are the result of a break in our communication. — Torkom Saraydarian
Coming from bad results, you have more tension and you get more into the game, maybe. You never know which is best. I prefer to come from good results. You have more confidence and you believe you are doing things well. But in football everything can change very quickly. — Tito Vilanova
Life Tension Quotes
The tension between "yes" and "no," between "I can" and "I cannot," makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self. — Anatole Broyard
Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away. — Peter Tork
If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido. — William S. Burroughs
Coffee has ... expand[ed] humanity's working-day from twelve to a potential twenty-four hours. The tempo, the complexity, the tension of modern life, call for something that can perform the miracle of stimulating brain activity, without evil, habit-forming after-effects. — Margaret Meagher
Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one's being. — Donald Curtis
For a quick lap at the Nrburgring, you've probably experienced more in seven minutes...than most people have experienced in all their life in the way of fear, in the way of tension, in the way of animosity towards machinery and to a racetrack. — Jackie Stewart
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. — Viktor E. Frankl
Life is a series of pulls back and forth... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match...Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins — Mitch Albom
Art gives a sense of order, life is basically chaotic, and there's a tension between them. A sense of order comes from chaos and contains a bit of it, but it's the sense of order that is important in a work of art. — Alfred Brendel
Life is like the harp string, if it is strung too tight it won't play, if it is too loose it hangs, the tension that produces the beautiful sound lies in the middle. — Buddha
No Tension Quotes
Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact. — Lyndon B. Johnson
The purpose of being is really making the soul ascend, to expand consciousness. That’s our true purpose. And if we follow that path then there is no tension. You just live like a kid, open. It’s all simple. It’s beautiful and the energy is clean. We are children of mother nature. — Wim Hof
Whenever there is injustice, there is tension. But in China it is very hard to release your anger unless you burn yourself or you jump from a bridge. In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. — Ai Weiwei
It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. — Rainer Maria Rilke
Another intruder that plagues our good health is sleeplessness. Insomnia is much like constipation in that stress or nervous tension can bring it on or aggravate it until there's almost no coping with it. That's why you find sleeping pills in so many medicine cabinets next to the laxatives. — Jack LaLanne
Going home means getting comfortable being who you are and who your soul really wants to be. There is no strain with that. The strain and tension come when we're not being who our soul wants to be and we're someplace where our soul doesn't feel at home. — Melody Beattie
There are some aspects of work you need to keep working on and no matter what environment you are in. Continuous learning is very important. It's what I call 'competitive tension', which is about having a competition around. — Viswanathan Anand
When you get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding... you can be yourself. Relaxed. You'll no longer be driving with your brakes on. — Anthony De Mello
There is a leisure about walking, no matter what pace you set, that lets down the tension. — Hal Borland
When you have no intention then you have no tension! Be flexible. — Mooji
Feeling Tension Quotes
Our feeling is that the most important thing on a set is that actors have enough confidence to try different things. If there's stress or tension, they won't go out on a limb because they won't want to embarrass themselves if they don't feel completely comfortable. — Peter Farrelly
Eating chocolate can have significant influences on mood, generally leading to an increase in pleasant feelings and a reduction in tension. — Peter Rogers
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self. — Erich Fromm
Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing. — Eminem
My inner world seems largely to consist of three rotating emotions: embarrassment, rage, and tension. Sometimes I feel excited, but I think that's just positive tension. — Carrie Fisher
You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty....you might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way. — George Benson
Errors have nothing to do with luck; they are caused by time pressure, discomfort or unfamiliarilty with a position, distractions, feelings of intimidation, nervous tension, overambition, excessive caution, and dozens of other psychological factors. — Pal Benko
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk. — H. L. Mencken
Emotionally, grief is a mixture of raw feelings such as sorrow, anguish, anger, regret, longing, fear, and deprivation. Grief may be experienced physically as exhaustion, emptiness, tension, sleeplessness, or loss of appetite. — Judy Tatelbaum
The main problem is to free your mind when you play. I find that in my own playing, whenever I feel any kind of tension, I'm restricted to playing the most fundamental kinds of things. — Art Farmer
Love Tension Quotes
Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I'm fine. I'm in another world - in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar. — Jimmy Page
Infinite Love is who we really are and who we refuse to be. This refusal is our most essential tension. — David Deida
I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me. — Jeanette Winterson
After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent. — Albert Camus
Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried with fewer tensions and more tolerance. — Benjamin Franklin
Some tension is necessary for the soul to grow, and we can put that tension to good use. We can look for every opportunity to give and receive love, to appreciate nature, to heal our wounds and the wounds of others, to forgive, and to serve. — Joan Borysenko
Film is so much about that intensity of focus that there always needs to be some tension and some forward motion. The novel goes into a series of lovely observations about the world, but you've got to find the story. — Lenny Abrahamson
These are the poems of a traveler and a lover who feels both the terror of time passing and the consolation of eternity. From such tension spring lovely poetic objects, ready for intelligent use. — Andrei Codrescu
Over the years I've grown more comfortable with making people uncomfortable because that is when growth can happen. You need a little conflict. You need a little tension. And that is part of my calling. A little tough love goes a long way! — Mark Batterson
My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity. — Hayden Carruth
Creative Tension Quotes
My purpose is to allow people to move closer to actually being creatures of free choice, to genuinely reflect individual creativity and emotion, freeing the body of habitual tensions and wired-patterns of behaviour so that it may respond without inhibition to do what the person wants. — Moshe Feldenkrais
Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. — Rollo May
The ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each. — Roger Martin
The proper condition of the human is not bovine placidity... the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne. — Brian Swimme
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. — Carl Sagan
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. — Norman Mailer
Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally. — Peter Senge
Creativity reduces instinctual tension, it fuses pleasure with reality, and satisfies the libido. — Peter Shepherd
This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions. — Paul Brunton
I am not afraid of the word tension. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
People Writing About Tension
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Carl Jung |
804 | 13370 |
 Chinese Proverbs |
119 | 7413 |
 Peter Senge |
102 | 1185 |
 James Hilton |
22 | 126 |
 Chuck Noll |
22 | 1000 |
 Byron Nelson |
17 | 197 |
More Tension Quotes
I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged. — Antonin Scalia
Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy. — A. Philip Randolph
Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite. — Auguste Escoffier
Good planning is important. I've also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you're in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you're depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension. — Edmund Hillary
Race is only relevant when it will heighten racial tensions, so ABC doesn’t mention that the driver was black. They do, however, give you the critical detail that it was a luxury car. — Dave Smith
If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn't ask me, I'd still have to say it. — George Burns
Russia and Norway have a dispute over the Svalbard Islands, the northernmost point on earth with a settled population. Most countries recognize the islands as being under Norwegian sovereignty, but the biggest island has a growing population of Russian migrants who have assembled around the coal-mining industry there. The mines are not profitable, but the Russian community serves as a useful tool in furthering Moscow’s claims on the islands. Norway knows what is coming and has made the Arctic its foreign policy priority. Its air force regularly intercepts Russian fighter jets approaching its borders; the heightened tensions have caused it to move the center of military operations from the south to the north, and it is building an Arctic battalion. Canada and Denmark are expanding their Arctic military capabilities as well. — Tim Marshall
That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break. — Jacques Derrida
There are flash points between China and the U.S.. America’s treaty with Taiwan states that if the Chinese invade what they regard as their 23rd province, America will go to war. A red line for China, which could spark an invasion, is formal recognition of Taiwan by the U.S., or a declaration of independence by Taiwan. However, there’s no sign of either on the horizon. — Tim Marshall
It's about finding meaning through light. I'm always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange. — Gregory Crewdson
Empty canvas. In appearance - really empty, silent, indifferent. Stunned, almost. In effect - full of tensions, with thousand subdued voices, heavy with expectations. A little frightened because it may be violated — Wassily Kandinsky
All seasoned players know, or at least have felt, that when you are playing your best, you are much the same as in a state of meditation. You are free of tension and chatter. You are concentrating on one thing. It is the ideal condition for good golf. — Harvey Penick
A great discovery solves a great problem, but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest, but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery. — George Polya
Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness. — Hans Selye
A short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters — Julio Cortazar
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are. — Tom Peters
Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. — Ada Louise Huxtable
Moreover, such a body freed from nervous tension and over-fatigue is the ideal shelter provided by nature for housing a well-balanced mind that is always fully capable of successfully meeting all of the complex problems of modern living. — Joseph Pilates
Washington's adventuristic policy, whipping up international tension to the utmost, is pushing mankind towards nuclear catastrophe. — Konstantin Chernenko
The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes.... The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation. — Seneca
This whole electric universe is a complex maze of similar tensions. Every particle of matter in the universe is separated from its condition of oneness, just as the return ball is separated from the hand, and each is connected with the other one by an electric thread of light which measures the tension of that separateness. — Walter Russell
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