Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
Denis Healey refused to contribute an article to the 'Guardian' about his intentions, and was punished by the electorate - and then all Labour MPs - for his presumption in assuming they already knew everything about him. He became famously the best prime minister we never had. Perhaps.
For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.
I refused to be filmed getting off a bus twice. The director said, 'I'm an award-winning director. Please do it', and I said, 'I never thought I'd say this, but I'm an award-winning actress with a bad leg, and if your film depends on seeing me get in and out of a bus, we're in trouble.'
I don't know where things are going wrong. I refused 22 offers for lavani numbers and five films. I was not happy with the kind of offers coming my way. Even for the lavani number 'Vajale Ki Bara' in 'Natarang,' I was the last option. I was finalised one day before the shoot was to begin.
While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did.
I have refused money sometimes for a film. I have refused films when I felt that it was not for me. When it was just a job or just about making money, I said no. I wanted to make every film count, and when you are true to yourself, this gives you a certain integrity and a certain reputation.
I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.
It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.
For a long time, I refused to wear jeans. I liked high-waisted pants, but jeans made me feel like I wasn't being unique. Even now, I won't wear the skinny-jeans style, because most people wear those - they have to be baggier, boyfriend-looking, or sort of like a mom jean. I'm real funny that way.
A few months before my dad died, his eyes had started to go, and his skin was turning green. When he finally went to hospital, he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. None of us kids knew why the old man ignored the doctors and refused their help, but none of us were surprised, either.
When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president. He didn't care whether it was the easy thing to do politically - that's not how he was raised - he cared that it was the right thing to do.
On Tuesday 26 July 2011, I was arrested in front of the White House along with a dozen other pro-immigrant advocates and clergy. We sat down on the sidewalk in front of the White House with a banner that read 'One Million Deported Under President Obama' and refused to move when the police ordered us to.
Years ago, NPR tried to stop me from going on "The Factor." When I refused, they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.
I encountered producers who wanted to hang out after we worked, and when I refused, they wouldn't let me come back and work again... I would've have way more opportunities if I had succumbed. But it never felt right. I always felt like I was going to be successful, and I didn't want to compromise my morals.
I remember when the great composer Madan Mohan had suddenly passed away, the producer-director H.S. Rawail had approached me to complete three of the pending songs in the Rishi Kapoor-Ranjeeta starrer 'Laila Majnu.' I refused saying I am not worthy of sharing a soundtrack with a genius like Madan Mohan saab.
When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.
Congress has an obligation to make controversial decisions on how to handle undocumented immigration. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have refused to take the tough votes on the issue for decades. Whether it's been to take advantage of cheap labor or for political purposes, both sides are guilty.
We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me - we're a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we're all created equal.
In 2009, I fractured my skull in a freak accident at an L.A. restaurant. I suffered a seizure and was rushed into hospital. I was so out of it that I refused to let them scan my brain. My dad rushed to my bedside and talked me into having the CAT scan - he told me that I might die if I didn't go through with it.
Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.
There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.
Repressive measures taken by the British government to quell Indian nationalist agitation meant that expansions of the franchise regarding legislative councils were met by mistrust: Indian politicians in Bengal refused to participate in the 1920 elections, and formally adopted a policy of boycott and non-cooperation.
Fantasy was something I'd read as a child. And, in fact, my teachers despaired a little bit because I refused to give up Enid Blyton. Then I walked through the wardrobe with C. S. Lewis, and I don't think I actually have returned fully from the wardrobe. So, fantasy was something that was in my life from quite young.
Here's something weird, though: I loved Jimi's music so much that I would never perform it for people. Throughout my teens and playing in various bands, I refused to play Hendrix songs. I know that sounds strange, but Jimi's music was so special to me that it was like works of art that shouldn't be touched or altered.
The Nisour Square shooting is a signature point in the Iraq war, one that inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad and contributed to the impression that Americans were reckless and unaccountable. The Iraqi government wanted to prosecute the security contractors in Iraq, but the American government refused to allow it.
The Kurds had always had a bad time. They were oppressed by the Ottoman empire. Then, at the end of the First World War, they were promised a homeland, but the new Turkish state refused to give them any land, while the British went and created the new state of Iraq and sent aircraft to bomb the Kurds there into submission.
I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.
Saddam Hussein is a risk-taking aggressor who has attacked four countries, used chemical weapons against his own people, professed a desire to harm the United States and its allies, and, even faced with the prospect of his regime's imminent destruction, has still refused to abide by Security Council demands that he disarm.
Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with.
I wouldn't be happy to be a specialist. There are some very interesting artists in history who refused to be nailed down into a category, like Da Vinci or Jean Cocteau. You could say Cocteau was a great poet but also a film-maker, interested in theatre, sculpture, and could never identify with any of these forms exclusively.
My nursery school did a production of 'The Three Little Pigs.' I played the third pig. When the wolf knocked on my door, I refused to get up and answer it because, to me, he was knocking the wrong way. I just lay there, snoring away on stage, fully immersed in my character. My dad turned to my mom and said: 'Dustin Hoffman.'
We believe in honoring our mothers and fathers and keeping our smallest residents - our children - healthy. The politicians in charge of Texas now clearly don't. Perry has refused to even consider expanding health care coverage in Texas because he cares more about scoring political points than he does about our Texas families.
Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'
I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.
I knew marriage was not the answer to changing the conditions for poor, black, queer folks. So I never felt compelled to get married - it just didn't seem important. But even if marriage wasn't right for me at the time, or a quick fix toward black empowerment, I found it repulsive that loving same-sex couples were refused the right.
What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.
Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute segment on cable, what could we do if we devoted a whole movie to a whole bunch of people?
Life was so much simpler in pre-video days when everyone refused invitations because the 'Forsyte Saga' was on. Now we all just have a long list of unwatched shows, all of which, it seems, our friends are raving about. I feel as outdated as if I wore a Fair Isle sweater, ate Pot Noodle and had a two-bar electric fire in the sitting room.
In referendums in 2005, the Dutch and the French electorates rejected the European Constitution, which aimed to turn the E.U. into a genuine state. But Brussels refused to take no for an answer. It went ahead with its plans for a constitutional treaty, notwithstanding the people's opposition. Brussels thinks it knows better than the people.
American envoys came to see me before the crisis in Iraq and asked me to say that there were nuclear weapons in Iraq. I refused. They even told me that things would go well for Belarus in terms of investments, etc. All I had to do was to support them. I told them that I couldn't do it because I knew that there were no nuclear weapons there.
I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully.
With The King Center as her base, my mother pressed on to fulfill a role that changed lives and legislation. She was a woman who refused to surrender the reigns of what she knew to be her assignment, even when male civil rights and business leaders tried to convince her that she should leave the work of building her husband's legacy to them.
One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.
I was raised by my great-great aunt. I was adopted within our family. My mother had me when she was, I think, 15, 16. They tried to get her to have an abortion and she refused. So, my 'mama' adopted me, which was really her great aunt, which was really my great-great aunt, who was named Viola Dickerson. I was told that my mother was my sister.
My family and I survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005; we left my grandmother's flooding house, were refused shelter by a white family, and took refuge in trucks in an open field during a Category Five hurricane. I saw an entire town demolished, people fighting over water, breaking open caskets searching for something that could help them survive.