Quotes about reject
page 7

“The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has — from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

http://hnn.us/articles/1881.html
Interview with Christopher Hitchens
Jamie
Glazov
History News Network
2003-12-22
2000s, 2003

People, Thinking, Time

“At a time in our history when the streets of the Nation's cities inspire fear and despair, rather than pride and hope, it is difficult to maintain objectivity and concern for our fellow citizens. But, the measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis. No nation in the recorded history of man has a greater tradition of revering justice and fair treatment for all its citizens in times of turmoil, confusion, and tension than ours. This is a country which stands tallest in troubled times, a country that clings to fundamental principles, cherishes its constitutional heritage, and rejects simple solutions that compromise the values that lie at the roots of our democratic system.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, Concurring opinion (January 17, 1972)

Lie, Fear, Justice, Hope

“When we reach the silver sands and plunge into the great sea of God's silence, we begin to understand that he alone is God — Lover, Friend, the totality of gentleness, peace and rest. He calls us and we cannot resist that call. We have to be alone with him. It is a necessity, it is a hunger. It has been said that prayer is a hunger. But this Christ walks with loneliness and rejection, and so must we.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

Molchanie (1982)

Hunger, God, Peace, Lovers

“The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan will co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour toward an end beneficial to all. For, as we have said elsewhere, socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian nor Freethinker, Buddhist, Mahometan, nor Jew; it is only Human. We of the socialist working class realise that as we suffer together we must work together that we may enjoy together. We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Labour, Nationality and Religion, in response to Father Robert Kane's lectures denouncing socialism, Catholicism and Socialism http://lxoa.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/catholicism-and-socialism/

Justice, Suffering

“There is one thing about “our tiny Parsi community” that you must know, which is that to us (or at least to most of us) the one thing greater than being a Parsi is being an Indian. I am proud of the fact that our community rejected the offer made at the time of drafting of India’s Constitution — to Anglo Indians and Parsis alike — to have, for at least 10 years, one special representative in Parliament. Sir Homi Mody said in the Constituent Assembly that Parsis would rather join the mainstream of free India. And we did. We have no regrets. I must also tell you that the “tiny Parsi community” not only churns out legal luminaries, but produces geniuses in the medical field as well. As to how it is that we have been formidable in the legal and medical world, I just cannot say. But I like to think that it is because of our religion — a religion of good morals, which Parsi Zoroastrians find difficult to explain, but easy to live by.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

World, Religion, Communication, Thinking

“Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd (2005), Chapter 21; musings of Odd Thomas

World, Solitude, Loneliness

“Fascism itself was a variant of Sorelian syndicalism which advertized itself as voluntaristic, neo-idealist and elitist socialism. This current of socialist thought neither Fascism nor Gentile ever rejected. ‘Fascism,’ Gentile insisted, ‘as a consequence of its Marxian and Sorelian patrimony... conjoined with the influence of contemporary Italian idealism, through which Fascist thought attained maturity, conceives philosophy as praxis.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 317

“Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.
The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Hate, People, Truth, Peace

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Books, School, Family, Faith

“Islam has no mechanism for excommunication. Individuals can leave the ummah and be regarded as apostates (murtad). But no one who swears he is a Muslim can be excluded. Even very bad Muslims are still Muslims as long as they haven’t thrice publicly rejected the two testimonies. (The two testimonies are accepting the oneness of God and that Mohammed is His Prophet.) Thus, neither Obama nor anyone else is qualified to decide who is a Muslim — or what is “true Islam.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Obama’s elementary errors on Islam http://nypost.com/2015/02/20/obamas-elementary-errors-on-islam/, New York Post (February 20, 2015). New York Post

God

“For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism. Is there any evidence from the past that institutionalizing sects and ethnic grievances would ensure a nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom? America’s melting pot is history’s sole exception of e pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language, and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt…”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, Diversity: History's Pathway to Chaos (2016)

History, Freedom, Success, Past

“my father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/39/mode/1up pp. 39–40

World, Evil, Perfection

“Unless a woman asks men out (the first time) as often as men ask her out, then the assertion He asked me out, therefore he pays is just a double jeopardy of the male role: he must not only do the asking, he must pay extra for risking extra rejection.”

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

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 277.

Men, Time

“A government will not pay people to contradict directly, or even only indirectly, what it has had promulgated from all the pulpits by thousands of its appointed priests or religious teachers. … Hence the maxim improbant secus docentes [We reject and condemn the man who teaches something different].”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Zuvörderst nämlich wird eine Regierung nicht Leute besolden, um Dem, was sie durch tausend von ihr angestellte Priester, oder Religionslehrer, von allen Kanzeln verkünden läßt, direkt, oder auch nur indirekt, zu widersprechen. … Daher der Grundsatz improbant secus docentes.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, pp. 152–153, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 139
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

People, Teachers

“Women will never succeed at the level or in the numbers they deserve until they get over their genteel reluctance to take abuse in the attack and counterattack of territorial warfare. The recent trend in feminism, notably in sexual harassment policy, has been to overrely on regulation and legislation rather than to promote personal responsibility. Women must not become wards and supplicants of authority figures. Freedom means rejecting dependency.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. x

Women, Freedom, Dependency, Personality

“In negotiating with rejected lovers or husbands, women must stop thinking they can make everyone happy. In many cases of harassment and stalking, it is clear that the woman never learned how to terminate the fantasy — which requires resolution and decisiveness on their part. Wavering, dithering, or passive hysterical fear will only intensify or prolong pursuit.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 47

Women, Happiness, Fear, Lovers

“This book recounts the story of the people in their struggle to maintain their way of life. Given this background of massacres, resistance, and protest, the courage they show in this current situation is remarkable. It should be an inspiration for those who maintain that progress can be made only when the rank and file of workers are the architects of the institutions in which they work and lie, just as it is a refutation of those who reject the primary role of workers in bringing about such a future”

June Nash (1927–2019) American anthropologist

We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (1979), p. xxi

Life, People, Lie, Books

“I reject, as you know, the "philosophy of Marxism," dialectical materialism….The general Marxian theory of "universal history," to the extent that it has any empirical content, seems to me disproved by modern historical and anthropological investigation.Marxian economics seems to me for the most part either false or obsolete or meaningless in application to contemporary economic phenomena. Those aspects of Marxian economics which retain validity do not seem to me to justify the theoretical structure of the economics.Not only do I believe it meaningless to say that "socialism is inevitable" and false that socialism is "the only alternative to capitalism"; I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitive society (which I call "managerial society") is not only possible but is a more probable outcome of the present than socialism….On no ideological, theoretic or political ground, then, can I recognize, or do I feel, any bond or allegiance to the Workers Party (or to any other Marxist party). That is simply the case, and I can no longer pretend about it, either to myself or to others.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Burnham's Letter of Resignation, 1940

Feeling, History, Universe, Parting

“Tolstoy becomes intelligible when he is interpreted as a nineteenth century Russian who participates, in the depths of his unconscious soul as well as consciously, in the cultural movements of his time, and in the Russian mystic sense of community with men and nature. It is so with all the members of the radical Christian group. When they meet Christ they do so as heirs of a culture which they cannot reject because it is part of them.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 70

Men, Soul, Intelligence, Communication

“One rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The secret memorandum Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East (25 May 1940)
1940s

People

“Roswell Gardiner has never wavered in his faith, from the time when his feelings were awakened by the just view of his own insignificance, as compared to the power of God! He then learned the first, great lesson in religious belief, that of humility; without which no man can be truly penitent, or truly a Christian. He no longer thought of measuring the Deity with his narrow faculties, or of setting up his blind conclusions, in the face of positive revelations. He saw that all must be accepted, or none; and there was too much evidence, too much inherent truth, a morality too divine, to allow a mind like his to reject the gospel altogether. With Mary at his side, he has continued to worship the Trinity, accepting its mysteries in an humble reliance on the words of inspired men.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Sea Lions or The Lost Sealers (1849)

Men, God, Truth, Faith

“Only veganism respects nonhuman rights and rejects nonhuman enslavement.”

Joan Dunayer American activist

Speciesism (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2004), p. 156.

“Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Money, Way, Business

“But the thing about getting rejected is that you reflect and think and analyze about why you got turned down. You learn a lot more from stories about getting rejected than stories about becoming happy.”

Makoto Shinkai (1973) Japanese anime director and former graphic designer

Interviewed on Anime Diet http://animediet.net/conventions/the-garden-of-thoughts-an-interview-with-makoto-shinkai About The Garden of Words

Happiness, Thinking, Learning

“Then what you find out is, what humans then do is, they create institutions - that's where institutionalism has a tie with Post Keynesianism - they create institutions which limit outcomes, which permit you to control outcomes as long as the society agrees to live by the rules of the game, which are the rules of the institutions. Now, if society rejects those rules, then society breaks down. What are the rules of the game? Well, money is a rule of the economic game. There are lots of human economic arrangements which don't use money. The family unit solves its economic problems, of what and how to produce within the family, without the use of money and without the use of markets. All the 24 hours of the day are either employed or leisure. There's no involuntary unemployment in the family. So you can solve the problem, but it's a different economy. We are talking about a money-using economy, and money is a human institution. You have to ask yourself, why was it created? Why is it so strange? You see, in Lerner, in neoclassical economics, money is a commodity. It's peanuts, with a very high elasticity of production. If people want more money, that creates just as many jobs as if people want goods. Then you have to say to yourself - and this was the question that Milton Friedman asked me in the debate - he says, 'That's nonsense; Davidson says money is not producible. Why are there historical cases where Indians used beads as money? Aren't beads easily producible?”

Paul Davidson (1930) Post Keynesian economist

But not in the Indian economy. They didn't know how to produce them.
quoted in Conversations with Post Keynesians (1995) by J. E. King

Money, People, Family, Game

“Every official was required to undergo, before assuming office… approval before a law court. This was an inquiry into his conduct, his exactness in paying taxes, etc., and it sometimes happened that he was rejected… Every official was also required to take an oath of allegiance.”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

Law

“I love being with people. But I need a script, a role, something that will help me overcome my fears of rejection and shame. Most religions and belief systems provide a blueprint for some sort of community. And the religion’s leaders model a way of being. For example, in my book Choke, a character enacts his own death and resurrection every night – as does the narrator in Fight Club. Here’s Jesus, allowing himself to look terrible in front of his peers. That’s the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Quoted in Andrew Lawless, "Those burnt tongue moments - Chuck Palahniuk in interview" http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_chuck_palahniuk_haunted_interview.htm, Three Monkeys (May 2005)

Love, Death, People, Books

“Anyone who criticisms Islam publicly can expect to be threatened with physical violence. If that's not terrorism, then what is it? In the world of the cultural terrorist, if you oppose the oppression of women and minorities, you're an enemy of religious freedom; if you despise violent superstition, you're a racist; and if you reject religious totalitarianism, you have a mental illness. Let me tell you something, when you get to the stage where anyone criticising your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness, that is a sure sign of mental illness.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Islamic cultural terrorism" (15 June 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=377kKBi6anQ 2011

Women, World, Freedom

“It is woman's peculiar gifts, as well as man's, which make nonesense of any literal-minded notion of 'equality' of the sexes. Nobody could do greater harm to woman's real progress than to confuse 'equality' on the one hand with 'equality of opportunity' on the other. The Moslem religion and all the other great world faiths teach the complementary relationship of man and woman. They all reject the idea of their being 'equal' in the sense of identical or synonymous. Observation and common sense teach the same truths.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 235
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Truth, World, Faith, Religion

“His heart and mind must be pure. He must put aside fornication—”
Sagitta chuckled. “Dear Father, sex is the ultimate creative power. Your faith’s rejection of that principle will be its downfall.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 86)

Faith, Sex, Heart

“That which the learned Jews did with the outward letter of their Law, that same do learned Christians with the outward letter of their gospel. Why did the Jewish church so furiously and obstinately cry out against Christ, Let him be crucified? It was because their letter-learned ears, their worldly spirit and temple-orthodoxy, would not bear to hear of an inward savior, not bear to hear of being born again of his Spirit, of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, of his dwelling in them, and they in him. To have their Law of ordinances, their temple-pomp sunk into such a fulfilling savior as this, was such enthusiastic jargon to their ears, as forced their sober, rational theology, to call Christ, Beelzebub, his doctrine, blasphemy, and all for the sake of Moses and rabbinic orthodoxy.
Need it now be asked, whether the true Christ of the gospel be less blasphemed, less crucified, by that Christian theology which rejects an inward Christ, a savior living and working in the soul, as its inward light and life, generating his own nature and Spirit in it, as its only redemption, whether that which rejects all this as mystic madness be not that very same old Jewish wisdom sprung up in Christian theology, which said of Christ when teaching these very things, "He is mad, why hear ye him?" Our blessed Lord in a parable sets forth the blind Jews, as saying of himself, "We will not have this man to reign OVER us."”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

The sober-minded Christian scholar has none of this Jewish blindness, he only says of Christ, we will not have this man to REIGN IN US, and so keeps clear of such mystic absurdity as St. Paul fell into, when he enthusiastically said, "Yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me."
¶ 157 - 158.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life, Wisdom, Law, Soul

“In the form that it emerged at the turn of the century and developed in the 1920s and 1930s, the fascist ideology represented a synthesis of organic nationalism with the antimaterialist revision of Marxism. It expressed a revolutionary aspiration based on a rejection of individualism, whether liberal or Marxist, and it created the elements of a new and original political culture.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p. 6

“We reject: kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.”

David Clark (1944) American computer scientist

A Cloudy Crystal Ball -- Visions of the Future, PDF, 1992-07-16, 2016-05-13 https://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/People/DDC/future_ietf_92.pdf, (Presentation given at the 24th Internet Engineering Task Force) frequently cited as the motto of the Internet engineering community

“Does the cycle that goes, interest in something, involvement in it, tiring of it, and rejection of it, looking into something else, get shorter every decade?”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 9 - Countdown

“Rather than let the rejections deter you from your objectives, simply aim to learn what the rejections teach you.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.35

Learning

“God sends good people to Hell. Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism—not only do they lead people away from from God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in Hell. You know Jesus was very clear: Hell is not only going to be populated by murderers, and drug dealers, and child dealers; Hell is going to be filled with good religious people who have rejected the truth of Christ.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

"Politically Incorrect", First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, , quoted in * 2011-10-11
Perry Endorser Calls Judaism, Catholicism Path to Hell
Tim
Murphy
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/watch-perry-endorser-jeffress-calls-judaism-catholicism-path-hell

God, People, Truth, Religion

“A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father. And though I would never subscribe to such a statement wholeheartedly, I would be the last person to reject it out of hand. For my own part, I would express such a doctrine without any suggestion of bitterness against the world, or rather without the hurt which the mere sound of the words implies.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

World, Parting, Hurt, Personality

“The barrier was only in my mind — which is true of this barrier as well. The more firmly I try to cross the barrier, the more firmly I'm rejected. Well, maybe it's the intention to cross the boundary that pushes me away.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)

“The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 5, The Magical Control of the Weather.

Truth, Time

“That heart had been an apple once, they reckoned. Green.
They had a scheme to plant an apple there again
beginning with a pip, but he rejected it.”

Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist

'Man with a Golf Ball Heart', from The Dead Sea Poems.

Heart

“Everything turns on mastering the gap between the presupposition (that must be rejected) of a being of the one and the thesis of its 'there is.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Meditation One: The One and the Multiple: a priori conditions of any possible ontology
Being and Event (1988)

“When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it.
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Good Intentions (1942), Seeing Eye to Eye is Believing

People, Truth

“In the 1990's, a time of corporate capital's global ascendancy, the mildest restraints on its prerogatives have been peremptorily rejected. Automatically, under this designation, measures to protect national cultural industries, for example, have been ruled unacceptable infringements of "free trade."”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Two, Visions Of Global Electronic Mastery, p. 80

Time

“It goes without saying that I understand the comforts and security of racial solidarity, defensive or otherwise. Only those who have not been set upon by hatred and repelled by rejection fail to understand its attraction. As I have suggested, I have been there.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Understanding

“… we sometimes find that such heresies have been the foundation for bold and necessary change, but heresy is usually just crazy. Most daring new ideas are foolish or dangerous and appropriately rejected or ignored. So while it may be true that great geniuses are usually heretics, heretics are rarely great geniuses.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

On leadership and the relation between madness, heresy, and genius.
Ideas as Art (2006)

Idea, Change

“I reject republicanism. At the head of races, above the elite, there is Monarchy. Not all monarchs have been good. Monarchy, however, has always been good. The individual monarch must not be confused with the institution of Monarchy, the conclusions drawn from this would be false. There can be bad priests, but this does not mean that we can draw the conclusion that the Church must be ended and God stoned to death. There are certainly weak or bad monarchs, but we cannot renounce Monarchy. The race has a line of life. A monarch is great and good, when he stays on this line; he is petty and bad, to the extent that he moves away from this racial line of life or he opposes it. There are many lines by which a monarch can be tempted. He must set them all aside and follow the line of the race. Here is the law of Monarchy.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Life, Death, God, Law

“In the past, both sexes were anxious about sex and pregnancy. Now the pill minimizes her anxiety and condoms increase his. Now the pimple faced boy must still risk rejection while also overcoming his own fear of herpes and AIDS and reassuring her there is nothing to fear. He must still do the sexual risk-taking, but now he can be put in jail if he takes risks too quickly or be called a wimp if he doesn’t take them quickly enough.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 168.

Fear, Sex, Boy, Past

“Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), p. 216

Justice, Question, Freedom, Universe

“We want friendship and co-operation with the people of Spain. But the people of Gibraltar said no to Joint Sovereignty in our referendum of 2002. By 98% we rejected Joint Sovereignty then. But that was obviously not loud and clear enough. So let me be unequivocal so that there is no mistake or any further foolish repetition of this warped notion for the transfer of our sovereignty: Gibraltarian is not for sale. The Gibraltarians will not be bribed. The Gibraltarians will never surrender!”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

[14 June 2016, Chief Minister's Address To United Nations Committee Of 24, http://www.yourgibraltartv.com/politics/11901-jun-14-chief-minister-s-address-to-united-nations-committee-of-24, Your Gibraltar, 19 September 2016]
Address to the Special Committee on Decolonisation in New York
2016

Friendship, People

“Many grand notions and titles have over time attached themselves to this place: a paradise at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s richest floral kingdom, a maritime fulcrum between West and East, a European outpost at the foot of the continent, the Tavern of the Seas. But the two names that are the most potent are also two of the earliest: the contradictory claims of this being both a Cape of Storms and a Cape of Good Hope. The tension between these ideas encapsulates many of the tensions of this city.
Legend has it that the first Portuguese navigator to round the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias, named this stormy peninsula Cabo das Tormentas. However, King João II rejected Dias’s name in favour of one that would be more inspirational for the Portuguese people: Cabo da Boa Esperança. The turning point for the Lusitanian caravels would spell untold riches in the East. But the dialectic between the two contending titles is as virile today in a city whose promise is limitless and whose socio-political storms act as a sea anchor.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

Cape Town Calling (2007)

People, World, Hope, Idea

“As a right-winger and UKIP member, I believe in immigration. That sentence might sound slightly surprising coming from the General Secretary of a Party which is perceived by the media as anti-immigration. So let me explain. I reject uncontrolled immigration. I reject immigration beyond the ability of our country’s infrastructure to cope. Recently, I’ve been listening to the Bruce Springsteen song ‘American Land’. It starts off well enough, talking about people relocating to America as it grew and helping to build the country. That’s the kind of immigration that I believe in. Those who believe that they can have a better life (in this case in the UK), who come over and are determined to see themselves as part of British culture and will put their heart and soul into improving this country for all of us. I’m talking about the kind of person who is proud to come to the United Kingdom and shows that pride at every opportunity. Such people are a real asset to the country. That’s why I’m so angry at the ‘left-wing’ in British politics, which has consistently pursued an effective open-door immigration policy. Uncontrolled mass immigration doesn’t provide any of those benefits, but instead creates huge cultural problems for us. Worse still, it creates resentment. In Sheffield, I see workers losing their jobs to immigrant workers. All that does is create resentment and fuels the kind of racism that we’ve painstakingly worked to get rid of from our nation.”

Jonathan Arnott (1981) British politician

I believe….in immigration? http://www.jonathanarnott.co.uk/2013/06/i-believe-in-immigration/ (June 23, 2013)

Life, People, Soul, Problem

“To Parker Bright, Hannah Black, and other critics of this painting, I say this:
I completely reject your criticism. If only artists of the proper ethnicity can depict violence inflicted on their group, then only writers of the proper ethnicity can write about the same issues, and so on with all the arts. And what goes for ethnicity or race goes for gender: men cannot write about suffering inflicted on women, nor women about suffering inflicted on men. Gays cannot write about straight people and vice versa.
The fact is that we are all human, and we are all capable of sharing, as well as depicting, the pain and suffering of others. I will not allow you to fracture art and literature the way you have fractured politics. Yes, horrible injustices have been visited on minority groups, on women, on gays, and on other marginalized people, but to allow that injustice to be conveyed only by “properly ethnic or gendered artists” is to deny us our common humanity and deprive us of emotional solidarity. No group, whatever its pigmentation or chromosomal constitution, has the exclusive right to create art or literature about their own subgroup. To deny others that right is to censor them.
To those who say this painting has caused them “unnecessary hurt” because it is by a white artist about black pain, I say, “Your own pain about this artwork is gratuitous; I do not take it seriously. It’s the cry of a coddled child who simply wants attention.””

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Insane political correctness: snowflakes urge destruction of Emmett Till painting https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/insane-political-correctness-snowflakes-urge-destruction-of-emmett-till-painting/" April 4, 2017

Women, Men, Pain, People

“The Chartres apse is as entertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because it overrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imagination whatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; the feebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulant or strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive plants from the touch of a vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel a woman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Feeling, Imagination, Idea

“Thank you all very much for your hospitality. We've just had a wide-ranging discussions on the matter at hand. Like the good folks standing with me, the American people were appalled and outraged at last Tuesday's attacks. And so were Muslims all across the world. Both Americans and Muslim friends and citizens, tax-paying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our T. V. screens. These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith, and it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that. The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself. 'In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Islam is Peace (September 2001)

People, World, Faith, Quotes

“Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

“There is a phenomenon in nature unknown, and therefore rejected by physiology and psychology in our age of unbelief. This phenomenon is a state of half-death. Virtually, the body is dead; and, in cases of persons in whom matter does not predominate over spirit and wickedness not so great as to destroy spirituality, if left alone, their astral soul will disengage itself by gradual efforts, and, when the last link is broken, it finds itself separated forever from its earthly body. Equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the ethereal man from the decaying organic mass. The whole difficulty lies in that 1, the ultimate moment of separation between the two is believed to be that when the body is declared dead by science; and 2, a prevailing unbelief in the existence of either soul or spirit in man, by the same science.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XII

Death, Age, Soul, Nature

“The new institutionalism in organization theory and sociology comprises a rejection of rational-actor models, and interest in institutions as independent variables, a turn toward cognitive and cultural explanations, and an interest in properties of supra-individual units of analysis that cannot be reduced to aggregations or direct consequences of individual’s attributes or motives.”

Paul DiMaggio (1951) American sociologist

Source: Introduction to The New Institutionalism and Organizational Analysis, 1991, p. 8

Motivation

“Early signs of what the Trump administration may look like: A man associated with white supremacy and misogyny will be White House chief strategist; a man rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism will be attorney general; and an Islamophobe who has taken money from Moscow will be national security adviser. No, this is not satire.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

Trump Embarrasses Himself and Our Country http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/so-many-options-yet-donald-trump-picks-the-ugly.html, The New York Times (November 19, 2016)

Money

“Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses for nonviolence, justice and equality.
He exposes the fallacy of the claim that everyone can be rich and successful provided they work hard. He points to the millions who work themselves to the bone and still remain hungry.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

Justice, Motivation, Nature, Success

“There are tremendous actual differences in values. Some value systems, such as the ones that motivate "honor killings", deserve to be morally condemned and rejected. But there are many other variations in values within the bounds of decency.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"The Zeitgeist Movement" (2009) https://stallman.org/articles/zeitgeist.html 2000s

Motivation

“But once we have reached this agreement and we then elect a government and that government functions—and the election for that government is one in which there’s freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, so that it is a legitimate government—then that government commands our obedience. We have no right to reject our duty to obey because we don’t like the result of the election—provided the election is conducted fairly and Constitutional rights are observed.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A

Freedom

“'The main argument for the term "open source software" is that "free software" makes some people uneasy. That's true: talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might rather ignore. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may reject the idea for that. It does not follow that society would be better off if we stop talking about these things.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1990s, Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" (1998)

People, Idea, Thinking, Freedom

“Socialism aside, there also has been a rejection of Western values, of which individual freedom is prominent, and acceptance of some form of value-relativism (thus, no political system is better than any other). In some cases this rejection has turned to outright hostility and particularly anti-Americanism, and thus opposition to American values, such as freedom. To accept, therefore, that democratic freedom is inherently most peaceful, is to the value-relativist, to say the unacceptable—that it is better.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Political Systems, Violence, and War,” chap. 14, in "Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map", edit, W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen, Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1991, pp. 347-370; and “The Politics of Cold Blood,” Society, Vol. 27 (November/December, 1989) pp. 32-40

Hostility, Peace, Freedom

“It is difficult to analyse the motive that induced me to make those journeys, or the satisfaction I derived from such a life. There was of course the lure of the unknown; there was the constant test of resolution and endurance. Yet those travels in the Empty Quarter would have been for me a pointless penance but for the comradeship of my Bedu companions. All they possessed were their camels and saddlery, their rifles and daggers, some waterskins and cooking pots and bowls, and the very clothes they wore; few of them even owned a blanket. They possessed, however, a freedom which we, with all our craving for possessions, cannot experience. Any of them could have found a job in the towns and villages of the Hadhramaut; but all would have rejected that easier life of lesser men. They met every challenge, every hardship, with the proud boast: 'We are Bedu.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 398.

Life, Men, Travel, Motivation

“Today, I view Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a bloated Brown Sahib, and Nehruism as the combined embodiment of all the imperialist ideologies Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Communism that have flooded this country in the wake of foreign invasions. And I do not have the least doubt in my mind that if India is to live, Nehruism must die. Of course, it is already dying under the weight of its sins against the Indian people, their country, their society, their economy, their environment, and their culture. What I plead is that a conscious rejection of Nehruism in all its forms will hasten its demise, and save us from the mischief which it is bound to create further if it is allowed to linger.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

People, Communication, Country

“A woman who rejects motherhood, who refrains from being around the house, however successful her working life is, is deficient, is incomplete.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Turkey's Erdogan says childless women are 'incomplete'" http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/turkey-erdogan-childless-women-incomplete-160606042442710.html, Al Jazeera (June 6, 2016)

Life, Success, Housing

“Balla [his former art teacher in Italy] flabbergasted us because, not content with being involved in a Futurist campaign, as you can well imagine him doing, he launched himself into a complete transformation. He rejected all his works and all his working methods. He started work on four pictures of movement (one painting was his 'Girl running on a balcony'), which were still realist but incredible ahead of their time.... He confided this to w:Aldo Pallazzeschi: 'They (Balla's former - so much younger pupils Boccioni and Severini] did not want anything to do with me in Paris and they were right: they have gone much further than I, but I will work and I too will progress.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

In a letter to Gino Severini, Jan. 1913; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
Boccioni is referring in this quote to their common former teacher Balla who lived and worked that time in Paris
1913

Art, Confidence, Imagination, Girl

“Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

World

“The first obligation of Simplicity is that of using the simplest means to secure the fullest effect. But although the mind instinctlvely rejects all needless complexity, we shall greatly err if we fail to recognise the fact, that what the mind recoils from is not the complexity, but the needlessness.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

“No. But it was indicated by other people that I should go there—like my wife, my friends, the woman from Alcoholics Anonymous who came around. My wife, Dottie, was the prime mover. It would have been a disappointment to her if I'd rejected her suggestion. I stayed until they were done with me. I don't know if it 'worked.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

I don't understand that.
When asked if he was "feeling batter" following his previous year's stay at the Betty Ford Center, as quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind" by Victor Davis, in The Chicago Tribune (November 23, 1984)

People, Alcohol, Disappointment, Understanding

“The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it…”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

"The Root is Man" (1946).

War, Understanding, Sense

“No one looked at her, no one thought of her. She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.”

Guy De Maupassant book Boule de Suif

Boule de Suif (1880)

“I have staked my career—my life itself—on the things I could see, on the stories I could credit, and on the eventual vindication, when the book was closed, of the reasonable and skeptical approach. In the face of twenty-five years of bloodshed, mayhem, criminality, and the universal human pastime of ruination, I have clung fiercely to Occam’s razor, seeking always to keep my solutions unadorned and free of conjecture, and never to resort to conspiracy or any kind of prosecutorial woolgathering. My mother, whenever she was confronted by calamity or personal sorrow, invoked cosmic emanations, invisible empires, ancient prophecies, and intrigues; it has been the business of my life to reject such folderol and seek the simpler explanation. But we were fools, she and I, arrant blockheads, each of us blind to or heedless of the readiest explanation: that the world is an ungettable joke, and our human need to explain its wonders and horrors, our appalling genius for devising such explanations, is nothing more than the rim shot that accompanies the punch line.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The God of Dark Laughter https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/04/09/the-god-of-dark-laughter, The New Yorker (April 9, 2001)

Life, Books, World, Fools

“Rejection is nature's way of telling you to write a better book.”

James D. Macdonald (1954) American author and critic

Making Light: "How To Get Published" http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012744.html (6 December 2010), nielsenhayden.com

Books, Way, Nature

“I have tried, in this book, to do three things. I try first to bring a greater awareness of the way in which the differences and the similarities in the bodies of human beings are the basis on which all our learnings about our sex, and our relationship to the other sex, are built. Talking about our bodies is a complex and difficult matter. We are so used to covering them up, to referring to them obliquely with slang terms or in a borrowed language to hiding even infants' sex membership under blue and pink ribbons. It is difficult to become aware of those things about us which have been, and will always be, patterned by our own particular modesties and reticences. We reject, and very rightly, catalogues of caresses arranged in frequency tables, or accounts of childhood that read like a hospital chart…”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 4-5

Books, Sex, Way, Learning

“Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Hayek and conservatism", in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Problem

“For, it must be kept in mind that individualism is the modern radicalism. In the true sense of the word, individualism is always radical, for it rests its case on root ideas; I delves into the nature of things for basic causes; it rejects the idea that man is best served by a series of expedients.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 6

Idea, Nature, Sense

“Who are they to try me? They should be tried first. [They are] people who are rejecting the United Nations resolutions, who are rejecting the Hague Court resolution, who are rejecting the world public opinion, who have no respect for any internation law, and who are massacring people, executing people, just imprisoning thousands and thousands and thousands without any reasons. Who is going to try them?”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

David Frost (January 1980), The Shah Speaks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUQUDf5IBo&feature=related (video) Interviews

People, World, Law

“An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxx

“Science as a system of statements is always an object of discussion. Statements are to be compared with statements, and not with 'experience', or with 'the world', or with something else. All that meaningless doubling belongs to more or less subtle metaphysics and as such must be rejected. Every new statement is to be confronted with existing ones, already brought to a state of harmony between themselves. A statement will be considered correct if it can be joined to them.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1931), "Soziologie im Physikalismus", in Erkenntnis, Vol. 2. p. 403; as cited in: Schaff (1962;84)
1930s

World, Science

“Vibrant human diversity is now commonplace in major cities throughout the world. Some celebrate such a mix of human diversity. Others deplore it, preferring that so-called races be separated both geographically and reproductively. Even today, some people retain the once-popular belief that the 'white' race is superior in intellect, health, and other attributes. Although far more people reject the notion of white supremacy today than in the past, its legacy remains, as evidenced by economic stratification, ongoing segregation, and classification by racial categories. Even among those who reject the supposed superiority of a particular ethnicity over any other, the perception of distinct, genetically determined human races often persists.”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 9–10.

People, Health, World, Past

“What was the origin of our slave population? The evil commenced when we were in our Colonial state, but acts were passed by our Colonial Legislature, prohibiting the importation, of more slaves, into the Colony. These were rejected by the Crown. We declared our independence, and the prohibition of a further importation was among the first acts of state sovereignty. Virginia was the first state which instructed her delegates to declare the colonies independent. She braved all dangers. From Quebec to Boston, and from Boston to Savannah, Virginia shed the blood of her sons. No imputation then can be cast upon her in this matter. She did all that was in her power to do, to prevent the extension of slavery, and to mitigate its evils.”

James Monroe (1758–1831) American politician, 5th President of the United States (in office from 1817 to 1825)

Speech in the Virginia State Convention for altering the Constitution https://books.google.com/books?id=R9ctAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22The+evil+commenced+when+we+were+in+our+Colonial+state%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBmoVChMIwM7FxfHTxwIViPM-Ch3fiQrs#v=onepage&q=%22The%20evil%20commenced%20when%20we%20were%20in%20our%20Colonial%20state%22&f=false (2 November 1829)

Evil

“America's greatness is built on the principles of liberty and preserved by the men and women who wear the uniform to defend it. As I have said on numerous occasions, a religious test for entering our country is not reflective of these fundamental values. I reject it. Many Muslim Americans have served valiantly in our military, and made the ultimate sacrifice. Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice—and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan—should always be honored. Period.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Statement http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/statement-house-speaker-paul-ryan (July 31, 2016)

Women, Men, Country

“And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. Full transcript http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/facts/GOP.speeches.past/84.kirkpatrick.shtml

People, Freedom, Housing, Country

“We need to launch a nationwide campaign against superstition and belief in witchcraft. Nigerians should be told that witches are not real, and that witches and spirits are imaginary entities created by primitive minds during the infancy of human race to explain situations and issues they could not understand or resolve commonsensically. This campaign should be taken to all Nigerian schools, colleges and universities. It should be publicized over the radios and television, in the newspapers, in market places, in churches and mosques. In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing. This has been the driving force in Akwa Ibom State, and until Nigerians learn to reject superstition and irrationalism such tragedies will continue to occur.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2008/12/14/saving-child-witches-a-nigerian-perspective/ (December 14th, 2008)

Women, Men, God, Books

“By their very nature the problems imposed on organizational theorists involve so many assumptions and such a mixture of accuracy and inaccuracy that virtually all conjectures and all selection criteria remain plausible and nothing gets rejected or highlighted.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, "Theory construction as disciplined imagination," 1989, p. 521; as cited in: Richard A. Swanson, ‎Thomas J. Chermack (2013), Theory Building in Applied Disciplines, p. 49

Nature, Problem

“To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended. Judgments of this kind supply the motivation for the decision of accepting or rejecting the kind of entities.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (1950), Ch. 3. What does acceptance of a kind of entities mean?

Motivation, Question, Decision, Falseness

“The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 10

Art, Knowledge, Time

“The puella mother who has never taken up residence in her own body, and therefore fears her own chthonic nature, is not going to experience pregnancy as a quiet meditation with her unborn child, nor birth as a joyful bonding experience. Although she may go through the motions of natural childbirth, the psyche/soma split in her is so deep that physical bonding between her and her baby daughter does not take place. Her child lives with a profound sense of despair, a despair which becomes conscious if in later years she does active imagination with her body and releases waves of grief and terror that resonate with the initial, primal rejection. […] The body that appears in dreams wrapped in fire, encircled by a black snake or encumbered by a fish tail from the waist down, may be holding a death-wish too deep for tears.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 37

Death, Fear, Dreams, Imagination

“Here at Adbusters, we decided to tackle the issue head on and came up with a carefully researched list of who appear to be the 50 most influential neocons in the US (see above). Deciding who exactly is a neocon is difficult since some neocons reject the term while others embrace it. Some shape policy from within the White House, while others are more peripheral, exacting influence indirectly as journalists, academics and think tank policy wonks. What they all share is the view that the US is a benevolent hyper power that must protect itself by reshaping the rest of the world into its morally superior image. And half of them are Jewish.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Why won't anyone say they are Jewish? http://web.archive.org/web/20040223012106/http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/52/articles/jewish.html. Adbusters (March/April 2004).

World, Thinking, Appearance, Housing

“If you read some of the Parisian newspapers, among others the 'Figaro', so beloved of the right-thinking public, you must have learned that I am part of a group of artists who opened a private exhibition [in the art-gallery of Durand-Ruel in Paris, April 1876]. You must also have seen what favour this exhibition enjoys in the eyes of these gentlemen [Berthe refers to the critical articles in Paris with all their mockery about her works]. On the other hand, we have been praised in the radical newspaper, but you don't read those [her aunts]! Well, at least we are getting attention, and we have enough self-esteem not to care. My brother-in-law Edouard Manet is not with us [Manet didn't participate in this first Impressionist show, initiated by Degas ]. Speaking of success, he [Manet] has just been rejected by the Salon; he, too, is perfectly good-humored about his failure.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter to her aunts, 1876; as quoted in The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 155
Berthe wrote this letter after the second Impressionist exhibition of April 1876 where she was participating with 19 pictures (Monet with 18!)
1871 - 1880

Law, Art, Failure, Thinking

“What is correct invariably develops in the course of struggle with what is wrong. The true, the good and the beautiful always exist by contrast with the false, the evil and the ugly, and grow in struggle with them. As soon as something erroneous is rejected and a particular truth accepted by mankind, new truths begin to struggle with new errors. Such struggles will never end. This is the law of development of truth and, naturally, of Marxism.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

Truth, Law, Beauty, Error

“If any person, discouraged by these difficulties, should think to relieve himself by rejecting all religion, natural and revealed, he will find, if he reflect at all, that he has miserably deceived himself, and that he is involved in greater perplexity than ever; the scheme he has adopted not only filling his mind with great darkness and distress, but being contrary to some of the plainest appearances in nature, and therefore manifestly irrational and absurd.”

Joseph Priestley book Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion

Vol. I : Preface (1772)
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–1774)

Religion, Nature, Thinking, Appearance

“As a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, your most important intervention was in suggesting that before investigating corruption allegations against senior officers, the CBI should get approval from the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) rather than the government. Didn’t the rejection of your proposal show that all political parties are united in shielding corrupt officers?”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

On the two institutions of Central Board of Investigations (CBI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).
Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

“While the label “date rape” has helped women articulate the most dramatic aspect of dating from women’s perspective, men have no labels to help them articulate the most traumatic aspects of dating from their perspective. Now, of course, the most traumatic aspect is the possibility of being accused of date rape by a woman to whom he thought he was making love. If men did label the worst aspects of the traditional male role, though, they might label them “date robbery,” “date rejection,” “date responsibility,” “date fraud,” and “date lying.””

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 313.

Love, Women, Men, Making love

“If you reject family - which a mother holds together - as well as the ties of Church and State, is there anything left for you?”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965)

Family

“Armenia categorically rejects the resumption of military hostilities in Nagorno Karabakh as an option. In case Azerbaijan resorts to military aggression, Armenia will have no other choice but to recognize the Nagorno Karabakh Republic de jure and to employ all its capabilities to ensure the security of the people of Artsakh.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

Remarks by The President of the Republic of Armenia H.E. Serzh Sargsyan at the OSCE Meeting of the Heads of State or Government (Summit) http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?pn=9&id=1339/ (December 02, 2010)

Hostility, People