"There are many challenges, there are many obstacles; let us try to change the obstacles to advantages"
About this Quote
The line acknowledges reality before it asks for ambition. The repetition of "there are many" concedes the weight of difficulty, while the semicolon pivots to a communal invitation: "let us try". It is not triumphalist; the verb try keeps humility at the center. The daring move lies in the reframing. An obstacle is usually a stopper; calling it an advantage asks the mind to turn the problem into material for progress. Constraints become boundaries that focus effort. Resistance becomes feedback. A setback reveals where a system is weakest and thus where leverage lies.
Harri Holkeri earned the authority to say this. A Finnish statesman who served as prime minister and later helped chair the Northern Ireland peace talks, he practiced the craft of turning hard realities into workable structures. In a conflict shaped by mutual suspicion, the very existence of opposing vetoes became the justification for power-sharing arrangements that required cross-community consent. The risk of renewed violence encouraged verification regimes and decommissioning timetables. Geography and identity, long sources of division, found institutional expression in North-South and East-West bodies that recognized plural belonging. Each was an attempt to retool a hindrance into a guarantee or an incentive, to ensure that what had once blocked a settlement would now sustain it.
The sentence also carries a democratic ethic. "Let us" insists on shared agency; it denies the fantasy of a solitary savior. It points to an ethic of pragmatic optimism: not denying hardship, not romanticizing endurance, but treating adversity as data and instrument. In everyday life, the principle applies just as well. Scarce resources can focus a team on essentials, regulatory constraints can catalyze better design, a competitor can sharpen differentiation. The moral is neither complacent nor naive. It asks for imagination under pressure and the discipline to build systems where the forces that hinder you are harnessed to hold the solution in place.
Harri Holkeri earned the authority to say this. A Finnish statesman who served as prime minister and later helped chair the Northern Ireland peace talks, he practiced the craft of turning hard realities into workable structures. In a conflict shaped by mutual suspicion, the very existence of opposing vetoes became the justification for power-sharing arrangements that required cross-community consent. The risk of renewed violence encouraged verification regimes and decommissioning timetables. Geography and identity, long sources of division, found institutional expression in North-South and East-West bodies that recognized plural belonging. Each was an attempt to retool a hindrance into a guarantee or an incentive, to ensure that what had once blocked a settlement would now sustain it.
The sentence also carries a democratic ethic. "Let us" insists on shared agency; it denies the fantasy of a solitary savior. It points to an ethic of pragmatic optimism: not denying hardship, not romanticizing endurance, but treating adversity as data and instrument. In everyday life, the principle applies just as well. Scarce resources can focus a team on essentials, regulatory constraints can catalyze better design, a competitor can sharpen differentiation. The moral is neither complacent nor naive. It asks for imagination under pressure and the discipline to build systems where the forces that hinder you are harnessed to hold the solution in place.
Quote Details
| Topic | Overcoming Obstacles |
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