Refrain Quotes - page 6
World government must progressively be established, common problems must be solved by common action, economic and racial justice and fellowship must be achieved... empires must be transformed into commonwealths, the race of armaments must be stopped and the system of balance-of-armed-power must be brought to an end, the churches must take Jesus seriously by trusting goodwill and pacific means and by disentangling themselves from the war system, a mighty movement of peoples must be created so that governments will maintain friendly and cooperative relations and will refrain from hostile and provocative actions. ...Now is the time to prevent a third world war.
Kirby Page
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.
Aleister Crowley
Such superstitions which are in flagrant conflict with scientific universalism, should be dealt with by intellectuals, and the state will have done more than its share if it does not impede the broadcasting of their criticism of these superstitions. The state should just refrain from banning books eventhough they hurt the feelings of those steeped in the said superstitions. It should refrain from pressurizing or boycotting or prosecuting people who perform their legitimate task of educating people concerning such superstitions. It should refrain from imposing history-distortions on schoolbooks, i.e. from concealing the truth about the evil effects of such superstitions. (That the Indian state is so far not secular enough to refrain from this sabotage of the intellectual struggle against superstition, is shown in ch. 12)
Koenraad Elst
(Hirsi Ali has just given a page of examples of Islamic terrorism) Fear has an effect.
Thus slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, people begin to get used to not saying certain things, or they say them but certainly won't write them. The thin fingers of self-censorship begin to tighten around individual minds, then groups of people, then around ideas themselves and their expression. When free speech crumbles in this way, when Westerners refrain from criticizing or questioning certain practices, certain aspects of Islam, they abandon those Muslims who seek to question them too. They also abandon their own values. Once they have done that, their society is lost.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I recognize the fact that the sacrifices made by the Italian Jews during the war were considerable and generous, but now it is a question of examining certain political positions and of indicating what line the government might eventually adopt... This is in the interest of the Jews, who, having fled from the pogroms of Ukraine and Poland, must not meet Arab pogroms in Palestine; moreover, it is advisable that the Western nations should refrain from creating a painful legal position for the Jews, since to-morrow those same Jews, becoming citizen-subjects of those States, might immediately form foreign colonies within them.
Benito Mussolini
No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system's destructive path, we can't deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming. In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It's past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet.
David Suzuki
Amarantine is an ancient word, which means eternity. The poets describe an undying flower with that word, and I fell in love with that idea ... For me that word suited rhythmically to the refrain of the piece. A-ma-ran-ti-ne. In our website the fans tried to guess something super-romantic to be the album's name, but this word was obviously never guessed by anyone.
Enya
Scores of courts, the President's own Attorneys General, state election officials, both Republican and Democrat, have reached that unequivocal decision. And in light of today's sad circumstances, I ask my colleagues, do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What's the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience? Leader McConnell said that the vote today is the most important in his 36 years of public service. Think of that. Authorizing two wars, voting in two impeachments. He said that not because the vote reveals something about the election, it's because this vote reveals something about us. I urge my colleagues to move forward with completing the electoral count, to refrain from further objections, and to unanimously affirm the legitimacy of the Presidential election.
Mitt Romney
I also believe the time has come for this institution to become more inclusive so that it can better respond to the needs of today's world.
Members of the U.N. Security Council, including the United States, should consistently uphold and defend the U.N. Charter and refrain - refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.
That is also why the United States supports increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives of the Council. This includes permanent seats for those nations we've long supported and permanent seats for countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Joe Biden
