Quotes about refuse (1375 quotes, page 14)

“My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews…. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, 26 November 1938. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1930s

Home , Sleep , Confidence , Imagination

“This was Elric’s dream, more coherent now than it had ever been. This was his dream and it was why he traveled the world, why he refused the power which was his, why he risked his life, his mind, his love and everything else he valued, for he believed that there was no life worth living that was not risked in pursuit of knowledge and justice. And this was why his fellow countrymen feared him. Justice was not obtained, he believed, by administration but by experience. One must know what it was to suffer humiliation and powerlessness; at least to some degree, before one could entirely appreciate its effect. One must give up power if one was to achieve true justice. This was not the logic of Empire, but it was the logic of one who truly loved the world and desired to see an age dawn when all people would be free to pursue their ambitions in dignity and self-respect.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

Fear , Justice , Dreams , Suffering

“Is the Gospel story historically true? Is it a mystical tale of great beauty and of real teaching value but nevertheless of no vital import to the intelligent men and women of today, who pride themselves on their reasoning powers and upon their independence of ancient mental trammels and of old and dusty traditions? As to the perfection of the portrayed character of Christ there is never any question. The enemies of Christianity admit His uniqueness, His basic profundity and His understanding of the hearts of men. They recognise the intelligence of His ideas and sponsor them in their own philosophies. The developments which the Carpenter of Nazareth brought about in the fabric of human life, His social and economic ideals, and the beauty of the civilisation which could be founded upon the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount are frequently emphasised by many who refuse to recognise His mission as an expression of divinity.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Understanding , Question , Beauty , Intelligence

“A lot of people commenting don’t know how Congressional salaries work. Each member is given a set amount that they disburse. GOP has refused to increase budgets in years to give hard-working staff a raise, which means people helping to run the country are getting paid $30k/year.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC (23 February 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), February 2019

Help , People , Country

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

First paragraph
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Future , Hope , Age

“In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution … The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.”

Aleksandr Dugin (1962) Russian political scientist

Aleksandr Dugin — The Basics of Geopolitics (1997)

“I also know you cannot pick and choose. Change is a medicine bundle. You must refuse it altogether, or take the whole thing.”

Poul Anderson book The Boat of a Million Years

Source: The Boat of a Million Years (1989), Chapter 12 “The Last Medicine” (p. 215)

Change

“These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Moslems. When time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India. And as it has happened in many countries under similar situation in the world the utmost that we can do under the circumstances is to form an Indian State in which none is allowed any special weightage of representation and none is paid an extra-price to buy his loyalty to the State. Mercenaries are paid and bought off, not sons of the Motherland to fight in her defence.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

V.D. Savarkar: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, quoted in part in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.332

Time , Country , Question , Dreams

“Not only does it deny the corporate claim to liberty of men and women organized in national societies, but it refuses the much more fundamental claim of men and women to the free expression of human personality, which rests upon the eternal value of every human soul. True pride of race may be tested by the behaviour of its possessors towards their own fellow citizens and towards others. It will forbid conduct to individuals of which they should be ashamed in their private lives. It is thus evidently something far removed from the ideal of a race which by the German philosophy of to-day is called to stamp out the civilization of another. Between these two conceptions there is a great gulf fixed. … Until these false creeds are abjured, and replaced by a wider toleration, they must continue to excite resistance. The future of humanity must not be left in the hands of those who would imprison and enslave it.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech to the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford (27 February 1940), quoted in The Times (28 February 1940), p. 10
Foreign Secretary

Soul , Personality , Future , Falseness

“Although at the time I knew but little of the crimes he had committed, it was obvious to me that Himmler, as far as I was concerned, was intolerable. This I had to make quite clear to him, and one way or the other, I had to have a swift and final showdown with him. On the evening of April 30, shortly after the receipt of the telegram I told my ADC to telephone to Himmler, from whom I had parted in Luebeck only a few hours before, and ask him to come to Ploen forthwith. To my ADC he retorted with a blunt refusal, but when I myself spoke to him and told him that his presence was essential, he eventually consented to come.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

Source: Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (1959), p. 443

Way , Time , Parting , Making love

“Ach! If Hitler had given me an immoral order I would have refused. Think of it! To break teeth out of a dead body! Think of it! Why, if I had been only a simple soldier, I would not have obeyed. I would have said that it was against my religious conviction. That dog Pohl knew all about it.”

Oswald Pohl (1892–1951) Head of the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt

Hjalmar Schacht to Leon Goldensohn, June 9, 1946.

Dogs , Thinking , Dead

“Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.”

Friedrich Engels book Principles of Communism

Principles of Communism (1847)

Law , Country

“ICELANDER: Thus I reply to you. I am well aware you did not make the world for the service of men. It were easier to believe that you made it expressly as a place of torment for them. But tell me: why am I here at all? Did I ask to come into the world? Or am I here unnaturally, contrary to your will? If however, you yourself have placed me here, without giving me the power of acceptance or refusal of this gift of life, ought you not as far as possible to try and make me happy, or at least preserve me from the evils and dangers, which render my sojourn a painful one? And what I say of myself, I say of the whole human race, and of every living creature.”

Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) Italian poet, philosopher and writer

Essays and Dialogues (1882), Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander

Pain , World , Life , Making love

“Unfortunately for mankind—and perhaps fortunately for tyrants—the poor and downtrodden lack the instinct or pride of the elephant, who refuses to breed in captivity.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Il est malheureux pour les hommes, heureux peut-être pour les tyrans, que les pauvres, les malheureux, n'aient pas l'instinct ou la fierté de l'éléphant qui ne se reproduit point dans la servitude.
Maximes et Pensées, #509
Reflections

“On his refusal of a set for MTV Unplugged: It’s one of the biggest career mistakes I’ve ever made. I’d be so much more wealthy, because of America. I was offered one of the first ones. But I saw Eric Clapton on it, and it reminded me of Pebble Mill At One.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

I thought, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want anything to do with this’. Because he’s like God to me. [...] So I turned it down. I should have had an older brother who said, ‘Fucking do it’.
2015

“Cognition is autonomous; it refuses to have any answers foisted on it from the outside. Yet it suffers without protest having certain questions prescribed to it from the outside (and it is here that my heresy regarding the unwritten law of the university originates). Not every question seems to me worth asking. Scientific curiosity and omnivorous aesthetic appetite mean equally little to me today, though I was once under the spell of both, particularly the latter. Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of.”

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) Jewish theologian and philosopher

Inquired of, that is, by men rather than by scholars. There is a man in each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains whom it possesses of his humanity.
in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (1961/1998), p. 97

Universe , Suffering , Law , Question

“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”
Part III, Chapter VIII (p. 299)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Box , People , Heart , World

“A highly competent Bitch often deprecates herself by refusing to recognize her own superiority…. Bitches are among the most unsung of the unsung heroes of this society. They are the pioneers, the vanguard, the spearhead. Whether they want to be or not this is the role they serve just by their very being. Many would not choose to be the groundbreakers for the mass of women for whom they have no sisterly feelings but they cannot avoid it. Those who violate the limits, extend them; or cause the system to break…. Their major psychological oppression is not a belief that they are inferior but a belief that they are not…. Like most women they were taught to hate themselves as well as all women. In different ways and for different reasons perhaps, but the effect was similar. Internalization of a derogatory self-concept always results in a good deal of bitterness and resentment. This anger is usually either turned in on the self —making one an unpleasant person or on other women — reinforcing the social cliches about them. Only with political consciousness is it directed at the source — the social system…. We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever.”

Jo Freeman (1945) writer, lawyer

The BITCH Manifesto (Fall, 1968, © 1969) http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/bitch.htm, as accessed Aug. 22, 2010 (also published as Joreen, The Bitch Manifesto, in Notes From the Second Year (N.Y.: Shulamith Firestone & Anne Koedt, 1970))

Anger , Hate , Personality , Beauty

“He was never interested in conventional beauty. Sober, pinched, reflective, lined and melancholy, his portraits remind us of that. But how many American artists said more about the sense of being in the world? Eakins was that extreme rarity, an artist who refused to tell a lie even in the service of his own imagination.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Robert Hughes, "Thomas Eakins," Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists (1990).

Imagination , Beauty , Lie , Sense

“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

Sense , Truth , Idea , Madness

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

Way , Freedom

“Nay interference has begun: there are already Factory Inspectors,—who seem to have no lack of work. Perhaps there might be Mine-Inspectors too:—might there not be Furrowfield Inspectors withal, and ascertain for us how on seven and sixpence a week a human family does live! Interference has begun; it must continue, must extensively enlarge itself, deepen and sharpen itself. Such things cannot longer be idly lapped in darkness, and suffered to go on unseen: the Heavens do see them; the curse, not the blessing of the Heavens is on an Earth that refuses to see them.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Family , Suffering

“I categorically refused to consider the surrealists as just another literary and artistic group. I believed they were capable of liberating man from the tyranny of the 'practical, rational world'. I was going to become the Nietzsche of the irrational. I, the obsessed rationalist, was the only one who knew what I wanted: I was not going to submit to irrationality for its own sake, to the narcissist and passive irrationality others practiced. I would do completely the opposite. I would fight for the 'conquest of the irrational.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

In the meantime my friends would let themselves be overwhelmed by the irrational, succumbing, like so many others, Nietzsche included, to that romantic weakness.
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 9

Fight , World

“The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines."”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona."
"Writing", p. 27
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Singing , Self-confidence , God , Making love

““Never fancied him anyway,” I’d write when a boy dumped me. I’d leave out things that had gone wrong, or been difficult. I think it was partly an exercise in defiance, a refusal to be defeated by life’s adversities. So in that sense, my diary was a bit of a self-help manual, written by me, for me.”

Tracey Thorn (1962) English singer and songwriter

On reading past diaries in “Tracey Thorn: ‘I went through a phase of carrying Camus under my arm’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/25/tracey-thorn-interview-another-planet-memoir in The Guardian (2020 Jan 25)

Help , Boy , Self-confidence , Thinking

“All the tolerance of persecution that has seeped into the Jewish character — the adaptability, the patience, the resignation, the silence, the self-denial — must be squeezed out, until the only response there is to any restriction of liberties is "No, I refuse."”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Writing About Jews (1963)

Patience , Silence , Self-confidence

“The faculty by which man is differentiated from the lower animals is his reasoning power. But the devout believer renounces reason, refuses to explain the things which surround him, the innumerable natural phenomena, because his religious faith is enough for him. The brain loses the habit of thinking; and this religious sottishness hurls mankind back into animalism.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Animals , Faith , Thinking , Nature

“By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

Suffering , Failure , Evil

“I refuse to start from the assumption that the role of monetary policy is to control and stabilize inflation. The only acceptable way to start is, I believe, to think of the goal of monetary policy, together with fiscal policy,as the maximization of welfare.”

Olivier Blanchard (1948) French economist

" Monetary Policy; Science or Art? https://economics.mit.edu/files/742" (2006)

Way , Thinking

“If we stubbornly refuse to look at that which seems magical or incredible, we are in distinguished company. The French Academy announced at one point that it would not accept any further reports of meteorites, since it was clearly impossible for rocks to fall out of the sky. Shortly thereafter a rain of meteorites came close to breaking the windows of the Academy.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

“After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Forgiveness , Courage , Tree , History

“Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the “new normal,” those of us who know that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.””

Max Haiven (1981)

Already, in the state of emergency that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of the neoliberal regime’s claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. These have included the suspension of rents and mortgages, the free provision of public transit, the deployment of basic incomes, a hiatus in debt payments, the commandeering of privatized hospitals and other once-public infrastructure for the public good, the liberation of incarcerated people, and governments compelling private industries to reorient production to common needs. We hear news of significant numbers of people refusing to work, taking wildcat labor action, and demanding their right to live in radical ways. In some places, the underhoused are seizing vacant homes. We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation of grassroots radical demands for policies of care and solidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity.
No return to normal: for a post-pandemic liberation (March 23, 2020)

Fate

““Violence” was a euphemism for a threat to the ruling order and its illusion of social peace, with which the class struggle, the brutality of patriarchy, and the murderousness of colonialism are hidden. The newspapers did not talk about violence when cops killed strikers, when landlords evicted families, or when poor people died of hunger. They talked about violence when workers went on strike, when tenants stopped paying rent, when street vendors refused to surrender their wares to the cops.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 1. Violence Doesn't Exist

Hunger , Peace , People , Family

“They [the Communist Party] ask to surrender Greece. We refuse. Our aim is to subject the parties to the Nation and not the opposite.”

Georgios Papandreou (1888–1968) Greek politician - former prime minister of Greece

From his "speech to the nation", after the Lebanon Conference in May 1944.

“I do not think that the time is right to talk about democracy in its absolute concept. Arab societies marginalized their modern thinkers and scholars for the elders who stopped their time before fourteen centuries, which is the difference between us and them .. Therefore, it was necessary to work on spreading a more realistic culture in which modern science has a more open place. Take, for example, if we asked the Tunisian people (he meant former President Bourguiba then and not now) to hold a referendum on his position on women's education, then I can assure that 99.99% will refuse her education.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

Democracy , Time , People , Thinking

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Home , Question , Country , Suffering

“It has become impossible to be simultaneously realistic about both the political climate and the science of climate. The two stubbornly refuse to reconcile, so we are forced to decide which carries more weight, and then be profoundly unrealistic about the other. To take present policy seriously demands a total rejection of the science. To take the science seriously demands a total rejection of the policy on the table. And so grassroots movements like the Extinction Rebellion and Climate Mobilization are emerging – the realists of a larger reality.”

Shaun Chamberlin

"The Sequel: Life After Economic Growth", Tikkun (2018) https://www.tikkun.org/the-sequel-life-after-economic-growth

Science , Reality

“On the other hand, refusing to accept and affirm, avoidable suffering, unfair distributions of goods, uninhibited aggression, and so forth, are refusals which have long been and continue to be part of everyday morality. As such, they are a well-established part of life as it is. Animal liberation extends such concerns, which have traditionally been focused on the human world and on human life, to include equal consideration for animals. In this way, animal liberation is simply carrying on the business of everyday moral practice. Therefore, it does not loathe or deny life as it is. Rather, unlike Callicott's proposed retreat to the wilderness, animal liberation is participating in life and, hopefully, in its continuing moral evolution.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Article Review of Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1244&context=ethicsandanimals", Ethics and Animals, Vol. 5, Iss. 4 (1984), p. 120

Business , Suffering , Animals , World

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet, as quoted by * 2020-04-26

Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments

Lauren Aratani

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/25/donald-trump-stays-away-from-briefings-amid-fallout-from-disinfectant-comments
2020s, 2020, April

Time , Housing , Hostility , Question

“Let me put on record here that in my 9 years of close involvement in this debate, I have seen time and again that it is the invasionist school which, when it did not refuse the debate, has spoiled the debate by replacing argument with mud-slinging.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

School , Time

“Marxist socialism also had dark nooks and crannies where Jews were regarded as money-mad capitalists or as an ‘obsolete’ people who refused to join the onward march of secular progress towards a moneyless society. Anarchists also suffered from this contagion,…”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 94

Money , Suffering , Madness , People

“Revolutionary morality consists, in whatever circumstances, in resolutely struggling against all enemies, maintaining one's vigilance, standing ready to fight, and refusing to submit, to bow one's head. Only by so doing can we defeat the enemy, and fulfill our revolutionary tasks.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"On Revolutionary Morality" (1958)
1950's, On Revolutionary Morality (1958)

Fight

“One critic called me one of the most magnificent resources Canada has allowed to escape to the United States. Because I was born and raised in Vancouver and lived up there until I was 17. My kids sons Bruce and Michael are, of course, American citizens. But not me. I defiantly refuse to change.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Change

“The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have expressed all things ever since man was man.And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains.”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

"Eyes", pp. 98–99
The Colour of Life and Other Essays (1896)

Sense , Soul , World

“[C]ircles have been contaminated by hatred and paranoia. Refuse and reject that right now. If you make room in your heart and mind for it, it will take you down, and take down all those that follow you.”

Rod Dreher (1967) American journalist

2020s
Source: "Information and the Cultural Revolution" https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/information-cultural-revolution-live-not-by-lies/ (January 2021), The American Conservative

Making love , Heart

“Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?”

Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist

[Oliver Heaviside (1850-1927) - Physical mathematician, http://teamat.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/2/55.extract, https://www.gwern.net/docs/science/1983-edge.pdf, Teaching mathematics and its applications, Oxford Journals, 2, 2, 55-61, 1983, DA Edge]
This quote cannot be found in Heaviside's corpus, Edge provides no reference, the quote first appears around the 1940s attributed to Heaviside without any references. The quote is actually a composite of a modified sentence from Electromagnetic Theory I https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict02heavrich/page/8/mode/2up (changing 'dinner' to 'eat'), a section header & later sentence from Electromagnetic Theory II https://archive.org/details/electromagnetict02heavrich/page/4/mode/2up, and the paraphrase of Heaviside's views by Carslaw 1928 https://www.gwern.net/docs/math/1928-carslaw.pdf ("Operational Methods in Mathematical Physics"), respectively:
"Nor is the matter an unpractical one. I suppose all workers in mathematical physics have noticed how the mathematics seems made for the physics, the latter suggesting the former, and that practical ways of working arise naturally. This is really the case with resistance operators. It is a fact that their use frequently effects great simplifications, and the avoidance of complicated evaluations of definite integrals. But then the rigorous logic of the matter is not plain! Well, what of that? Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion? No, not if I am satisfied with the result. Now a physicist may in like manner employ unrigorous processes with satisfaction and usefulness if he, by the application of tests, satisfies himself of the accuracy of his results. At the same time he may be fully aware of his want of infallibility, and that his investigations are largely of an experimental character, and may be repellent to unsympathetically constituted mathematicians accustomed to a different kind of work."
"Rigorous Mathematics is Narrow, Physical Mathematics Bold And Broad. § 224. Now, mathematics being fundamentally an experimental science, like any other, it is clear that the Science of Nature might be studied as a whole, the properties of space along with the properties of the matter found moving about therein. This would be very comprehensive, but I do not suppose that it would be generally practicable, though possibly the best course for a large-minded man. Nevertheless, it is greatly to the advantage of a student of physics that he should pick up his mathematics along with his physics, if he can. For then the one will fit the other. This is the natural way, pursued by the creators of analysis. If the student does not pick up so much logical mathematics of a formal kind (commonsense logic is inherited and experiential, as the mind and its ways have grown to harmonise with external Nature), he will, at any rate, get on in a manner suitable for progress in his physical studies. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. There is no end to the subtleties involved in rigorous demonstrations, especially, of course, when you go off the beaten track. And the most rigorous demonstration may be found later to contain some flaw, so that exceptions and reservations have to be added. Now, in working out physical problems there should be, in the first place, no pretence of rigorous formalism. The physics will guide the physicist along somehow to useful and important results, by the constant union of physical and geometrical or analytical ideas. The practice of eliminating the physics by reducing a problem to a purely mathematical exercise should be avoided as much as possible. The physics should be carried on right through, to give life and reality to the problem, and to obtain the great assistance which the physics gives to the mathematics. This cannot always be done, especially in details involving much calculation, but the general principle should be carried out as much as possible, with particular attention to dynamical ideas. No mathematical purist could ever do the work involved in Maxwell's treatise. He might have all the mathematics, and much more, but it would be to no purpose, as he could not put it together without the physical guidance. This is in no way to his discredit, but only illustrates different ways of thought."
"§ 2. Heaviside himself hardly claimed that he had 'proved' his operational method of solving these partial differential equations to be valid. With him [Cf. loc. cit., p. 4. [Electromagnetic Theory, by Oliver Heaviside, vol. 2, p. 13, 1899.]] mathematics was of two kinds: Rigorous and Physical. The former was Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. And the thing that mattered was that the Bold and Broad Mathematics got the results. "To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical enquiries." Only the purist had to be sure of the validity of the processes employed."
Apocryphal

Mathematics , Understanding

“Simply, libertarians do not advocate the initiation of force, fraud, or theft to achieve social or political goals. If you refused to contribute to my favorite charity, and I took your money at gunpoint anyway, I’d be stealing from you. Similarly, if I vote for taxes to force you to contribute to that charity, I’m asking the government to take your money—at gunpoint, if necessary… Wrong doesn’t turn into right, just because the majority agrees to it. Minorities have no protection if they have to depend upon the majority for it.”

Mary Ruwart (1949) American scientist and libertarian activist

Source: Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked, (2012), p. 18

Money , Fraud , Dependency

“A few Christian men I've met seem to think they are somehow robbed of their manhood if their wife has a job, and it's even worse if she has a serious career of her own. That's a foolish attitude. At the same time, what is even worse is a man whose wife is compelled to work because her husband refused to get a job.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Source: Man to Man: Rediscovering Masculinity in a Challenging World (2020), p. 17

Thinking , Time , Men

“We are certainly ready to fulfill our obligations as ally but we clearly must refuse to be drawn lightly into a world conflagration by Vienna without consideration of our proposals.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to Schoen, Pourtales, and Tschirschky (29 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 68

World

“The conscience exists, standing before us now asking not to be created or perfected but to be chosen and defended, in need of champions, not exiles. Any fiction which refuses that request is henceforth a collaborationist fiction.”

Carl Oglesby (1935–2011) American political activist

"The Deserters: The Contemporary Defeat of Fiction" (1972)

Perfection

“How would the man born blind not have the idea of light? Nature has refused them a soul; they have some right to doubt, not only the immortality of the soul, but its existence.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Soul , Light , Nature , Idea

“Nuclear weapons are considered as a means of forcing a potential adversary to refuse to unleash aggression against our country.”

Valery Gerasimov (1955) chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of the Russian Federation

"Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov holds briefing for foreign military attaches" https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12331668@egNews (24 December 2020)

Country

“Old habits did not just die hard. They refused to die at all.”

Charles Sheffield book Transcendence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 7, “The Torvil Anfract” (p. 70)

“If God entrusted his word to priests, it’s easy to explain why the world refuses to listen to it.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Donna Giovanna, Act IV, scene ii.
Theater Quotes

God , World

“It would be deemed sinful of you to refuse to change even though you know that you are completely wrong.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Change

“Compared to the dog, the wolf is a true symbol of freedom or of those who refused to be spoon-fed.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom , Dogs , Wolf

“Those who tried to refuse or go against the Will of God, like Jonah, had to pay the price of disobedience.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God

“Memories refused to fit, or fitted but came unglued. Even months later, how would I know if some major tranche of myself remained lost?”

David Mitchell book Cloud Atlas

"The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish", p. 354
Cloud Atlas (2004), The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (Part 2)

Memory

“And if my friends refused to listen to me, then the walls had to hear me or the stones in the fields and the trees of the forests.”

Julius Bahnsen (1830–1881) German philosopher

Quoted by Harry Slochower in "Julius Bahnsen, Philosopher of Heroic Despair, 1830-1881" (1932), The Philosophical Review, 41(4), p. 371

Tree

“A universal refusal to propagate the human species would be the greatest of conceivable crimes from a Utilitarian point of view.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 4, chapter 5, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

Universe

“Are you one of the nine who pass men by
In this hasty life we live?
Do you refuse with a downcast eye
The help which you could give?
Or are you the one in ten whose creed
Is always to stop for the man in need?”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.90 - The One in Ten, final stanza.

Help , Men , Life

“You have a right to be curious. And I have a right to refuse to satisfy it. You may credit it to your own charm or an old man’s whim, if you like. You are interesting, you know. Hired killers always are. Not admirable, but interesting.”

Jack Williamson book Star Bridge

Source: Star Bridge (1955), Chapter 11, “The Turning Tide” (p. 150)

“I envy men whose yards are gay,
But never work as hard as they;
I also envy men who own
More wealth than I have ever known.
I'm like a lot of men who yearn
For joys that they refuse to earn.You cannot have the joys of work
And take the comfort of a shirk.
I find the man I envy most
Is he who's longest at his post.
I could have gold and roses, too,
If I would work like those who do.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: Just Folks (1917), The Truth About Envy, third and last stanzas.

Wealth , Joy , Men , Envy

“Most people just don’t want to accept the reality of incompatibility. But refusing to accept incompatibility will lead you straight down the road to relationship hell.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

Hell , People , Reality

“Some remnant of battle must remain, something halting an advance. The ghost of a ghost may be more than a memory. It may be a piece of history that refuses to be rewritten.”

Jack Cady (1932–2004) American writer

Source: Kilroy Was Here (1996), p. 156

History , Memory

“There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Source: Paradoxes of Faith (1987), Ch. X. "Man", p. 137

Beauty , Suffering , Appearance

“You cannot find one synagogue I desecrated. You cannot find one Jewish person I have harmed, except I refuse to be silent when I know the truth. And it was Jesus who said you shall know the truth and the truth will set us free.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

Farrakhan speaks in Birmingham to support Voting Rights Act https://www.al.com/spotnews/2013/06/farrakhan_speaks_in_birmingham.html (14 June 2013)

Personality , Truth

“I think: what is my responsibility to my roots-both white and brown, Spanish-speaking and English? I am a woman with a foot in both worlds; and I refuse the split. I feel the necessity for dialogue. Sometimes I feel it urgently”

Cherríe Moraga (1952) American writer

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Fourth Edition (2015)

World , Thinking , Feeling

“Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride or laziness of mind.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Principle attributed to Popper by Ryszard Kapiscinski in New York Times obituary, 1995.
Misattributed
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/magazine/lives-well-lived-karl-popper-the-philosopher-as-giantslayer.html

Knowledge