Refuse Quotes - Page 31

• Somebody is going to win & somebody is not, and that's fine... But we will never refuse to participate because we're scared to fail.

  Chael Sonnen

  Winning, Mma, Scared

  7 Copy quote

• The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Needs, Faces, Serious

  Campaign address, Syracuse, N.Y., 29 Sept. 1936

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We live in this irreparably broken world, and I don't wish to deny reality, but the amazing thing to me is not that we refuse to relinquish hope as a species. The amazing thing is that we're right to hold on to hope. The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy. ... Obviously not all stories end happily. We don't always have good fortune, but hope gives us, as a species and as individuals, what we otherwise wouldn't have: A chance.

  John Green

  Crazy, Reality, Broken

  11 Copy quote

• The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

  Alice Miller

  Past, Childhood, Suffering

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.19, Macmillan

  75 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world.

  Lev Manovich

  Order, Enemy, Events

  24 Copy quote

• Settling for what is comfortable is one of the biggest enemies to our enlargement... In every season of life...we need to be committed to enlarging our personal capacity (even when it's not comfortable). We need to refuse to be satisfied with our latest accomplishments, as what we've accomplished is no longer our potential because it has been realized.

  Christine Caine

  Accomplishment, Enemy, Enlargement

  FaceBook post by Christine Caine from Dec 23, 2015

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader's eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things.

  Bill Barich

  Eye, Usual, Way

  6 Copy quote

• If you ever look sideways at another man or attempt to refuse me I shall beat you. Got it?

  Margaret Way

  Men, Looks, Sideways

  Margaret Way (1983). “The Girl at Cobalt Creek”, Harlequin Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what he says.

  C. S. Lewis

  Daughter, Mother, Bullying

  191 Copy quote

• Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding.

  Frances Wright

  Understanding, Admitting, Like You

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.45

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Passion, Mob Rule, Anarchy

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All those things at which thou wishest to arrive by a circuitous road, thou canst have now, if thou dost not refuse them to thyself.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Ifs, Thyself

  Marcus Aurelius (2015). “Meditations”, p.122, Sheba Blake Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans. If we are to work for the future of the city, let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were.

  John F. Kennedy

  Truth, Reality, Thinking

  "Address at the Free University of Berlin". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. June 26, 1963.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

  St. Jerome

  Dinner, Clergymen, Contempt

  St. Jerome (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Saint Jerome (Annotated Edition)”, p.199, Jazzybee Verlag

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Writing, Justice, Perfection

  "Characters: Of Works of the Mind," #67, 1688.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man may doubt of God's existence when he is in good health, just as he may doubt whether his relation with a harlot is sinful. When he falls ill, when dropsy develops, he leaves his concubine, and he believes in God.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Children, Believe, Fall

  "Of Freethinkers". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!

  August Strindberg

  Speaks Out, Long, People

  9 Copy quote

• Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?

  James Anthony Froude

  Men, Self, Law

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The nemesis of faith”, p.134

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.

  James Anthony Froude

  Temptation, Soul, Rising

  James Anthony Froude (1849). “The Nemesis of Faith”, p.182

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one is beat till he quits, no one is through till he stops. No matter how hard failure hits, no matter how often he drops, a fellow's not down till he lies in the dust and refuses to rise.

  Edgar Guest

  Lying, Dust, Matter

  Edgar Guest (1916). “A Heap o' Living'”

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Attitude, Winning, Trying

  "Charles Krauthammer: Thought police on patrol". www.washingtonpost.com. April 10, 2014.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ah why refuse the blameless bliss? Can danger lurk within a kiss?

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Kissing, Bliss, Danger

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1852). “Select Poetical Works”, p.16

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Modern critics, who refuse to let a plain thing alone, have now started a theory that Cervantes's work is a vast piece of "symbolism." If so, Cervantes didn't know it himself and nobody thought of it for three hundred years. He meant it as a satire upon the silly romances of chivalry.

  Stephen Leacock

  Silly, Years, Symbolism

  Stephen Leacock, Gerald Lynch (2002). “Leacock on Life”, p.49, University of Toronto Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Kind, Human Nature

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.238, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Compensation is counterintuitive:  The more treasure you give away to those who serve well, the more treasure will return to you.  But few people perceive this simple truth.  Most try to keep as much as they can for themselves and give little away.  That's why their purses refuse to fatten.

  Toyotomi Hideyoshi

  Simple, People, Giving

  78 Copy quote