Refusal Quotes - page 2

In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
I feel that the recent ruling of the United States Army and Navy regarding the refusal of colored blood donors is an indefensible one from any point of view. As you know, there is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of the individual blood types or groups. View quote
Charles R. Drew
My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules. View quote
Harold Ramis
The refusal to acknowledge the scientific value of embryonic stem cell research is one more tragic misstep. View quote
Lois Capps
In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated. View quote
Margaret Halsey
There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think. View quote
Ayn Rand
If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ... self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences. View quote
Herbert Spencer
Knowledge isolates phenomena and things to observe with.... nothing is isolatable or can be removed from its environment. Anything which becomes isolated ceases to exist. It is like the violent refusal of someone to play a game in which everyone cheats. View quote
Karel Appel
Whatever be the substance which takes possession of such a soul, it will produce the same result, and will change into a pretext for not conforming to any concrete purpose. If it appears as reactionary or anti-liberal it will be in order to affirm that the salvation of the State gives a right to level down all other standards, and to manhandle one's neighbour, above all if one's neighbour is an outstanding personality. But the same happens if it decides to act the revolutionary; the apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. ... As regards other kinds of Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level. View quote
José Ortega y Gasset
We are living in a world which seems to be founded on the refusal to reflect. View quote
Gabriel Marcel
.. we didn't have the intention at all of founding a new style... What we wanted, was a refusal of the outmoded, overly-cultivated art practices. (Karl Schmidt-Rottluff)
Oblige people never so often, and, if you deny them on a single point, they remember nothing but that refusal. View quote
Pliny the Younger
ICELANDER: Thus I reply to you. I am well aware you did not make the world for the service of men. It were easier to believe that you made it expressly as a place of torment for them. But tell me: why am I here at all? Did I ask to come into the world? Or am I here unnaturally, contrary to your will? If however, you yourself have placed me here, without giving me the power of acceptance or refusal of this gift of life, ought you not as far as possible to try and make me happy, or at least preserve me from the evils and dangers, which render my sojourn a painful one? And what I say of myself, I say of the whole human race, and of every living creature. View quote
Giacomo Leopardi
As he (the gnani) gets older he grows more and more happy and peaceful. After all, he is going home. Like a traveller nearing his destination and collecting his luggage, he leaves the train without regret. (...) The mist of bodily existence is lifting – the burden of the body is growing less from day to day. (...) Every sensation is contemplated in perfect equanimity. There is no desire for it, nor refusal. It is as it is and he looks at it with a smile of affectionate detachment. (...) He is alone, but he is all. He is not even a being. He is the beingness of all beings. (...). View quote
Nisargadatta Maharaj
In fact, India is by no means a Hindu state; it was not based on the refusal to co-exist with others, as Pakistan was; and it is not squeezing out its minorities, as Pakistan is. The best refutation is provided by the highly anti-symmetrical migration stream: the constant trickle of Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh is not matched by a similar trickle of Muslim refugees from India, but by a vast movement of Muslim migrants from Bangladesh illegally settling in India. View quote
Koenraad Elst
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Some scientists hesitate to continue in a given field of research as soon as its application becomes apparent. This refusal to apply knowledge when it exists seems to us, however, to be as unrealistic as the attempt to apply knowledge before it exists. (page 8) View quote
Alfred Kinsey
Nothing will a man rue more than refusal to listen to the wise. View quote
Philo
All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. View quote
George W. Bush
Refusal noted and cordially declined. View quote
Scott Lynch
...it was in her refusal to allow any of us to indulge in self-pity of any kind...through a maddening style of argument, in which the following three statements were repeated in various sequences: A. It's your life + social commentary. B. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things. C. No one ever said that life was fair. (Nicholas Sparks)
Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does. View quote
Suzanne Collins
Everything in nature lives according to some order so it seems unlikely that humans live outside this system, even if they try to resist their instincts. That's how we can be sure we're not animals, this refusal to abide by what we know is good for us. If an animal's instinct tells him to avoid something he has no trouble keeping a wide berth. We, on the other hand, run in the direction of danger if it offers a thrill or satisfies a curiosity. View quote
Chrissie Hynde
There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god. View quote
Orhan Pamuk
In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives and among the Populares, the storms of revution had made fearful havoc.... In the 'democractic' party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 102 B. C.) drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius, he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal of the youth who had scrace outgrown the age of boyhood to send a divorce to his young wife cornelia at the biddining of the Dictator, as P(ompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla; his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened, and which was with difficulty. View quote
Theodor Mommsen