Refusal Quotes - Page 9

• A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Rights, Individualism

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.406, Penguin

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• In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

  Robert Greene

  Masculine And Feminine, Play, People

  Robert Greene (2010). “The Art Of Seduction”, p.51, Profile Books

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• Our lack of intimacy is due to our refusal to unplug and shut off communication from all others so we can be alone with Him.

  Francis Chan

  Communication, Intimacy, Dues

  Francis Chan, Preston Sprinkle (2014). “The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply”, p.213, David C Cook

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• Frivolity is the species' refusal to suffer.

  John Lahr

  Suffering, Species, Frivolity

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• In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Past, Reality, Culture

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.75, Routledge

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• Nationalism is fraught with dangers, of course, but so is the blind refusal to recognize that attachment to one's own culture, traditions, and history is a creative, normal, and healthy part of human experience.

  Anthony Daniels

  Attachment, Creative, Healthy

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• The name of God should no longer come from the mouth of man. This word that has so long been degraded by usage no longer means anything.... To use the word God is more than sloth, it is a refusal to think, a king of short cut, a hideous shorthand.

  Arthur Adamov

  God, Kings, Mean

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• Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm.

  Leo Strauss

  Philosophy, Humble, Men

  Leo Strauss, Hilail Gildin (1989). “An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays”, p.39, Wayne State University Press

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• Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

  H. L. Mencken

  Government, Effort, Resistance

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.204, Knopf

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• Every time a bank swoops down to snatch up a home, it should be met with a crowd of jeering, obstructive neighbors. And although this may be point 4.5, how about organizing a mass refusal to pay back student loans?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Home, Crowds, May

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• The Declaration of Independence...is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution's refusal to 'deny or disparage' other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges' list against laws duly enacted by the people.

  Laura Schlessinger

  Rights, Government, Law

  "The Grandparent Dissent" by George F. Will, www.washingtonpost.com. June 7, 2000.

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• Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal

  Noam Chomsky

  Opportunity, Devil, Criminals

  Noam Chomsky (1999). “Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order”, p.91, Seven Stories Press

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• Once you have confidence in your instincts, you must never allow other people's refusal to believe, or their data to refute, what you instinctively know is true.

  T. D. Jakes

  Inspirational, Believe, Data

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• The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique.

  Richard Rohr

  Love, Spiritual, Loneliness

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• The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for.

  John Fowles

  Love, Sex, Men

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• Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, People, Suffering

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “Bowen's Court & Seven Winters”, p.205, Random House

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• Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Artist, Creative, Grace

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2002). “Letters on Cézanne”, p.60, Macmillan

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• The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.

  Arthur Brisbane

  Savages, Characteristics, States

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• The engineer's power was usually limited to a refusal to endorse a given plan, or to the tender of his resignation.

  Samuel Florman

  Engineering, Given, Resignation

  Samuel Florman (2013). “The Existential Pleasures of Engineering”, p.31, Souvenir Press

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• The unification of opposites which characterizes the commercial and political style is one of the many ways in which discourse and communication make themselves immune against the expression of protest and refusal.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Communication, Expression, Opposites

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.90, Beacon Press

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• In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.

  John Stuart Mill

  Political, Age, Example

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.67, Cambridge University Press

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• There is a vast difference - a constitutional difference-between restrictions imposed by the state which prohibit the intellectual commingling of students, and the refusal of individuals to commingle where the state presents no such bar.

  Fred M. Vinson

  Differences, Intellectual, Bars

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• The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression.

  Albert Camus

  Lying, Commitment, Writing

  Albert Camus (1960). “Speech of Acceptance Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Delivered in Stockholm on the Tenth of December, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty-seven. [Translated by Justin O'Brien”

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• I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.

  Will Self

  Attention, Pay, Facts

  "Will Self: modernism and me" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2012.

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• REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired; Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Desire, Denial, Lasts

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2495, Delphi Classics

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