Refuse Quotes - page 17
I have invented [c. 1915-1916] a new series of verses, verses without words, or sound poems, in which the balancing of the vowels is gauged and distributed according to the value of the initial line... With these sound poems we should renounce language, devastated and made impossible by journalism. We should withdraw into the innermost alchemy of the word, and even surrender the word, thus conserving for poetry its most sacred domain. We should refuse to make poems second-hand; we should stop taking over words (not to mention sentences) which we did not invent entirely anew for our own use. We should no longer be content to achieve poetic effects which, in the final analysis, are but echoes of inspiration..
Hugo Ball
We do not mechanically connect the sensation of white with the idea of light, any more than we connect the sensation of black with the idea of darkness. We admit that a black jewel, even if of a dead black, may be more luminous than the white or pink satin of its case. Loving light, we refuse to measure it, and we avoid the geometrical ideas of the focus and the ray, which imply the repetition-contrary to the principle of variety which guides us-of bright planes and sombre intervals in a given direction. Loving colour, we refuse to limit it, and subdued or dazzling, fresh or muddy, we accept all the possibilities contained between the two extreme points of the spectrum, between the cold and the warm tone.
Albert Gleizes
I Shall Sing No Song That Is Not A Country Song.
I Shall Make No Record That Is Not A Country Record.
I Refuse To be Known As Anything But A Country Singer.
I Am Proud To be Associated With Country Music.
Country Music And Country Music Fans Made Me What I Am Today.
And I Shall Not Forget It.
Buck Owens
So if I succeed in my effort at suicide tonight then this will sure be the last I'll ever say or write on this earth. The choice is mine and I fully realize just what I am doing. I would like to have it known just why I do this. I had no choice about coming into this world and nearly all of my 38 years in it I have had very little to say or do about how I should live my life. People have driven me into doing everything I have ever done. Now the time has come when I refuse to be driven any further. Tonight I die and tomorrow I go to the grave farther than that no man can drive me I am sure glad to leave this lousy world and the lousier people that live in it. But of all the lousy people in this world I believe that I am the lousiest of them all. Today I am dirty but tomorrow I'll be just DIRT.
Carl Panzram
We are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist. This is especially the case when what we do not wish to see is what we wish to eat. If it were really indispensable, or, if not indispensable, at least in some way useful! But it is quite unnecessary ... And this is continually being confirmed by the fact that young, kind, undepraved people - especially women and girls - without knowing how it logically follows, feel that virtue is incompatible with beefsteaks, and, as soon as they wish to be good, give up eating flesh.
Leo Tolstoy
At this time I was hesitant to venture into the greenery, because I wasn't keen on the possibility of having spiders the size of basketballs drop onto my face from overhead branches and refuse to let go. (...) Hunger pains were moving to the 'excruciating' stage by mid-morning. After a last-ditch attempt to extract nutrients from filling my mouth with sand, I decided that, if a big spider the size of a basketball dropped onto my face and tried to eat it, I would eat it back and we could turn the whole thing into an exciting competition.
Ben Croshaw
The right response when, in the army, you are given an unlawful order, is to refuse that order. The right response of a chief executive in this state and in this nation, when faced with an order by a court that he conscientiously believes violates the constitution he is sworn to respect, is to refuse their order!
Alan Keyes
He [somebody at Carnegie Mellon University] had betrayed us. But he didn't just do it to us. Chances are he did it to you too. [Pointing at member of audience. ] And I think, mostly likely, he did it to you too. [Pointing at another member of audience. ][Laughter] And he probably did it to you as well. [Pointing to third member of audience. ] He probably did it to most of the people here in this room - except a few, maybe, who weren't born yet in 1980. Because he had promised to refuse to cooperate with just about the entire population of the Planet Earth. He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Richard Stallman
I refuse to accept the notion that we couldn't have prevented some of those murders, and suicides, and kept more families whole. I know we won't all agree on this issue. But it's time to be honest - fewer gun safety laws don't mean more freedom, they mean more fallen officers. They mean more grieving families, and more Americans terrified that they or their loved ones could be next.
Barack Obama
In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.
Barack Obama
Seeing that I can find no subject specially useful or pleasing - since the men who have come before me have taken for their own every useful or necessary theme - I must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. I, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares I offer may be worth.
Leonardo da Vinci
