Quotes about acceptance (3726 quotes, page 15)

“Nawf! Prophet David (Daud) once got up at such an hour in the night and said this was the hour when prayers of everyone who prayed were accepted except of those who forcibly collected revenues or who were scandal- mongers or were persons in the police force of a despotic regime or were musicians.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

Personality , Night

“Another two years later, in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no such profession. And, believe it or not, but under the heading “profession” my marriage act shows the ridiculous entry “theoretical physicist!””

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html (EWD340).
1970s

Marriage

“In a war the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so-called normal life to go into someone's home where a family is grieving over the death of a loved one and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn't be done. Those picture could not have been made unless I was accepted by the people I'm photographing. It's simply impossible to photograph moments such as those…without the complicity of the people I'm photographing…without the fact that the welcomed me, that they accepted me, that they wanted me to be there. They understand that a stranger who's come there with a camera to show the rest of the world what is happening to them…gives them a voice in the outside world that they otherwise wouldn't have. I try my best to approach people with respect. I want them to see that I have respect for them and the situation they're in. I want to be very open in my approach…feel open in my own heart towards them. I want them to be aware of that. People do sense it…with very few words…sometimes with no words at all.”

James Nachtwey (1948) American photographer

War Photographer, documentary, 2001

Love , Life , Death , War

“must we not say that it is part of the deep sickness of our culture that ever since Descartes, we have been seduced by the idea of a kind of knowledge which could not be doubted, in which we would be absolutely secure from personal risk? And has not this seduction taken two forms which, even if they disclaim all relationship with each other, are really twin brothers? One is biblical fundamentalism which supposes that adherence to the text of the Bible frees me from the risk of error and therefore gives me a security which does not depend on my own discernment of the truth. The other is a type of scientism which supposes that science is simply a transcript of reality, of the "facts" which simply have to be accepted and call for no personal decision on my part, a kind of knowledge which is "objective" and free from all the bias of subjectivity.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),48-49.

Truth , Error , Idea , Knowledge

“Health and well being are a way of life. Not a certain diet or set of exercises or any other single area, but a combination of all the aspects of your life. Accept full responsibility for yourself, your health and your choices. The western civilization culture is anti health in that it is designed to produce profit not health. Read up on epigenetics. You control more of the genes which differentiate you from other humans than you realize. You are your own creator and creation.”

Jim Morris (bodybuilder) (1935–2016) American bodybuilder

"Jim Morris, vegan bodybuilder" https://web.archive.org/web/20140616020714/http://www.greatveganathletes.com/jim-morris-vegan-bodybuilder, interview with Great Vegan Athletes (2014).

Life , Health , Way , Exercises

“"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity. "Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger's nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one. Then off they came.It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars, disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible thing at all!”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 7: The Unveiling of the Stranger

Understanding , Housing , Falseness

“Jerry had been about to protest when Janza opened his mouth. "It's okay with me. I can beat this kid any way you want." And Jerry saw, to his dismay, that Archie had counted on Janza's reaction. He had known that Jerry couldn't back away now- he had come too far. Archie had bestowed one of his sickly sweet smiles on Jerry. "What do you say, Renault? Do you accept the rules?" What could he say? After the phone calls and the beating. After the desecration of his locker. The silent treatment. Pushed downstairs. What they did to Goober, to Brother Eugene. What guys like Archie and Janza did to the school. What they did to the world when they left Trinity.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 235-236

World , School , Smile , Way

“... while we must not thrust beliefs on people, belaboring their minds to try to make them accept orthodoxy, we may set these same beliefs before people, showing them the rich truth which we have found and which they may come to receive as their questing mind develops and grows.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.61, [ellipsis added]

People , Truth

“Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (p. 187)

Men , Age , Art , Nature

“We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man's duty to understand his world rather than simply fight for it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)

World , Intelligence , Courage , Understanding

“I strongly believe that fundamental science cannot be driven by instructional, industrial and government or military pressures. This was the reason why I decided, as far as possible, not to accept money from the to run of grow a good institution without funds…. I therefore will not put it as a condition that no government funds should be accepted by the Institute.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

His statement to his fellow scientist before his death in 1970. Quoted in**[Parameswaran, Uma, C.V. Raman: A Biography, http://books.google.com/books?id=RbgXRdnHkiAC, 2011, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-306689-7, xix]

Money , Science

“As a process, choosing for myself turned out to be much more valuable in the long run, rather than simply accepting or rejecting a single point of view.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

“Even many Christians who have been raised and indoctrinated in a secular mindset … will say, 'Look, we're just going to have to accept the science of the day and try to make our peace with it theologically.' … And there is no peace theologically … ultimately with this view [Darwinian evolution]. But they accept it. And so, this idea of intelligent design becomes very threatening.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

2000s

Peace , Intelligence , Idea , Science

“Gay activism has been naive in its belligerent confidence that “homophobia” will eventually disappear with proper “education” of the benighted. Reeducation of fractious young boys on the scale required would mean fascist obliteration of all individual freedoms. Furthermore, no truly masculine father would ever welcome an feminine or artistic son at the start, since the son’s lack of virility not only threatens but liquidates that father’s identity, dissolving husband into wife. Later there may be public rituals of acceptance, but the damage will already have been done. Gay men are aliens, cursed and gifted, the shamans of our time.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 86

Men , Education , Confidence , Boy

“Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history. Who needs a memory hole when the world's favourite search engine does the job so effectively?”

Bill Thompson (1960) English technology writer, born 1960

" Blog eats blog: The rise of the blogeoisie. http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DDA4.htm" by Bill Thompson, May 15, 2003.

World , History , Search , Idea

“In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest right. There have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterward, many millions accept his views. But there are still heights above and beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot say that success demonstrates either divine origin or supernatural aid.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

Men , World , Way , Star

“In the absence of social awareness and appreciation of the scientiﬁc objectivity among sufficiently large number of civil servants or political leaders, the need of validity has not yet been accepted in the ofﬁcial tatistical system in India. Ofcial statistics in India is treated as an integral part of the dministrative system which is regulated by the principle of authority. Approval of statistical estimates at a high level of authority is accepted as a bstitnte for validity in many ases there is continuing opposition to independent cross-hccks for the validity of the data. Ofﬁcials have the feeling that two independent estimates, which might differ would be confusing and, in fact unthinkable; therefore independent cross-checks in statistics should be eliminated.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

Feeling , Parting

“The objection that consequentialism demands too much is accepted uncritically by almost all of us.”

Shelly Kagan (1956) American philosopher

‘Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 13, no. 3 (1984), p. 239

“Borrowing a chapter from the Nazis, they believe that the more often a lie is repeated, the more people are prone to accept it as truth. Nothing is too scandalous for them, and I am constantly amazed at the fact that at one time I was a close associate of people capable of such deceitful behavior.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

As quoted in “Escape Artist: Recalling a YAF hero—the unlikely, liberating journey of Phillip Abbott Luce”, Shawn Steel, California Political Review, July-August (2000) pp. 23-28

People , Truth , Lie , Behavior

“Behold over and over again I would briefly set out the words of my confession. I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from which I had previously escaped with difficulty.
But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

God , Truth , Fear , Angels

“In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the welfare of our souls. I would go further and say that we would do well to cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything. Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful thing. … Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance. Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never have too much. Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the preternatural, the unearthly.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Root of the Righteous (1955), Chapter 34.

God , Truth , Faith , Soul

“The sociologist permits himself to see only what is acceptable to his colleagues.”

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

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 370

“After long and fruitless endeavors to effect the purposes of their mission and to obtain arrangements within the limits of their instructions, they concluded to sign such as could be obtained and to send them for consideration, candidly declaring to the other negotiators at the same time that they were acting against their instructions, and that their Government, therefore, could not be pledged for ratification….
Whether a regular army is to be raised, and to what extent, must depend on the information so shortly expected. In the mean time I have called on the States for quotas of militia, to be in readiness for present defense, and have, moreover, encouraged the acceptance of volunteers; and I am happy to inform you that these have offered themselves with great alacrity in every part of the Union. They are ordered to be organized and ready at a moment's warning to proceed on any service to which they may be called, and every preparation within the Executive powers has been made to insure us the benefit of early exertions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson's Seventh State of the Union Address (27 October 1807). Description of the negotiations and rejected treaty of James Monroe and William Pinkney with Britain over maritime rights, and subsequent negotiations over the British sinking of the American ship Chesapeake, leading to an American embargo (The Embargo Act).
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

Time , Parting , Dependency , Happiness

“We can accept any and all events in our existence if we believe our mothers love us. For, as I say, she was, and still is, all the world to us.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Veneration of Life: Through the Disease to the Soul (1999), p. 54

Love , World

“An autonomous electorate, free because it is free from indoctrination and manipulation, would indeed be on a “level of articulate opinion and ideology” which is not likely to be found. Therefore, the concept has to be rejected as “unrealistic”—has to be if one accepts the factually prevailing level of opinion and ideology as prescribing the valid criteria for sociological analysis. And—if indoctrination and manipulation have reached the stage where the prevailing level of opinion has become a level of falsehood, where the actual state of affairs is no longer recognized as that which it is, then an analysis which is methodologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a false consciousness. Its very empiricism is ideological.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 117

Falseness

“Perhaps the most prevailing expectation of men is our Superman expectation: the fear we are merely Clark Kents who won't be accepted unless we are a Superman.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 96.

Men , Fear

“It is one of the favorite pastimes of headquarters groups to decide from within their professional ivory tower what help the field organization needs and to design and develop programs for meeting these "needs." Then it becomes necessary to get field management to accept the help provided, and a different role is taken by the staff: that of persuading middle and lower management to utilize the programs.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 227 (in 2006 edition)

Help

“Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion" (1927), ch. 8, from The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London, Hogarth Press, 1961), vol. 21, p. 44
Misattributed

Universe , Personality

“When the government grants preferences on the basis of race, it teaches the people that discrimination is acceptable. Our laws must reflect the principle that the government discrimination on the basis of race or sex is not to be tolerated. Americans look to our government to exemplify what is right and just. So long as the federal government recognizes people as unequal under the law, we cannot achieve the fundamental truth the American people already know: we are all entitled to equal protection of the law. This legislation will ensure that the federal government leads the way in respecting this basic American principle.”

Charles T. Canady (1954) American politician and judge

The Civil Rights Act of 1997 http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/the-civil-rights-act-of-1997 (December 1, 1997)

People , Truth , Law , Sex

“I have been appointed by the Convention of the State of Georgia, to present to this Convention, the ordinance of secession of Georgia, and further, to invite Virginia, through this Convention to join Georgia and the other seceded States in the formation of a Southern Confederacy. This, sir, is the whole extent of my mission. 1 have no power to make promises, none to receive promises; no power to bind at all in any respect. But still, sir, it has seemed to me that a proper respect for this Convention requires that I should with some fulness and particularity, exhibit before the Convention the reasons which have induced Georgia to take that important step of secession, and then to lay before the Convention some facts and considerations in favor of the acceptance of the invitation by Virginia. With your permission then, sit, I will pursue this course.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)

“All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", p. 138.

Life , Death , Men , World

“Could it be that people accept evolution because […. ] They know that evolution is the only philosophy that can be used to justify their political agenda of: i. Communism, ii. Racism, iii. Abortion, iv. Nazism, v. Socialism, vi. Gay rights, vii. Women's liberation, viii. Extreme environmentalism, ix. Euthanasia, x. Pornography, xi. Humanism, xii. New Age Movement.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Women , People , Age , Communication

“The church-sponsored archaeologists were the only ones who had any kind of overview of the entire haul of relics, and they were under intense pressure to ignore any evidence that conflicted with Quaicheist scripture. That was why Rashmika wrote them so many letters, and why their infrequent replies were always so evasive. She wanted an argument; she wanted to question the entire accepted view of the scuttlers. They wanted her to go away.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 11 (p. 166)

Question

“No country would suffer more than Britain from an international trade war, since we depend more on world trade than any of our competitors. That is why we cannot accept the proposal made in some quarters that we should seek to solve our problems through imposing import controls for a long period over a whole range of manufactured consumer goods.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/dec/17/employment in the House of Commons (17 December 1975)
1970s

War , World , Problem , Suffering

“I understand how it was possible for Spinoza to find deep and sustained happiness when he was excommunicated, poor, despised and suspected alike by Jew and Christian; not that the kind world of men ever treated me so, but that his isolation from the universe of sensuous joys is somewhat analogous to mine. He loved the good for its own sake. Like many great spirits he accepted his place in the world, and confided himself childlike to a higher power, believing that it worked through his hands and predominated in his being. He trusted implicitly, and that is what I do. Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts, 'the source and centre of all minds, their only point of rest.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love , Men , God , World

““Are you sharpness personified?”
Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 27).

Coffee , Thinking

“The Catholic Church has a lot of sins on the conscience regarding the health prevention. I still have a copy of a church magazine from 1905 that condemns the use of vaccines. Until recently, the Church believed that every illness is the result of God's decision. So if the disease attacked, then it was necessary to accept it with dignity – as the judgment of the Supreme.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Mazurek, Maria (7 July 2017): Cudowna armia, która broni naszego ciała http://plus.gazetakrakowska.pl/magazyn/a/cudowna-armia-ktora-broni-naszego-ciala,12271571. Gazeta Krakowska (in Polish), pp. 18–19.

God , Health , Disease , Decision

“Yet, even did it be ever proved that Man once to be a fish, I to have no cause to abate the first part of mine argument; but to have the more need of the thought, that I gain power to accept the Fact; for I still then to have no occasion that I think Man to have been truly a Fish, or aught truly different from a Man; but only that he did be once Modified physically to his need, and to be still possessed of the Man-Spirit, though all lackt of development. Yet, truly, I to be less offend in my Reason, if that it be shown that Man did be ever somewise in his present shape, though mayhap so brutish as the Humpt Men; but yet I do be ready to consider all matters, and do build no Walls about my Reason. Yet, neither I to have an over-ready acceptance of aught, but to need that my Reason shall approve.”

William Hope Hodgson book The Night Land

Source: The Night Land (1912), Chapter 15

Men , Thinking , Fish , Parting

“Humanity will have to extricate itself from the bags created by false moralists, according to whom we taste happiness and then pass judgment on it, as if it were a piece of fruit. But I maintain that even for a piece of fruit we can do something to help it taste good. This is even truer of marriage and every other human relationship; these things are not meant to be tasted or passively accepted; they must be made. A relationship is not like a bit of shade where one is comfortable or uncomfortable depending on the weather and the way the wind is blowing. On the contrary, it is a place of miracles, where the magician makes the rain and the good weather.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

On Private Life
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Marriage , Way , Help , Dependency

“Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment (1866)

Hurtful , Suffering

“This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid spokesmen… to the effect that they were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing nerves to the effect that they live in a polite version of hell.”

Sinclair Lewis book The Job

The Job (1917)

Age , Hell , Happiness

“And when did mediocrity become excellence in our country? Music is dead in 2011 because Lady Gaga lives. Really? Is that the best we can do? Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, "Poker Face"? This stuttering, growling midget with a speech impediment is music? Really? This vapid, pop cancer, Madonna mini-me? She makes Miley Cyrus look like John Lennon. She makes Jack Lemon look like John Lennon. I'm sorry. And you don't get to claim you're not accepted at a billion hits on YouTube. And you're not an artist just cause you can wear a live chimpanzee as a bra. Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie raped Carol Burnett.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

Music , Dead , Country

“A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Experience and Nature (1925)

Truth , Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge

“Fortunately, President Obama and most world leaders understand that the idea that Iran's goal is not to develop nuclear weapons is ridiculous. Yet incredibly, some are prepared to accept an idea only slightly less preposterous: That we should accept a world in which the Ayatollahs have atomic bombs. Sure, they say, Iran is cruel, but it's not crazy. It's detestable but it's deterrable. Responsible leaders should not bet the security of their countries on the belief that the world's most dangerous regime won't use the world's most dangerous weapons. And I promise you that as Prime Minister, I will never gamble with the security of Israel. From the beginning, the Ayatollah regime has broken every international rule and flouted every norm. It has seized embassies, targeted diplomats and sent its own children through mine fields. It hangs gays and stones women. It supports Assad's brutal slaughter of the Syrian people. Iran is the world's foremost sponsor of terror. It sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and terrorists throughout the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Iran's proxies have dispatched hundreds of suicide bombers, planted thousands of roadside bombs, and fired over twenty thousand missiles at civilians. Through terror from the skies and terror on the ground, Iran is responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. In 1983, Iran's proxy Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 240 American servicemen. In the last decade, its been responsible for murdering and maiming American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just a few months ago, it tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in a restaurant just a few blocks from here. The assassins didn't care that several Senators and members of Congress would have been murdered in the process. Iran accuses the American government of orchestrating 9/11, and it denies the Holocaust. Iran brazenly calls for Israel's destruction, and they work for its destruction – each day, every day. This is how Iran behaves today, without nuclear weapons. Think of how they will behave tomorrow, with nuclear weapons. Iran will be even more reckless and far more dangerous.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference http://www.aipac.org/pc/videos/2012/monday-gala-plenary/prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu (March 2012).
2010s, 2012

Women , Children , People , World

“We must recognise that the absolutely free working of such a system cannot now be accepted. We are living too closely knit a structure of society in which the very complication of our immense programme of social reform and industrial development necessitates strong powers being retained at the centre. It will be necessary to use the organising power and majesty of the State in a variety of ways. The State will have to be the grand arbiter between competing interests.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Fundamental Issues (Conservative Political Centre, 1946), p. 7.

Way , Strong

“Millions of artist create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity.
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally posterity include him in the primers of Art history.
I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957

Art , History , Waiting

“The small triumph of "The Graduate" was to have domesticated alienation and the difficulty of communication, by making what Benjamin is alienated from a middle-class comic strip and making it absurdly evident that he has nothing to communicate — which is just what makes him an acceptable hero for the large movie audience. If he said anything or had any ideas, the audience would probably hate him.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Hate , Communication , Idea

“I don't expect people who listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to come hear me. I accept that reality.”

Cecil Taylor (1929–2018) American pianist and poet

Source: http://www.bluesforpeace.com/names.htm

People , Reality

“I believe instinctively in a God for whom I am prepared to search.

I believe it is an offence against the God of Nature for me to accept any hand-me-down, man-defined religion or creed without the test of reason. I believe no man dead or alive knows more about God than I can know by searching.

I believe that the God of Nature must be without prejudice, with exactly the same concern for all of His children, and that the human invokes no more, no less of fatherly love than the beaver or the sparrow.

I believe I am an integral part of the environment and, as a good subject, I must establish an enduring relationship with my surroundings. My dependence upon the land is fundamental.

I believe destructive waste and greedy exploitation are sins.

I believe the biggest challenge is in being a helper rather than a destroyer of the treasures in Nature's storehouse, a conserver, a husbandman and partner in caring for the Vineyard.

I accept, with apologies to Albert Schweitzer, "a Reverence for Life" and all that is of the Great Spirit's creation.

I believe mortality is not complete until the individual holds all of the Great Spirit's creatures in brotherhood and has compassion for all. A fundamental concept of Good consists of working to preserve all creatures with feeling and the will to live.

I am prepared to stand before my Maker, the Ruler of the entire Universe, with no other plea than that I have tried to leave things in His Vineyard better than I found them.”

Grant MacEwan (1902–2000) Alberta politician, Mayor of Calgary, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta

[Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 185–186, Geo Takach] The MacEwan Creed, 1969 http://www.macewan.ca/web/services/ims/client/upload/ACF16FF.pdf.

Love , Life , God , Children

“But who looks for serious conduct at the public shows? A Cato never goes to the circus. Anything said there by the people as they celebrate should be deemed no injury. It is a place that protects excesses. Patient acceptance of their chatter is a proven glory of princes themselves.”
Mores autem graves in spectaculis quis requirat? ad circum nesciunt convenire Catones. quicquid illic a gaudenti populo dicitur, iniuria non putatur. locus est qui defendit excessum. quorum garrulitas si patienter accipitur, ipsos quoque principes ornare monstratur.

Cassiodorus Variae

Bk. 1, no. 27; p. 19.
Variae

People

“I am well aware that some very eminent systematists regard the whole problem as solved. They hold as Darwin did that specific diversity has no physiological foundation or causation apart from adaptation, and that species are impermanent groups, the delimitations of which are ultimately determined by environmental exigency or "fitness." The specific diversity of living things is thus regarded as being something quite different in nature from the specific diversity of inorganic substances. In practice those who share these opinions are, as might be anticipated, to be found among the 'lumpers' rather than among the 'splitters.' In their work, certainly, the Darwinian theory is actually followed as a guiding principle; unanalysed intergradations of all kinds are accepted as impugning the integrity of species; the underlying physiological problem is forgotten, and while the product is almost valueless as a contribution to biological research, I can scarcely suppose that it aids greatly in the advances of other branches of our science.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 12.

Nature , Problem , Science

“We accepted her as an artist. And with her popularity, everybody, from school kids to grown ups, have watched her sites. People are paying money to watch her. How can there be tolerance for all this? What will the new generation learn?”

Pahlaj Nihalani

On pornstar-turned-actress Sunny Leone, as quoted in " I don't mind being called conservative: Pahlaj Nihalani http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pahlaj-nihalani-censor-board-chief-interview/article6823559.ece" The Hindu (26 January 2015)

Money , People , School , Learning

“The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 38 (p. 369)

Nature , Universe , Change , Parting

“They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Lilith, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Life , Birth

“If you're brought up a Catholic and you've had 13 years of convent education with nuns, there's no way you ever get out from under that. I've accepted that fact about myself so there are certain things—like my lost saint—that sometimes are not so lost.”

Mia Farrow (1945) American actress, singer, humanitarian and former fashion model

On her religious upbringing, quoted in The Independent, 2006

Education , Way

“Paul stared out at the randomly scattered, lonely stars and wondered why he had always so easily accepted that they represented order.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 34 (p. 270).

Star

“What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? This love was tricky; it had no hard-and-fast rules — it might be given for free, as with Jamie, or earned through time and hard work, as with Ian, or completely and heartbreakingly unattainable, as with Jared.
Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans could hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Wanderer, p. 472
The Host (2008)

Love , Hate , Soul , Time

“If it is necessary that each sentient being must have the possibility of achieving an overwhelming good, then it is clear that there must be some form of life after earthly death. Despite the many pointers to the existence of God, theism would be falsified if physical death was the end, for then there could be no justification for the existence of this world. However, if one supposes that every sentient being has an endless existence, which offers the prospect of supreme happiness, it is surely true that the sorrows and troubles of this life will seem very small by comparison. Immortality, for animals as well as humans, is a necessary condition of any acceptable theodicy; that necessity, together with all the other arguments for God, is one of the main reasons for believing in immortality.”

Keith Ward (1938) British philosopher, theologian, priest and scholar

Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), pp. 201-202.

Life , Death , God , World

“[Democrats] will only become acceptable once they are comfortable in their minority status. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

Grover Norquist cited in " The Great Revulsion http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?ref=grovergnorquist" at nytimes.com, 10 November, 2006
2004

Animals , Happiness

“I must be absolutely clear about this. Britain cannot accept the present situation on the Budget. It is demonstrably unjust. It is politically indefensible: I cannot play Sister Bountiful to the Community while my own electorate are being asked to forego improvements in the fields of health, education, welfare and the rest.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture (18 October 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104149 regarding the UK's contribution to the European Community budget.
First term as Prime Minister

Health , Education , Communication , Sister

“Give them Islam, proclaim to the world the program of Islamic government; maybe the kings and presidents of the Muslim countries will understand the truth of what we say and accept it. We would not want to take anything away from them; we will leave anyone in his place who faithfully follows Islam.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Tahrir al-Vasileh, 1970. http://politicalquotes.org/node/54102
Foreign policy

Truth , World , Understanding , Country

“Some have said that the PSP is our answer to the (Nintendo) Game Boy. Well, here’s how we view the world: PSP will elevate portable entertainment out of the handheld gaming ghetto and Sony is the only company that can do it. We happily accept this challenge and, dare I say it, the baton has been passed.”

Kazuo Hirai (1960) Japanese businessman

World , Game , Boy

“The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Source: My View of the World (1951), p. 10

“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Bennis (1989, p. 45), cited in: Terrence Mech, ‎Gerard B. McCabe (1998) Leadership and Academic Librarians. p. 56
1980s

Leadership

“In recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one — the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religous experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed — and the belief caused them considerable distress — that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience.”

Aldous Huxley book Ends and Means

Ends and Means (1937)

Men , World , Way , Intelligence

“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth in: Arthur R. Rose, “Four Interviews,” Arts Magazine (February, 1969).

Art , Question , Nature , Painting

“I accept that in a free society you have to justify reductions in people's liberties. I accept that, bearing in mind my starting point is that the most important human right is the right to life…”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

Terrorism Summit (Friday, 5 August 2005)

Life , People

“At the center of market fundamentalism lies the general acceptance of the Walrasian general equilibrium model, or the neo-classical paradigm. Although many economists came to doubt the universal validity of such models in view of economies of scope, bounded rationality, asymmetric information, and other types of market imperfections and ventured into institutional analysis, the orthodoxy still remains the one which postulate some type of rationality of atomized individuals and the market which mediate among these atomized individuals and firms to reach some stable equilibrium.”

Eisuke Sakakibara (1941) Japanese economist and critic

The End of Market Fundamentalism (1999)

Universe

“.. At the end of the month I should like to go to the hospital at St. Remy or another institution of this kind. What comforts me a little, is that I am beginning to consider madness as a disease like any other and accept the thing as such, whereas during the crises themselves, I thought that everything I imagined was real... After all... I have perhaps still some almost normal years in front of me.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 21 April 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 585), p 25
1880s, 1889

Disease , Imagination , Madness

“In addition, a century or more of efforts to arrive at a feasible and politically acceptable mix of market and nonmarket elements has not produced a definitive, stable, or uniform solution.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 3 : Democracy and Markets

Effort

“It seems acceptable today to scream for revolution, without any concept of what will follow it. This is just what the forces at large want, for who will follow a man who doesn't know where he's going?”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance", p. 62.

“My central belief is that there are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully in all the main activities of the Union and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from inside. The other is to recognise that Britain's history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member. If so, it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly and, if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

'Britain and Europe: The problem with being half pregnant', in Keith Sutherland (ed.), The Rape of the Constitution? (Imprint Academic, 2000), p. 277
2000s

Exercises , History

“[I]f we’re going to jeer at North Korea for being a de facto monarchy, we must also acknowledge the main advantage of such a system: no divisive squabbling over who has the right to rule. On my book tour for “The Cleanest Race” I used the example of my British mother: a firm supporter of the monarchy with different estimations of the various royals. She doesn’t like the idea of Charles becoming king, but accepts that it will and must happen.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Joshua Stanton (August 2017)

Books , Idea , Support

“There was nothing he could do unless he accepted what was real.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 24, “The Graylands” (p. 544).

“I'm thrilled of the acceptance I get abroad. The people are so hearty, warm and grateful and I feel privileged having seen so many countries and some of the greatest monuments”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

People , Feeling , Country

“To the memory of Sir Thomas Denison, Knt., this monument was erected by his afflicted widow. He was an affectionate husband, a generous relation, a sincere friend, a good citizen, an honest man. Skilled in all the learning of the common law, he raised himself to great eminence in his profession; and showed by his practice, that a thorough knowledge of the legal art and form is not litigious, or an instrument of chicane, but the plainest, easiest, and shortest way to the end of strife. For the sake of the public he was pressed, and at the last prevailed upon, to accept the office of a judge in the Court of King's Bench. He discharged the important trust of that high office with unsuspected integrity, and uncommon ability. The clearness of his understanding, and the natural probity of his heart, led him immediately to truth, equity, and justice; the precision and extent of his legal knowledge enabled him always to find the right way of doing what was right. A zealous friend to the constitution of his country, he steadily adhered to the fundamental principle upon which it is built, and by which alone it can be maintained, a religious application of the inflexible rule of law to all questions concerning the power of the crown, and privileges of the subject. He resigned his office February 14, 1765, because from the decay of his health and the loss of his sight, he found himself unable any longer to execute it. He died September 8, 1765, without issue, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He wished to be buried in his native country, and in this church. He lies here near the Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, who by a resolute and judicious exertion of authority, supported law and government in a manner which has perpetuated his name, and made him an example famous to posterity.”

Thomas Denison (1699–1765) British judge (1699–1765)

Memorial inscription, reported in Edward Foss, The Judges of England, With Sketches of Their Lives (1864), Volume 8, p. 266-268.
About

Health , Truth , Age , Justice

“Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality.”

Colin Wilson book The Outsider

Source: The Outsider (1956), Chapter one, The Country of the Blind

World , Reality

“The giraffe's neck supposedly supplies a crucial example for preferring natural selection over Lamarckism as a cause of evolution. But Darwin himself (however wrongly by later judgement) did not deny the Lamarckian principle of inheritance for characters acquired by use or lost by disuse. He regarded the Lamarckian mechanism as weak, infrequent, and entirely subsidiary to natural selection, but he accepted the validity of evolution by use and disuse. Darwin does speculate about the adaptive advantage of giraffe's necks, but he cites both natural selection and Lamarckism as probable causes of elongation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 312
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Nature

“Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 231 (24 November 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Offending and insulting, is different from expressing an opinion that can be analyzed, argued on, and can eventually be accepted or rejected [therefore offending others is not acceptable] … But in addition to the west, we ourselves also have problems in this regard. Instead of logical criticism or debate, we only keep saying offensive things about liberalism, democracy and modernism. I had told some of our elders before, that the religion of the today's world is 'liberalism' and we have no right to make insults about it. We should not keep using phrases such as "the corrupt culture of the west" etc. in our words. As it's also said in the Holy Koran, "Do not insult the gods of others, otherwise you are indirectly insulting your God."”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

February 15th, 2006, during a press interview in Tehran's airport upon his return from a cultural conference in Malaysia.
http://www.isna.ir/Main/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-667116&Lang=P; http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2006/02/060215_jb_khatami_cartoon.shtml.
Blasphemy

God , World , Religion , Democracy

“the protective, healing silence of forgiveness is just as much part of confession as its quality of judgment - stressed so much more. For in confession sin is not so much subjected to the light of the word, of judicial sentence, as received into the darkness of merciful, secret acceptance, sunk into divine oblivion.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters p. 361.

Secret , Forgiveness , Light , Silence

“Since the 1980's, we have been concerned about acceptable risk, but I believe that we have now entered the era of acceptable uncertainty.”

Daniel Alan Vallero (1953) American scientist

Quoted during statement at "The Society for Risk Analysis Policy Forum: Risk Governance for Key Enabling Technologies". Venice, Italy. March 2, 2017.

“In a culture whose media extols thinness as the great panacea that will bring happiness, sexuality, self-respect and social acceptance, they are blind to the insidious lies of the false goddess. Possessed by their own damaged instincts, and ironically driven by the same desire for power that their parents used in raising them, some children wolf down food, or reject it, or vomit it out. Whether that rejection of life is concretized in 200 pounds of armor, or 90 pounds of bone, or vomit in the toilet, the surest way out of the neurosis is to try to understand what food symbolizes in the individual psyche and why the energy is pulled in that direction.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 103

Life , Children , Food , Way

“I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel. Finally, I wish to say that from the time I came to Palestine as a young woman, we have been forced to choose between what is more dangerous and what is less dangerous for us. At times we have all been tempted to give in to various pressures and to accept proposals that might guarantee us a little quiet for a few months, or maybe even for a few years, but that could only lead us eventually into even greater peril.”

Golda Meir book My Life

My Life (1975), p. 459

Life , Hate , People , Peace

“Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires. You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning. You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.””

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Evolution? No" http://archives.adventistreview.org/2004-1509/story2.html, The Adventist Review (2004)

Love

“I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation has served to hold back progress on the development of alternative approaches. Blind acceptance of the orthodox position cannot produce the challenges needed to push the theory eventually to its breaking point. And break it will, probably in a way nobody can predict, to produce a theory nobody can imagine. The arguments about reality will undoubtedly persist, but at least we will have a better theory.
I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for modern students of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing the case, I have only made the subject seem even more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions, and its most common interpretation is anti-realist in nature. If you fine the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory's fault—not yours.”

Jim Baggott (1957) British writer

Closing remarks
Beyond Measure (2004)

Way , Imagination , Understanding , Nature

“Since I expressed my views…in July last year, I have sought to negotiate a position which would allow me to defend my stance in public, especially when it is questioned. The BBC has required that I do not speak on matters on which my stance is already known. That is not acceptable to me. I have therefore asked the corporation to accept my resignation as South Asia correspondent.”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

When he quit BBC due to differences with John Birt, the Director General of BBC.
Source: Peter Victor, " Tully quits BBC http://www.independent.co.uk/news/tully-quits-bbc-1412865.html," The Independent, 10 July 1994

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