Wrestling With A Pig In The Mud Quotes

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the pig likes it.

As Bill likes to say, never wrestle a pig in the mud.

the question is not “Are you flawed?” It’s “What do you do about your flaws?” Do you learn from your mistakes so you can do and be better in the future? Or do you reject the hard work of self-improvement and instead tear others down so you can assert they’re as bad or worse than you are? I’ve always tried to do the former. And, by and large, so has our country, with our long march toward a more perfect union. But Donald Trump does the latter. Instead of admitting mistakes, he lashes out, demeans, and insults others—often projecting by accusing others of doing what he himself has done or is about to do. So if he knows that the Donald J. Trump Foundation is little more than a personal piggy bank, he’ll turn around and accuse, with no evidence, the well-respected Clinton Foundation of being corrupt. There’s a method to this madness. For Trump, if everyone’s down in the mud with him, then he’s no dirtier than anyone else. He doesn’t have to do better if everyone else does worse. I think that’s why he seems to relish humiliating people around him. And it’s why he must have been delighted when Marco Rubio tried to match him in slinging crude personal insults during the primaries. Of course, it hurt Rubio much more than Trump. As Bill likes to say, never wrestle a pig in the mud. They have cloven hooves, which give them superior traction, and they love getting dirty. Sadly, Trump’s strategy works. When people start believing that all politicians are liars and crooks, the truly corrupt escape scrutiny, and cynicism grows.

You once told me that bearing a grudge was like mud wrestling with a pig. You both finish up dirty, but only the pig enjoys it.

In one corner of the large bar room I saw a pit filled with mud and a pig. I watched a buxom, mature woman as she rolled around in this soup, trying to catch a pig that seemed to be more elusive than expected. Squealing the pig escaped from the pit and ran for his life. Everyone joined in trying to catch the critter and eventually some guys did return him to the pit he called home. Picking him up with a mud covered towel the woman and her pig disappeared behind a curtain, only to be replaced by two other women who started wrestling each other. It was an expected typically crude performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. After finishing my overpriced beer I hightailed out of there and took the city rapid transit back to the ship.

Imagine that someone has enjoyed success in the past by being strong willed and consistently sure of their course of action, even in the face of doubters. That sort of attitude can easily grow out of a period in a tough management role. So, it becomes their default way of operating.” She paused and raised her eyebrows. “Then, one day, they find themselves in a situation they haven’t faced before, one where their tried-and-tested bullish methods do not work. And the more they try, the more they fail. They just keep hammering away, assuming that everyone and everything else is wrong. That the world has gone mad.” Andrea rolled her eyes. “That’s when other people start labelling them. They’re stubborn. They’re pig headed. But it’s really not their fault,” she explained. “They’re just stuck in the mud.