Top 100 Don't Say Yes Quotes
#1. That's my curse, I see the politics within these things and so I don't say yes to them.
Alex Cox
#2. Don't say yes to something just because it's an opportunity.
Lennon Parham
#4. Being a feminist simply means you believe in equal rights, and I think if you ask anybody if they believe in equal rights, they'll say yes, man or woman. And if they don't - who the heck would say that?
Leighton Meester
#5. I hate your reasons. I don't want reasons. If you see somebody in pain, people like you reason and reason. You say - pain is a good thing, perhaps he'll be better for it one day. I want to let my heart speak ... Yes. At the end of a gun.
Graham Greene
#6. Don't worry. I know the truth."
"The truth about what?"
Cam stepped back. "You want to say yes, but you're just not ready."
My jaw dropped.
"It's okay." His grin turned cocky. "I'm a lot to handle, but I can assure you, you'll have fun handling me.
J. Lynn
#7. Retirement is not a dirty word, I am just enjoying what I am doing. If they want me to retire, then stop asking me. Ask and I will say yes unless it is something I really don't like.
Betty White
#8. When you go on a stage, before you go on a stage you're really scared and you're really frightened. You don't know what to do. "Why did I say yes to this?" But once you're on the stage you think, "Okay."
Yoko Ono
#9. Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.
Philip Pullman
#10. I don't want my offer to be tempting. I want it to be irresistible, so tell me what it will take for you to say yes." She studies me and grins. "I need time, and I need to know you better.
Georgia Cates
#11. What some people don't understand about new clothes is it's not about the clothes. It's the promise of how happy you'll be when you wear them, the wonderful things you'll be doing in them, how people will look at you and say, yes, there's a woman who really likes herself.
Kristan Higgins
#12. Don't be afraid to say "No". It's empowering. Remember, a "Yes" is a commitment. Give them wisely.
Sharon Law Tucker
#13. I don't believe in making five-year plans. I don't want to say, "Yes, I want to have children in the next five years," because I don't know. I've always known that I'd like to be a mom, but I don't want to live by a schedule. If I [did], I wouldn't be living in the moment.
Charlize Theron
#14. I look for strong people. I don't like people who'll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that's reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought great writers and columnists to 'The Standard.'
Anna Wintour
#15. I say this with all respect so that it don't upset you too bad, but I say it anyway. When I read in the Bible where he [Jesus] says, 'I Am,' I just smile and say, 'Yes, I Am, too!'
Kenneth Copeland
#16. When we are young - or even 32 - we often say 'yes' to everything because we're worried that we won't know what we'll like if we don't try it.
Jami Attenberg
#17. Don't be afraid to ask. All they can say is no....and they might say yes.
Lorri Moulton
#18. You don't have to say yes to everything, you know. It's okay to say no.
Janet Gurtler
#19. I loathed school. I don't have an academic mind, and besides I was so bored by my teachers! How teachers can take a child's inventiveness and say yes, yes, in that pontifical way of theirs, and smother everything!
John Hurt
#20. I want to say yes, but I don't want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be somebody else's first choice
Jenny Han
#21. Basch: So why don't you ask her out?
The Runt: I'm scared she wouldn't like me and say no.
-So what? What have you got to lose?
-The possibility -if she says no- that she might have said yes. Whatever I do, I don't want to lose that possibility.
Samuel Shem
#22. Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.
Karl Lagerfeld
#23. Kindness takes energy. If I say yes to everything, I don't have energy left to be kind.
Esther Hizsa
#24. Have you noticed the words which Old Testament people use when someone important calls them by name? They don't say "What?" or "Yes?" They answer with the curious sentence, "Here I am". So much is in that sentence: readiness to respond, a willing servitude, an offering of oneself to the other.
Walter Wangerin Jr.
#25. Producers don't like the director who ignores their opinion - but I always try not to be the nicest person when making a movie. It's easy to do that. Just say 'Yes sir', Alright', 'Okay' - but they're not seeing the movie because if they can, they should be directing the movie.
Ryuhei Kitamura
#26. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Okay, would you like pizza?"
"I don't think you deserve my company but I feel sorry for you so I'll say yes."
"God help me," he said, half under his breath.
Melina Marchetta
#27. Did we win?" Salan asked as Karol stood. "Hell yes, we did," Karol said, glad that he didn't have to lie to say it. "You just stay there and wait your turn. And don't get impatient. We don't rush the cunning men for pinpricks and scrapes." "Be all right with me if they rushed a little, sir.
Daniel Abraham
#28. I don't think you can really change anything unless you're willing to say yes.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#29. Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but don't forget that he never promised he'd say yes. He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all. Except one thing. Just one thing ...
That he cares ... That is all. Nothing else.
Madeleine L'Engle
#30. When someone asks me to do something, something new, something I don't know about, and if I haven't done it, I'll say yes. Just so I can try something new. You never know what you might like.
Osric Chau
#31. Don't ya wanna hear the secret?' his eyes were narrow and mean, despite the glaze of rum. Louer drained his glass and slammed it to the bar. 'You get happy by learnin' to say 'yes' to what life offers you, but stay happy by rememberin' when to start sayin' 'no'.
T.B. McKenzie
#32. You lose nothing by being polite. The answer is 'No', but please say it politely and give the reasons ... Explain to me why 'No'. Don't change 'No' to 'Yes'. Don't be a fool. If there was a good reason why it is 'No', it must remain 'No', but the man must be told politely.
Mr. Lee
#33. Saying "yes" doesn't mean I don't know how to say no, and saying "please" doesn't mean I am waiting for permission.
Amy Poehler
#34. People who smoke cigarettes, they say "You don't know how hard it is to quit smoking." Yes I do. It's as hard as it is to start flossing.
Mitch Hedberg
#35. I am an Arsenal player and I don't think about anything else. I'm not going to say no to anybody, nor am I going to say yes to anybody. I did not say that I was going to leave Arsenal to go to Barcelona, because equally Barcelona doesn't want me.
Cesc Fabregas
#36. I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!'
Vivienne Westwood
#37. If you have a mental model that says big corporations are fundamentally greedy and selfish and exploitative, you don't really want to have an exception to that model. It's much easier to say, 'Yes, Whole Foods has been corrupted.'
John Mackey
#38. When we say 'Yes' to something we are always saying
'No' to something else. So in that way, we never 'don't do' anything. We are just doing something else.
Malti Bhojwani
#39. I'm always surprised when actors say they don't like sex scenes. It's like a freebie. It's fun to make out with someone. So yes, thumbs up on that.
Mackenzie Davis
#40. Is there something else you have to say? Something you're not telling me?" "Yes. Up your game, Stark. These might be the End Times. I don't want you half-assing your way through them." It's a good party-line statement, but it's not what he's thinking about. There's something else.
Richard Kadrey
#41. I have so many things that I want to do, and I don't have enough time in my life to do them all. The problem with acting business is that it's so expensive and you've got to get so many people to say yes.
Frank Spotnitz
#42. Rome, yes, I say, thinking in quick succession of the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the cardinals screwing around while wondering whether women have souls or not, and of Nero, of course, who killed his closest family and let the city burn. I don't reckon he liked people, either.
Erlend Loe
#43. Did I say 'aspect ratio'? Yes I did. And if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, there's a very good chance your television at home is set to the wrong aspect ratio, in which case I'd like you to stop reading right now and punch yourself hard in the kidneys.
Charlie Brooker
#44. County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that's the problem. I don't know how to spell it and I'm not allowed to say it. Could you just rattle off all the swear words you know and I'll stop you when ... Hello?
Bill Watterson
#45. Ray, don't get mad just because I say yes to life. I like to keep myself available to the universe, because it brings me wisdom. Maybe you don't just want me to soar.
Douglas Coupland
#46. I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
W. H. Auden
#47. When the song is over, she bows and I clap. I wonder how come she seems so brave. There is no part of her she hides. Lakeisha sits with me now on the bed and says,"Wanna hear a story?" I don't have to say yes before she tells me .
Heidi W. Durrow
#48. I don't know if I'll get a happy ending. But why worry about a happy ending? Why worry about any ending at all? I don't know where I'm going next, and for the first time in forever, I don't want to. I want my life to be picaresque. Fantastical. I want to say yes and.
Samantha Ellis
#49. I cannot be called upon to know a negative or to prove a negative. if there is a god and you prove it, that's fine. but you don't tell me you can't know that there isn't. i would say yes i know there isn't because i have been given no evidence.
Ayn Rand
#50. Say yes to the one thing that frightens you, that intrigues, that you think you can't do. Say yes and don't look back. It will or it won't be, but you'll never know until you say yes.
Lexi Blake
#51. Yes, fine," I say, feeling dead inside. They don't know what they're in for at Spence, getting me, a ghost of a girl who'll nod and smile and take her tea who isn't really here.
Libba Bray
#52. Do you still love me, Janie?'
Janie stares at him, incredulous. 'Yes, of course! I don't say it lightly.'
'Say it lightly in my ear,' he demands.
She smiles, rests her soft cheek on his scratchy one, and whispers it. 'I love you, Cabe.
Lisa McMann
#53. I don't know that I will ever make a political speech again." Would he care to qualify that statement? one reporter queried. "Yes," Roosevelt laughingly said. "I won't say never.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#54. Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments - the American people really don't care.
Chuck Schumer
#55. You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.
Charlton Heston
#56. If you've stacked on the weight over time, and if you don't have any health issues, you don't realise. So you'll see yourself in the mirror and, yes, you know what the scales say, but you don't actually see what other people see.
Barry O'Farrell
#57. It is a big problem and so I don't know for sure if I say yes or no to Ferrari.
Valentino Rossi
#58. When I don't know what to do with a character, that's when I say yes to it. When it's far away from the way I am, the way I feel or the way I think, that's when it's more attractive.
Demian Bichir
#59. I don't say no as much as I should. I'm an extreme workaholic. So I can be sick, and I still say yes to anything. When you are the CEO of your own company, editor of your own videos, your own writer ,and you do every role yourself, you have a hard time saying no to opportunities.
Lilly Singh
#60. Stardom happens - you can't plan it - it's destiny, and you shouldn't stand between you and your destiny. I'm letting my destiny play its part, and I go by my gut feeling. If I like my role, I say yes; if I don't, I just refuse, as simple as that.
Randeep Hooda
#61. That easy, confident grin returned. "Don't worry, it's easily forgotten."
"Well," I said huffily, "it shouldn't be that easily forgotten."
"Would you like it better if I say I'll eventually forget it but not without a great deal of struggle and torment?"
"Yes."
"Done.
Richelle Mead
#62. ... some leaders don't want to celebrate with their team because they are afraid - yes, afraid that if they celebrate, people will quit working hard and lower the standards. I say don't let your fear take you out.
Lee Ellis
#63. What's the worst that can happen?" said Teatime. "You'll lose your job. Whereas if you don't, you'll die. So if you look at it like that, we're actually doing you a favor. Oh, do say yes.
Terry Pratchett
#64. When you say "Yes" to something, you include something you do want in your experience. When you say "No" to something, you include something you don't want in your experience.
Esther Hicks
#65. You don't need to know why God sent you to the earth before you say "yes" to what He sent you for! He wants you to prosper and he is the only one who knows "how?"!
Israelmore Ayivor
#66. You don't know me," she says. "Yes, I do," I say.
Ally Condie
#67. Don't be too concerned about the wingnut ears. Anxiety produces the wrong pheromones. Roll with the punches. Make time for life around your deep abiding need to write. Say Yes more, but not always. Say No enough that you have a life.
Nick Earls
#68. If you're not too busy this evening, why don't you bring your soft shoes and your pads over to officers' row and we'll go waltzing Matilda? Say about eight o'clock." "Yes, sir." "That's not an order, that's an invitation. If you really are slowing down,
Robert A. Heinlein
#69. And in improvisation there is one hard and fast rule, and that rule is known as 'Yes And'. The term yes and: to say yes, and not just yes, but to add information. In the adding of information you don't negate the other persons idea - but you build on it.
Maya Rudolph
#70. I have no idea what goes on in another person's mind. As a legislator, I need to be good at persuading people, counting votes and getting to 50 percent plus one. I don't go back and say, 'Why did this person get to the right position?' It's only, 'Are you yes or are you no?'
Tammy Baldwin
#71. The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you're not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don't take it personally when they say 'no' - they may not be smart enough to say 'yes.
Keith Olbermann
#72. I don't know what I believe anymore, and really, I try not to think about it. But the psychologists say that suicide is a behavioral contagion. It's the old adage "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" Apparently the answer is yes. To
Suzanne Young
#73. When people ask, Do you like children? I always say, I like some children, yes. Some children I don't like.
Isaac Mizrahi
#74. Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don't make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.
Gary Keller
#75. I don't see how I could possibly move a napkin with the power of my mind," I say.
"All will be revealed."
"Did you just say, 'All will be revealed'?"
He looks up. "Yes."
"Who says, 'All will be revealed'?"
"I do," Packard says. "Just perform the task.
Carolyn Crane
#76. Hey," I say as I rest the phone on my shoulder.
"Are you really dripping wet and wearing a tiny white towel?" he asks in a raspy low voice.
"Yes, I just got out of the shower."
"Good," he exhales into the line. "At least I don't have this raging hard-on for no reason.
Claire Contreras
#77. Being Mormon is a big part of who I am, and I try very hard to live the right way, but I don't know that I'm an example. I hate to say, 'Yes, look at me. I'm a good example of being Mormon.' I want to be the best person I can be, so in that aspect, maybe I'm a good example.
Stephenie Meyer
#78. I don't mind if somebody comes up to me and shakes my hand, but if I'm in the middle of a restaurant and somebody asks me for a picture, I can be a jerk and say no, or I can say yes and draw more attention to myself, which is exactly the opposite of what I want.
Macaulay Culkin
#79. My goal now is to remember every place I've been, only do things I love, and not say yes when I don't mean it.
Sandra Bullock
#80. Yes, dear Father. But has it ever occurred to you that by controlling [your feelings] you destroy them? How many times can we say sorry before we don't feel sorry anymore?
John Le Carre
#81. You planted a bug on me?"
"Yes."
"And you don't think that was wrong?"
"I don't care."
Prophet blinked. "Fuck. That's something I'd say.
S.E. Jakes
#82. I say, Peter," whispered Edmund. "Look at those carvings on the walls. Don't they look old? And yet we're older than that. When we were last here, they hadn't been made."
"Yes," said Peter. "That makes one think.
C.S. Lewis
#83. Yes, I'm a patriotic person. For these people who disgrace the American way and burn our flag and do all of these things ... I say, don't live here and disgrace my country. Go live in the Middle East and see how you like it.
Payne Stewart
#84. I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.
Faye Wattleton
#85. As women, do we have the same rights as men to enjoy sex? How many of us would say yes, we do have a right, we have a equal right to enjoy sex, and if our husbands don't satisfy us, then we have a right to seek satisfaction elsewhere.
Azar Nafisi
#86. You can trust Christ at this moment. The Bible says, "Now is the accepted time" [2 Corinthians 6:2 KJV]. Don't put it off. Don't say, "I'll think about it." Don't say, "I'll do it tomorrow." Do it right now. At this moment, say yes to Jesus Christ.
Billy Graham
#87. I said, 'I don't like the way you look.'
Quincy stopped his work. He said, 'Are you talking to me, runt?'
I said, 'Yes, and I will say it again. I don't like the way you look and I don't like the way you are cutting up that turkey. I hope you go to jail. My lawyer will not help you.
Charles Portis
#88. Say something," he said.
"What?" I mumbled, struggling to orient myself. "What?"
"Can you hear me? What day is it? Who's the president?"
"Yes, I don't know, and a horse's ass.
Jordan Castillo Price
#89. Qui tacet consentire. If you don't say no, you just said yes. He
M.R. Carey
#90. I didn't say yes. I can say no to anything I say vile, and I don't have to count the cost. But because you said yes, all that you can do, for all your crown and your trappings, and your guards - all that your can do is to have me killed.
Sophocles
#91. Come live with us, Diana. Don't argue. Just say yes."
Diana looked at the ground to hide her emotions. Then she said, "Would I have to be hearing you two going at it night and day?
Michael Grant
#92. Why don't I just pretend I'm on camera, Plutarch?" I say.
"Yes! Perfect. One is always much braver with an audience," he says. "Look at the courage Peeta just displayed!"
It's all I can do not to slap him.
Suzanne Collins
#93. Quiet down," said Falin. "Didn't you say something about an ambush and a murderer?"
"Crap, yes," said Marcus, and pulled Kira down behind the escalator. "Also: murderess. Don't be sexist, women can murder people too.
Dan Wells
#94. If one of my heroes comes to me and says, 'Do you want to work on something?' I just say, 'Yes.' I don't ask for details; I don't expect to get paid anything. I just love working with my heroes.
Moby
#95. Try to be thoughtful,
don't make the poor man say it;
see how human he is,
he has children of his own,
it is your job to ask:
Is she dead?
And he will nod and say yes
And now he can never not nod.
And now he can never say no.
And now he can never not say
yes.
Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno
#96. If I'm on my own, I'll speak to 'Monkey' to generate new stuff for the act. I mean, I don't do it for moral support, although I wouldn't say that's out of the question. In fact, I could do it, I might do it ... yes, I think I should actually start doing it more.
Nina Conti
#97. Yes, I feel I've got something to say. If people want to listen, that's great, and if they don't, that's their choice.
Tony Blair
#98. I think in any organization you want your manager to have a strong opinion. You don't want them to just say, 'Yes, sir' to things they don't believe in.
Terry Francona
#99. I have worried about getting pigeon-holed, but now I think I've done enough weird, offbeat stuff not to be. And I also know that I do things for the right reasons: I've made my money, so I don't have to say yes to anything.
Christopher Meloni
#100. You dueled?" Lily asked
"Yes. And if we do it again, it will be-"
"DON'T SAY IT!" Thibaud screamed.
"-a dual duel," I completed, with satisfaction.
Rachel Cohn
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