Refusal Quotes - Page 3

• All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically

  Steven Weinberg

  Simple, Logical Arguments, Religion

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• The same chemicals were used in the cooking as were used on the composition of her own being: only those which caused the most violent reaction, contradiction, and teasing, the refusal to answer questions but the love of putting them, and all the strong spices of human relationship which bore a relation to black pepper, paprika, soybean sauce, ketchup and red peppers.

  Anais Nin

  Strong, Cooking, Black

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• Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.

  Adrienne Rich

  Eye, Self, Survival

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• Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.

  Richard Powers

  Self, Evil

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• America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration reform.

  George Will

  Government, America, Immigration

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• There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  War, Civilization, Political

  Reinhold Niebuhr (1967). “Love and justice: selections from the shorter writings of Reinhold Niebuhr”

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• Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Inspirational, Respect, Integrity

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• Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophy, Views, Atheism

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, p. 51, September 19, 2006.

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• There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Atheist, Believe, Pride

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “Snow”, p.99, Faber & Faber

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• When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Doors, Special

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.33, Faber & Faber

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• Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being.

  Mircea Eliade

  Past, Reality, Men

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• Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Christian, Hands, Optimism

  Richard John Neuhaus (2001). “The Best of "The Public Square".: Book two”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• I am your Prince and you will marry me," Humperdinck said. Buttercup whispered, "I am your servant and I refuse." "I am you Prince and you cannot refuse." "I am your loyal servant and I just did." "Refusal means death." "Kill me then.

  William Goldman

  Mean, Loyal, Marry Me

  William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride”, p.62, A&C Black

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• The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.

  Albert Camus

  Hero, Passion, Live In The Present

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• I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hate, People, Earth

  William Butler Yeats (1954). “The Letters of W.B. Yeats”

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• Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]

  Winston Churchill

  Reality, Genuine Love, Evil

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• The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed.

  Brennan Manning

  Fear, Lying, Self

  Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.4, NavPress

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• The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.

  Michael Pollan

  Moving, Garden, Ideas

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• In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Order, Break Through

  John Stuart Mill (2003). “Mill's On Liberty”, p.81, Agora Publications, Inc.

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• So many things which once had distressed or revolted him — the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move — all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Moving, Reality, Serenity

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• I didn’t know how much I could love until you were gone. Until your laughter no longer filled my home, your wicked high jinks no longer made me crazy. Until I stood in that damned club and knew, without you by side, my life was as empty as my bed was without you in it. I didn’t know what love was, until I saw my refusal to admit it drown all the sweet innocence in your eyes. I love you.

  Lora Leigh

  Sweet, Laughter, Crazy

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• This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Pain, Artist, Evil

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.291, Simon and Schuster

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• Come awake, Tom. Fathers can willfully hurt their children. They can be addicts too weak to give up their vices, no matter the pain it causes. Mothers can turn you invisible with neglect. They can erase you with a denial, a refusal to see. Friends can deceive you. People lie. It is a cold, hard world. I do not blame Nell Hawkins for retreating from it into a madness of her own choosing.

  Libba Bray

  Mother, Hurt, Pain

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• 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.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Happiness, Pain, Stupid

  "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Book by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1973.

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• It is our destiny to live with the wrong as well as the right kind of citizens, and to learn from them, the wrong-minded ones, as much or more as from others. If we have not yet succeeded -after how many centuries?- in eliminating from life the elements which plague us perhaps we need to question life more closely. Perhaps our refusal to face reality is the only ill we suffer from, and all the rest but illusion and delusion. (p.26)

  Henry Miller

  Reality, Destiny, Suffering

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