Top 100 Quotes About Refusal
#1. Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.
David Limbaugh
#2. It is impossible, in my mind, to distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its summary rejection by some general order, and the denial of the right of petition.
Caleb Cushing
#3. Time and time again, the obstinate refusal of the tsarist regime to concede reforms turned what should have been a political problem into a revolutionary crisis ... the tsarist regime's downfall was not inevitable; but its own stupidity made it so.
Orlando Figes
#4. With little going for me other than unstoppable eagerness, a sense of total commitment, and a stubborn refusal to give up on what felt like a divinely ordained scheme, I cast myself upon the waters of the world's oceans.
Roz Savage
#5. Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.
Rumi
#6. 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.
Frederick M. Vinson
#7. Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?
Bell Hooks
#8. Sin is a refusal to grow, a refusal to love, a refusal to get committed, to be concerned, and to take risks.
Anthony De Mello
#10. Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.
Eric Hoffer
#11. The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.
Albert Camus
#12. As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even where such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism.
C.S. Lewis
#13. A really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options ...
Peter Greenaway
#14. You can understand why a system would seek information - but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?
James Tiptree Jr.
#15. Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.
Leif Enger
#16. And she refused to go to that miserable place he had dragged her to so many times, to hope for a thing that was unchangeable.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#17. The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.
Arthur Brisbane
#18. In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill will.
Boris Pasternak
#19. Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal
Noam Chomsky
#20. The charm of your writing," Evelyn Waugh once wrote to Mitford, "depends on your refusal to recognize a distinction between girlish chatter and literary language.
Nancy Mitford
#21. The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.
Maggie Nelson
#22. Part of why I love New York so deeply is exactly this elusiveness. This refusal to be caught is what allows it to carry such fantasy, mystery and myth, yet also be home. It is simultaneously no one's city and everyone's city.
Becky Cooper
#23. The roots of any evil deed can be traced to the perpetrator's refusal to experience pain.
Keith Ablow
#24. It could be oddly dispiriting, the blank refusal of humankind to even attempt to function responsibly.
Jojo Moyes
#25. The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
Seamus Heaney
#26. Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
Ayn Rand
#27. Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.
Roland Barthes
#28. 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
#29. It is the absence of the knowledge of God and man's refusal to obey Him that lie at the root of every problem which besets us.
Billy Graham
#30. Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.
Diana Vreeland
#32. Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted upon the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated.
Alexander MacLaren
#33. Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard
#34. Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.
Bell Hooks
#35. All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Facts are stubborn, and refusal to accept them does not avoid their inexorable effects-the tragic consequences are now upon us
Helen Keller
#37. Really, Mr. Collins,' cried Elizabeth with some warmth, 'you puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one.
Jane Austen
#38. There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.
Paul Rudnick
#39. Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
Nathaniel Branden
#40. I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.
Yiyun Li
#41. Kraut was a stand-up guy in the old tradition, in a strange way reminiscent of my father in his steadfast refusal to abandon a position once he had taken it. It was a quality I lacked, and so admired in others when they weren't using it to beat me to the canvas or break my heart.
Miles Watson
#42. Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
Herbert Kaufman
#43. Refusal to participate is a moral choice. Water is a gift for all, not meant to be bought and sold. Don't buy it. When food has been wrenched from the earth, depleting the soil and poisoning our relatives in the name of higher yields, don't buy it.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
#44. 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
#45. The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.
Thomas Keneally
#46. What does it mean to know? Really? Is it knowing-her refusal to think concretely about other women? Her refusal to ever consider the possibility?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#47. It wasn't my doing. It is the drink and the laudanum and the opium and that bloody refusal to live. That selfish grief. I thought I could change it with magic, but I can't. People will be who they are, and there is not enough magic in any world to change that.
Libba Bray
#48. 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.
W.B.Yeats
#49. The only thing that keeps us rooted in the past is our refusal to embrace the present.
Dude, you gotta hug it with both arms and legs and hold on tight! The present is all we've got. That's why they call it a present!
Karen Marie Moning
#50. Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energy ... And they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer. p220
Rainbow Rowell
#51. Pain can be endured and defeated only if it is embraced. Denied or feared, it grows in perception if not in reality. The best response to terror is righteous anger, confidence in ultimate justice, a refusal to be intimidated.
Dean Koontz
#52. Prayer is in essence rebellion - rebellion against the world in its fallenness. Prayer is the undying refusal to accept as normal what is pervasively abnormal. It is the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.
David G. Wells
#53. A refusal to believe that God loves us is the unbelief which destroys the soul.
Edward Norris Kirk
#54. An individual's refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.
Noam Chomsky
#56. Hearing politicians tell us we can't afford a tax cut is like listening to a glutton tell you he can't afford a diet. In no other context do people talk about paying for money they don't have. I can't pay for your refusal to give me money because I need a yacht.
Ann Coulter
#57. Infinite Love is who we really are and who we refuse to be. This refusal is our most essential tension.
David Deida
#58. Thus it seems that the Cross of Christ, laden with every sinful refusal of man, must stand at the very last extremity of hell; indeed, it must stand beyond hell, where the Son is forsaken by the Father in a way that only he can know.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar
#59. Their terror had the evasive quality of guilt: it was not the fear that comes from understanding, but from the refusal to understand.
Ayn Rand
#60. 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
#61. Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning.
F. Paul Wilson
#62. Don't boast about your hardheartedness or refusal to shed tears. Instead, pray that God will give you a tender heart which will sympathize with others.
Lee Roberson
#63. One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
Chinua Achebe
#64. Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.
Bernie Siegel
#65. 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
#66. The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.
George C. Marshall
#67. For a moment he thought Laurent wasn't going to do it. But in public, Laurent had no recourse to refusal. Laurent extended his hand. And then waited, palm outstretched, his eyes lifting to meet Damen's. Laurent said, 'Put it on me.' Every
C.S. Pacat
#68. If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#69. I wish I could blame my failure on my integrity & refusal to play bullshit games. But the truth is I just play them really badly.
Stephen Schneider
#70. REFUSAL
When you refuse
to tell your weight
and age,
people know
you're fat and old.
Chocolate Waters
#71. Nothing seems to me more tragic than the pressures we put on artists to do what we think we'll like, and our refusal to prize what is most ornery and special about them.
Marcia B. Siegel
#72. My art history papers were really politics. They were about the manifestation of culture through the eye of political events. So there was always that refusal to settle in one place, or one discipline or medium.
Roselee Goldberg
#73. 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
#74. We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#75. Your refusal to contemplate your own death leads to your refusal to contemplate your own life.
Neale Donald Walsch
#76. How many times has our conscience firmly prompted us to 'draw the line,' and we showed up with an eraser?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#77. However often you may have done them a favour, if you once refuse they forget everything except your refusal.
Pliny The Younger
#78. Perhaps that is what love is
the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.
Phyllis Rose
#80. She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.
David Nicholls
#81. And if you sat at the dinner table long enough, whether in punishment or in refusal or simply in boredom, you never stopped sitting there. Some part of you sat there all your life.
Jonathan Franzen
#82. There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail - the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions.
Brock Clarke
#83. Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.
Jane Austen
#84. Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.
Sam Harris
#85. There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.
Ayn Rand
#86. Certainly we admire Satan as a symbol of the questioning mind, the refusal to serve, the refusal to blindly obey authority.
Lilith Starr
#87. The mastery of the true self, and the refusal to permit others to dominate us, is the ultimate in living and self-expression in athletics.
Percy Cerutty
#88. The slavery of identity comes from our refusal to face ourselves. So we must begin the exploration to self-awareness. Where do we start?
Ruben Papian
#89. Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one's life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.
Walter Brueggemann
#91. This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name which is wise, and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal which is also very wise. No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time to trying to understand it.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#92. 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
#93. As a writer I have always fought for the right to write. For writing is a time-honored means of communication. Lack of communication, the refusal of some to understand, or outright refusal to learn about other human beings is based on fear. Fear is what keeps people apart.
Piri Thomas
#94. While Darwin's tear is a defense, and Freud's tear is a symptomatic eruption, Sartre's tear is a refusal.
Eugenie Brinkema
#95. I didn't go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey.
Ben Kingsley
#96. All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically
Steven Weinberg
#97. The beginning of suffering is often a refusal to look at the situation as it really is.
Deepak Chopra
#98. The crucial thing is to arouse the awareness that as a matter of human conscience we can never permit the people of any country to fall victim to nuclear weapons, and for each individual to express their refusal to continue living in the shadow of the threat they pose.
Daisaku Ikeda
#100. We must learn not to give up when requirements are not met or when commitments are broken. To do so is a refusal to allow mistakes to be corrected and a demonstration of an unwillingness to forgive yourself or anyone else who needs forgiveness.
Iyanla Vanzant
