Deny Quotes - Page 16

• Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence?

  Upton Sinclair

  Fate, Animal, Men

  "The Profits of Religion : An Essay in Economic Interpretation". Book by Upton Sinclair, Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting", 1918.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• How shall we ever make the world intelligent of our movement? I do not think that the answer lies in trying to render feminism easy, popular, and instantly gratifying. To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

  Adrienne Rich

  Lying, Thinking, Intelligent

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.5, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death.

  Alexander Lowen

  Fear, Emotion, Scared

  22 Copy quote

• Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.

  Alexander Lowen

  Love Is, Persons

  Alexander Lowen (2012). “Narcissism: Denial of the True Self”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• No men stand more in fear of God than those who most deny Him.

  Benjamin Whichcote

  God, Men

  Benjamin Whichcote, Anthony Tuckney (1753). “Moral and religious aphorisms [collected by J. Jeffery from the papers of B. Whichcote]. Now re-publ., with additions, by S. Salter. To which are added, Eight letters: which passed between dr. Whichcote, and dr. Tuckney”, p.130

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Kant ... stated that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge ... to make room for faith," but all he had "denied" was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.

  Hannah Arendt

  Rooms, Made, Found

  Hannah Arendt (1978). “The Life of the Mind: Thinking. v. 2. Willing”, Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We deny our Lord whenever, like Demas, we through love of this present world forsake the course of duty which Christ has plainly pointed out to us.

  Reginald Heber

  World, Christ, Lord

  Reginald Heber (1838). “Sermons: On the Lessons, the Gospel, Or the Epistle for Every Sunday in the Year, and for Week-day Festivals, Preached in the Parish Church of Hodnet, Salop”, p.333

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Mexican revolution was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Past, Mexican, Black

  "Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country's future". Interview with Anne-Marie O'Connor, articles.latimes.com. April 26, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature - equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Opportunity, Government, Law

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2016). “My Own Words”, p.348, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Opportunity, Rights, Government

  "West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette 319 U.S. 641". Judicial opinion, 1943.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hearing him speak is so fun, reassuring I dare say. You can say all you like about Sihanouk: that he's an atrocious liar, a madman, a fraud, a swashbuckler, an international blot. You may think that, but you cannot deny how in this age in which the political arena seems to generate only dull, obtuse and boring characters with no imagination, he's a kind of miracle.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Fun, Liars, Character

  "Interview with History". Book by Oriana Fallaci, 1974.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre "kick". Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Night, Profound, Imagination

  H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.145, Lulu.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket.

  Charles Lamb

  Pockets, Painful, Beggar

  Charles Lamb (1903). “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Miscellaneous Prose”, p.500, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

  Charles Lamb

  Knowing, Feelings, Attention

  'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would never deny that Jack Nicklaus is the greatest player who ever lived.

  Jack Nicklaus

  Player

  4 Copy quote

• With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use - I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident... it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be. I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it's direct.

  Jackson Pollock

  Drawing, Different, Use

  Interview by William Wright; as quoted in "Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics", ed. Clifford Ross, 1990, p. 144, Summer 1950.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.

  Helen Frankenthaler

  Painting, Surface, Flats

  Julia Brown, Helen Frankenthaler, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1998). “After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956-1959”, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes you can learn things from the way a person denies something. The choice of lies can be almost as helpful as the truth.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Lying, Choices, Way

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 1-5”, p.322, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• However, what Article VI [of the U.S. Constitution] does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is.

  Mike Huckabee

  Stupid, Doe, May

  9 Copy quote

• I have known many gods. He who denies them is blind as he who trusts them too deeply.

  Robert E. Howard

  Blind, Palate, Known

  Robert E. Howard (2016). “Fantastical Tales - The Ultimate Collection of Sword & Sorcery Action-Adventures, Time Travel & Mythical Worlds: Conan the Barbarian Series, The ‘Kull the Conqueror” Stories, The ‘Solomon Kane’ Saga, The ‘Bran Mak Morn’ Stories, The ‘Turlogh Dubh O'Brien’ Stories & The ‘James Allison’ Stories”, p.194, e-artnow

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Western countries allow no freedom of expression, which they claim to advocate, with regard to the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust, and nobody in the West enjoys the freedom of expression to deny it or raise doubts about it.

  Ali Khamenei

  Country, Expression, Holocaust

  "Leader's Address to Air Force Servicemen". www.leader.ir. February 07, 2006.

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

  Stephen Potter

  Player, Games, Names

  Stephen Potter (1962). “Three-upmanship: The theory & practice of gamesmanship: Some notes on lifemanship [and] One-upmanship”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two kinds of comprehensive doctrines, religious and secular. Those of religious faith will say I give a veiled argument for secularism, and the latter will say I give a veiled argument for religion. I deny both. Each side presumes the basic ideas of constitutional democracy, so my suggestion is that we can make our political arguments in terms of public reason. Then we stand on common ground. That's how we can understand each other and cooperate.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Ideas, Two

  19 Copy quote

• Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.

  John Searle

  Study, Problem, Materialism

  "Consciousness and Language". Book by John Searle, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.

  John Searle

  Dog, Baby, Believe

  "Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind". Book by John Searle, 1983.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source