Quotes about acceptance
page 12

Ryū Murakami photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President. Like many Americans, I’ve been conflicted by this election – I still haven’t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month. But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else – American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party – it is your duty.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

written Twitter statement reported 8 October 2016 article by Variety https://variety.com/2016/biz/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-i-will-not-vote-for-the-republican-candidate-for-president-1201882915/, released a day after the release of the Access Hollywood tape from 2005 of an interview of Trump by Billy Bush
2010s

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.”

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 27

Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Martin Niemöller photo

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

Jacques Ellul photo
David Robert Grimes photo
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Feb. 15, 1936
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“Poetry's magic lies in the imagery which satifies even without interpretation.. it is accepted as easily as it was created.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

The Necessity of Poetry Tredegar 1917 (from Collected Essays).
Essays

Victor Villaseñor photo
John A. Eddy photo
Bill O'Neill photo
Akihito photo
Jennifer Beals photo
Sting photo

“Dissent is a legitimate and essential right in any democracy and modern politicians must accept this fact with tolerance. A sense of proportion — and a sense of humour — is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.”

Sting (1951) English musician

Joining with Amnesty International in condemning the Russian authorities’ treatment of Pussy Riot, a Russian punk rock protest band. "Sting condemns Russia's treatment of Pussy Riot musicians ahead of Moscow concert" Amnesty International (25 July 2012) http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/sting-condemns-russias-treatment-pussy-riot-musicians-ahead-moscow-concert-2012-07-25

Fritjof Capra photo
Michael Grimm photo
Bea Arthur photo
Ward Churchill photo
Camille Pissarro photo
Rick Santorum photo
Mohammad Mosaddegh photo
Pricasso photo

“This is a free country. A free society throws up these kinds of people, who exercise their freedom in unusual ways. And if this is how he wants to do it, I must accept his constitutional right to do so.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

Mayor of Capetown Helen Zille — cited in: [Cape Argus staff, Artist uses a different stroke on Zille portrait, Cape Argus, South Africa, 7 May 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About

Alain de Botton photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“In Swami Dayananda's view, the term Arya was not coterminous with the term Hindu. The classical meaning of the word Arya is 'noble'. It is used as an honorific term of address, used in addressing the honoured ones in ancient Indian parlance. The term Hindu is reluctantly accepted as a descriptive term for the contemporary Hindu society and all its varied beliefs and practices, while the term Arya is normative and designates Hinduism as it ought to be…. Elsewhere in Hindu society, 'Arya' was and is considered a synonym for 'Hindu', except that it may be broader, viz. by unambiguously including Buddhism and Jainism. Thus, the Constitution of the 'independent, indivisible and sovereign monarchical Hindu kingdom' (Art.3:1) of Nepal take care to include the Buddhist minority by ordaining the king to uphold 'Aryan culture and Hindu religion' (Art.20: 1)…. The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Josefa Iloilo photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Parker Palmer photo
William Gibson photo
Báb photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Keir Hardie photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the ground rules of the environment. The ground rules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serves as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 93

Margaret Sanger photo

“They will never forgive us, that we did not accept being slain or gassed a little.”

Zvi Rex (1909)

Source: „Man wird uns nie verzeihen, daß wir uns nicht haben erschlagen oder ein bißchen vergasen lassen.“ Christoph Buchwald: Odysseus hat entweder heimzukommen oder umzukommen. Notizen zur Rezeption Walter Mehrings nach 1950, in the quarterly die horen 1982, p. 15 https://books.google.de/books?id=lgpZAAAAMAAJ&q=1948

Leo Tolstoy photo

“The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and hymn-singing evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected … This was so among the Christians of the first centuries who accepted Christ teachings, if not quite in its true form, at least not yet in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of whole nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's teaching. And this Church Christianity … did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity — the direct relationship of each individual to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all people, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having founded a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, but not only of these divinities themselves but of their images, it made blind faith in its ordinances an essential point of its teachings.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of the Romans such as Julian and others, it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints, and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Florence Nightingale photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Stanley A. McChrystal photo
Isaac Asimov photo
David Ben-Gurion photo

“The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)

Jacques Ellul photo

“The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 28

Michael Moorcock photo
Margaret Sanger photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Review of Le Misanthrope, by Molière, at the Piccadilly (1962), p. 117
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

George Canning photo

“Who e'er ye are, all hail! – whether the skill
Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc'rous quill;
With powers mechanic far above his age,
Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;
Measures the column, mends what e'er's amiss,
Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, ‘Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin’, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 59.
About

Tom Robbins photo
Baruch Spinoza photo

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Ricky Gervais photo

“You have options. You can either continue to be miserable or you can just stop being angry at everyone and accept the way things are. Allow yourself to live.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

Ghost Town, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5SYnbz7wgU

Kent Hovind photo
Gavin McInnes photo

“I was an atheist most of my life and now I am a God-fearing Catholic, because of the miracle of life. And I’m pro-life. Amongst my peers abortion is cool, it’s like, empowering, and they make jokes about it. Some of my best friends go, ‘I accept that it’s murder and I am pro-choice.’ That’s the world I live in.”

Gavin McInnes (1970) Canadian writer

‘Godfather of Hipsterdom’ Gavin McInnes: Feminism makes women miserable http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/23/godfather-of-hipsterdom-feminism-makes-women-miserable/ (October 13, 2013)

Newton Lee photo
Kathy Griffin photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“It's an open question, the degree to which the cosmos would order itself around you properly if you got yourself together as much as you could get yourself together. We know that things can go very badly wrong if you do things very badly wrong – there's no doubt about that. But the converse is also true. If you start to sort yourself out properly, and if you have beneficial effect on your family, first of all that's going to echo down the generations, but it also spreads out into the community. And we are networked together. We're not associated linearly. We all effect each other. So it's an open question, the degree to which acting out the notion that being is good, and the notion that you can accept its limitations and that you should still strive for virtue. It's an open question as to how profound an effect that would have on the structure of reality if we really chose to act it out. I don't think we know the limits of virtue. I don't think we know what true virtue could bring about if we aimed at it carefully and practically. So the notion that there is something divine about the individual who accepts the conditions of existence and still strives for the good, I think that's an idea that's very much worth paying attention to. And I think the fact that people considered that idea seriously for at least 2000 years indicates that there's at least something to be thought about there.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Alain de Botton photo

“It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.”

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 9.

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

Daniel Dennett photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
René Lévesque photo

“There is a time when quiet courage and audacity become for a people at the key moments of its existence the only form of adequate caution. If it does not then accept the calculated risk of the great steps, it can miss its career forever, exactly like the man who is afraid of life.”

René Lévesque (1922–1987) Quebec politician

Il est un temps où le courage et l'audace tranquilles deviennent pour un peuple aux moments clés de son existence la seule forme de prudence convenable. S'il n'accepte pas alors le risque calculé des grandes étapes, il peut manquer sa carrière à tout jamais, exactement comme l'homme qui a peur de la vie.
On the plaque in front of his statue on the hill of the National Assembly of Quebec.

“Problems happen because women cannot accept polygamy. What about doing a big campaign so that women can accept polygamy?”

Ibrahim Ali (1957) Member of the Dewan Rakyat (parliament)

Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol II]

Oscar Niemeyer photo

“I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Quoted in "Gordon Bunshaft and Oscar Niemeyer: Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates 1988" http://www.pritzkerprize.com/bunnei.htm#...about%20Oscar%20Niemeyer, pritzkerprize.com (1988).

Kurt Schwitters photo

“My name is Schwitters, Kurt Schwitters... I'm a painter and I nail my pictures... I'd like to be accepted into the Dada Club”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Quote in his letter to Hans Richter, c. 1916; as quoted in 'Hannover-Dada' by Hans Richter; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by w:Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 151
1910s

Prem Rawat photo
John Adams photo
David Lloyd George photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“If they will abandon the habit of mutilating, murdering, robbing, and of preventing honest persons who are attached to England from earning their livelihood, they may be sure there will be no demand for coercion. Well, you will be told you have no alternative policy. My alternative policy is that Parliament should enable the Government of England to govern Ireland. Apply that recipe honestly, consistently, and resolutely for 20 years, and at the end of that time you will find that Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in the way of local government or repeal of coercion laws that you may wish to give her. What she wants is government—government that does not flinch, that does not vary—government that she cannot hope to beat down by agitations at Westminster—government that does not alter in its resolutions or its temperature by the party changes which take place at Westminster.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6. The Liberal MP John Morley responded https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/03/tenth-night#S3V0306P0_18860603_HOC_120 by claiming that Salisbury was in favour of "20 years of coercion" for Ireland, which Salisbury contested https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1886/jun/04/personal-explanation#S3V0306P0_18860604_HOL_10.
1880s

Aleister Crowley photo
Hassan Nasrallah photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Frank Herbert photo

“Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Gowachin Mrreg to Jorj X. McKie; p. 297
The Bureau of Sabotage series, The Dosadi Experiment (1977)

Jürgen Habermas photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo
Aldous Huxley photo
John McLaughlin photo

“Whether people accept this music or not, I don’t give a damn. I know how good—and right—the group is. We all sell out to a point. And don’t get me wrong, I like living comfortably and having a nice car. But if money determines your art, then what’s the point?”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On the criticism of his acoustic band Shakti, after temporarily retiring his electric period with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, as quoted in Jerome, Jim. "John McLaughlin Pulls the Plug on His Guitar, but He's as Electrifying as Ever", People Magazines. 21 June 1976. http://people.com/archive/john-mc-laughlin-pulls-the-plug-on-his-guitar-but-hes-as-electrifying-as-ever-vol-5-no-24/

“Diverting attention from the way in which certain beliefs, desires, attitudes, or values are the result of particular power relations, then, can be a sophisticated way of contributing to the maintenance of an ideology, and one that will be relatively immune to normal forms of empirical refutation. If I claim (falsely) that all human societies, or all human societies at a certain level of economic development, have a free market in health services, that is a claim that can be demonstrated to be false. On the other hand, if I focus your attention in a very intense way on the various different tariffs and pricing schema that doctors or hospitals or drug companies impose for their products and services, and if I become morally outraged by “excessive” costs some drug companies charge, discussing at great length the relative rates of profit in different sectors of the economy, and pressing the moral claims of patients, it is not at all obvious that anything I say may be straightforwardly “false”; after all, who knows what “excessive” means? However, by proceeding in this way I might well focus your attention on narrow issues of “just” pricing, turning it away from more pressing issues about the acceptance in some societies of the very existence of a free market for drugs and medical services. One can even argue that the more outraged I become about the excessive price, the more I obscure the underlying issue. One way, then, in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.”

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 54.

János Esterházy photo

“We Hungarians accept principle that in time when Germany and Italy fight their giant struggle to guarantee better future of Europe and for fair and permanent peace, small and middle-sized states in the central Europe can only have the obligation to guard and secure in every way peace and understanding in their countries.”

János Esterházy (1901–1957) Czechoslovak member of Czechoslovak national parliament, russian nation politician and hungary nation polit…

About international relationships. Parliamentary speech on November 26, 1940.
International relationships

Toni Morrison photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo
Benjamin Harrison photo
Charles Stross photo