Top 150 Refused Quotes

Since childhood, I’d dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

When ‘Buffy’ was on the air, I recorded every single episode on my TiVo. I’m pretty sure my DVR thought I was a fourteen year-old girl. Whatever. The show was incredible. It refused to be pigeonholed.

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from ‘the bush’ could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.

The kind of support the down-and-out need is the kind we have always refused them, the kind that would mean engaging with them not as objects of contempt, but as fellow human beings.

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released – to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.

I couldn’t wait to get out, and at 14, I moved into a three-room Georgetown town house with Dad. I never went back. When they eventually sold the house, in 1984, Mom had a goodbye party for ‘Merrywood.’ I refused to go.

Without much money, I traveled to Argentina to see the meat industry, and after that, I wanted to travel to the United States, but I was refused a visa 5 or 6 times, but I never gave up.

There was that sense that as soon as a Northern Irish person opens their mouth, you go, ‘Ah, terrorist,’ so I refused to do TV and film. Instead, I did theatre for 20 years.

There will never be another Ed Koch. He was an original, but he represented a significant, if shrinking, segment of American Jewry who refused to compromise their liberal values, their support for Israel or their Jewish pride.

Because of my negative image, people used to hate me. I remember an incident while shooting for ‘Zamaanat.’ I was bitten twice by a cobra and the crew went to call a lady doctor whose clinic was close to the sets. She just refused to attend to me!

I’ve refused roles because they’re too simplistic.

The Obama administration has refused to back down on the insurance mandate that needlessly pits health care against the rights of the religious… This administration simply doesn’t get it.

I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn’t taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway.

The same Republicans who had threatened to impeach Hillary Clinton remained silent when, immediately after his surprise victory, Trump refused to abide by laws about emoluments or nepotism, openly profiting from the presidency and filling the White House with personal relatives.

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.

On one of my birthdays, I wanted to go to a disco, but Daddy refused permission. But when I insisted he finally took the entire family to the disco for five minutes.

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon’s urgings for me to go there.

I refused to adopt civilian way of life and slowly influenced my civilian surroundings to do things the military way. My civilian career as an entrepreneur and founder of a defense contracting company has been an extension of my military service.

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

When our interests matched, the Americans have been good to us, and when the interests differed, they wanted us to mold ourselves to them, which we refused.

British diplomats who worked in Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis are deeply upset by Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film ‘Argo,’ which suggests they refused shelter to the group who managed to get out of the U.S. embassy.

It’s a little bit like my inability to read a guide book before I go anywhere. I can read it after I’ve been there and by the same logic I refuse to accept any technical stunts from anybody. I refused to learn more than I knew and I confess I missed a great deal.

I don’t get offered leading parts. I suppose I’ve become a kind of character actor or sideman. I think it had to do with probably in the ’90s, I refused so many leading roles that they gave up on me, or I just became unpopular, or I became old. All those reasons.

My ancestors include Monahwee, who was one of the leaders in the Red Stick War, which was the largest Indian uprising in history, and Osceola, who refused to sign a treaty with the United States.

People from Tony Stone refused to let PhotoDisc become part of the industry trade association. Then we bought PhotoDisc. There was complete shock.

Time and again I was asked to arrest Jamaat activists but I put my foot down and refused to cave in.

I had only two offers of marriage in my life, and I refused both.

I have been refused entrance on the buses because I would not pay my fare at the front and go around to the rear door to enter. That was the custom if the bus was crowded up to the point where the white passengers would start occupying.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

I’ve learned that when someone does something very kind and refuses payment, giving them an engraved Swiss Army knife is never refused!

You know what the lowest rated episode we ever had was? Where Captain Kirk kissed Uhuru – a white man kissing an African-American woman. All the stations in the American South – in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana – refused to air it. And so our ratings plummeted.

I was bullied from the age of 11 onwards. I was always much bigger than the other kids. I spoke nicely, didn’t swear, and I refused to try to fit in and be like everyone else. People assumed I thought I was above everyone else.

I have never refused to talk to any authorities or give them any information I had.

In the summer of 1952, when I was 30, the Army assigned me to an infantry unit fighting in Korea. Meanwhile, though, there was other news in my family: My father had become the Republican presidential nominee. As an ambitious young major, I refused any offers for other assignments.

People claimed I refused to play. But that is not true and a complete lie.

The more I read and watched about the meat industry, the more determined I became to keep meat out of my diet. The things I saw in slaughterhouse exposes made me feel sick and I refused to just ignore what I now knew.

But the good news was that my elder sister refused to get married straight away and I couldn’t get married until she did so I had the licence to go off and dream.

Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible; that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.

My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage.

There were patterns in my family that had to be broken, and I refused to live my life the way certain members of my family had.

America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner’s never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it!

Gojira is my favorite band of all time; they’re lovely, I’ve seen them live two times. I also love Mastodon and the Refused as well.

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.

MWA and The Author’s Guild refused to accept me as a member.

I was in China when Pokemon fever hit, and I got it bad. But as I got older, I didn’t stay with it. My binder full of rares has since disappeared. I have refused to play the other games like the newest ‘Pokemon X/Y’ out of some misplaced hipster angst.

The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name, and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James – someone more talented than I: someone brilliant without even trying.

I had one nanny who made me sit in front of a bowl of porridge for three or four days running when I refused to eat it. I remember being very unhappy about that.

Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.

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.

Rather than showing themselves to be an ally to the middle class by ending the AMT or repealing it for years to come, my Republican colleagues refused to include it in today’s legislation and America’s middle class will surely suffer that choice greatly.

If I refused to get married, my parents would be brokenhearted and confused. Like any child close to her parents, I could not watch them suffer.

I don’t really believe there is such a thing as bad fashion – it is all self-expression, which used to get me into trouble when I was a little girl because I think I started wearing heels when I was about ten, and I always refused to wear matching socks.

So far, the general perception, including the perception in India, was that we are not capable of using high technology. They simply refused to believe an Indian can do it! I somehow was not ready to accept that this is not possible.

It is true that I once refused to eat haggis in Scotland and this did not sit well with the local population.

I’ve had five surgeries that could have ended most people’s careers. But because of the fact that I’m resilient and have a lot of pride, I refused to let myself go out except on my terms. An injury is not going to take me out.

It never was because of my positions or policies that people refused to vote for me. In fact, most people agreed with my policy agenda. Rather, the problem was my personality.

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.

I love to work anywhere, but because there is so much attention after ‘The Square’ my three agents wanted me to quit the play when I did it. I refused as I thought it was an interesting and brilliant play, and I didn’t just want to run straight off to Hollywood.

Ranbir was my first choice for ‘Ek Deewana Tha.’ I tried to get in touch in with. Forget about meeting Ranbir. I couldn’t even meet his secretary. Yes, even the secretary refused to meet me.

I refused to let my parents take my hat off when I went to bed.

I had repeatedly made written requests to the Fuehrer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission.

Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.

I refused David Letterman’s proposal of marriage for obvious reasons, but thanks for asking.

By any definition, what happened in Bhutan in the years 1989-93 was ethnic cleansing. The Bhutanese government denies this and has refused to repatriate any of those forcibly expelled.

What the Americans have done is refuse to back down. They’ve refused to make the cheapest, lowest common denominator forms of entertainment for TV and instead have championed television drama as an important part of our culture.

The last person to stand still and repeat himself was Walt Disney. He refused to repeat himself. So to think that he’d be making the same kind of film in the year 2001 that he made in 1941 is absurd.

‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ is one of my all-time top YA fantasy trilogies, so I was a little nervous about reading ‘Strange the Dreamer.’ Of course, I shouldn’t have been worried because Laini Taylor immediately grabbed me by the proverbial lapels and refused to let me go.

I had written a tune called ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll,’ but the white stations refused to play it – they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought up the name ‘rock n’ roll.’

I had a roommate who refused to believe that there were black people from Australia and that I just had this accent. I got frustrated. I’m saying, ‘mate, you’ve never heard of Aboriginals?’ And he definitely never heard of the Torres Strait Islands.

When I interviewed a bloke wearing a balaclava on Newsnight. He refused to remove it and halfway through our interview he forgot he was wearing it, took a sip of water and couldn’t find his mouth. It’s quite hard to hold it together when that happens.

If ethics is limited to financial conflicts of interest – that’s really what I did in the Bush White House – that’s a huge problem for me because Trump refused to sell his businesses. We don’t know where he’s getting his financing.

I refused to let my brother down, because he sacrificed for me. And I always told him, ‘As long as one of us playing football, we both playing football.’

After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to say which element of the U.S. military had participated in the assault. Until Vice President Joe Biden decided to talk about it on national television, that is.

Originally, when I wrote the song ‘The Sensual World’ I had used text from the end of ‘Ulysses.’ When I asked for permission to use the text, I was refused, which was disappointing.

We asked Jane Fonda if she would like to meet American pilots in Hanoi, but she refused, she didn’t want to.

In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks – a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.

I’ve always refused to buy into the idea that I should look a certain way. People say I don’t conform to the idea of what an actress should look like, but I am what I am and that’s fine.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius’ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

I refused to learn English for two years when we moved to London, hoping to send my family back home. It was tough, but at the same time, it has given me a sense of displacement that actually really suits the life that I’m living now.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

I never refused an autograph, never refused to buy someone a drink. Now I’m learning to say I’ve got other things on, instead of doing it and wondering why.

When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers.

My retirement, back in 1976, began as a one-year boycott to challenge the media on that question. I refused to return until the media, and radio stations in particular, got a hold on identifiably Canadian songs.

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.

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.

Fame is a delicate and dangerous creature; I saw people who didn’t honor it, who refused to take responsibility for it, get destroyed by it. I also saw that stardom in and of itself was empty.

I’ve had some wins. And been knocked down with defeats. Glimpsed views from the top of the mountain. And walked through the darkest of valleys. But through this entire ride called ‘a life’ – I’ve refused to give up.

Incumbent Congresswoman Bustos has proven during her time in Washington that she doesn’t understand or feel the pain of middle class families. We need a true representative fighting for us in Washington, and incumbent Congresswoman Cheri Bustos has refused to act.

For far too long, the Republican leadership in Congress has refused to act and pass comprehensive reform fixing our broken immigration system. In light of Republican inaction, I strongly support President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

I’m here today because I refused to be unhappy. I took a chance.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused.

I am (even after all the torture) amazed at British logic. Never in eight centuries have they succeeded in breaking the spirit of one man who refused to be broken. They have not dispirited, conquered, nor demoralised my people, nor will they ever.

Mum was nuts – you’d get a bucket of water over you if you refused to get out of bed.

Barbra Streisand developed overwhelming performance anxiety at the height of her career; for 27 years she refused to perform for the general public, appearing live only in private clubs and at charity events, where she presumably believed the pressure on her was less intense.

Obama has refused to equip, or to arm, any rebel groups fighting Assad or his forces.

As long as I sit at Henry Clay’s desk, I will remember his lifelong desire to forge agreement, but I will also keep close to my heart the principled stand of his cousin, Cassius Clay, who refused to forsake the life of any human, simply to find agreement.

In Rwanda that genocide happened because the international community and the Security Council refused to give, again, another 5000 troops which would have cost, I don’t know, maybe fifty, a hundred, million dollars.

After I watched ‘The Exorcist’ I refused to watch any other movie that had anything to do with ghosts or demons. I didn’t even watch ‘Ghostbusters’ until I was much older.

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.

France is no longer herself when she is folded in on herself, tormented by ignorance and intolerance. The country would plunge into decline if it refused to be itself, if it was afraid of the future, afraid of the world.

Scripture is filled with examples of men and women whom God used late in life, often with great impact – men and women who refused to use old age as an excuse to ignore what God wanted them to do.

I refused to beat my head against stone, of course.

I got fired from a movie that ended up being called ‘Windows,’ which Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, directed. I got fired because he refused to cast Meryl Streep, who at the time was at Yale. I told him I thought he was an idiot, and he fired me.

I think we’ve broken story after story that the rest of the media refused to break even when they had the story because they were scared of the story, or they just didn’t think it was appropriate.

What the Court really has refused to recognize is the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their intimate associations.

The Free Body Culture gave me a gift I might never have received had I refused to play along. It left me with an acute sense of the absurd – one I still cherish – to be there among my fellow apes, awkward and less than half-willing, aiming and missing, leaping, landing and wincing.

One of the reasons MSNBC is plummeting is that I, not long ago, refused to play any content from them. I figured, why? I mean, it’s genuine depraved partisan politics insanity, genuine extremist radical ignoramuses on that network.

I met with my lawyers. They gave me all the wrong advice. For a long time I refused to accept the child was mine. I should have met her, arranged a DNA test and accepted my responsibility.

That’s one reason I retired as a sergeant and not at a higher rank… I refused to ‘play the game’ the way the bosses wanted the game played. It is a decision that has cost me money in retirement pay but one that I have never regretted.

The world is undoubtedly a safer, freer place because Thatcher – like Reagan – refused to back down when it came to defending freedom.

Superstars come and go. I want to make sure I am always a producer’s actor. I may be refused to be called a great actor but I have never troubled any of my producers in my life. Honesty always catches the camera, and that is what my strength is.

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play ‘The Crucible’ analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials.

It is unimaginable that anyone, right or left, can aspire to be president without having thought about this. Every candidate has the stage; the Republicans have used it to fuss unproductively over the Common Core. The Democrats have all but refused to speak.

But here too it should be noted that the President’s approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.

My first memory of Umbro was when I refused to take off my orange and purple Umbro checkerboard shorts for church at five years old. I won that battle, and that drive to express myself and stay true to myself, even as a kid, is why I’m so excited about my partnership with Umbro.

For me, playing hurt was a battle in itself: a mind-over-matter head game I refused to lose. Often, I was barely able to bend my knees or elbows, flex my feet, make a fist, bend forward or turn my head. Heck, it hurt to blink.

If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.

For generations America and its institutions have refused to acknowledge the true severity of the harm that domestic violence imposes on our society.

I didn’t want to do an item role as a Sikh in 20 years of my career. Once, in ‘Chor Machaaye Shor,’ Bobby Deol and I disguised ourselves as sardars to save ourselves, but I refused many other roles.

I’ve always refused to play terrorists.

When fear rushed in, I learned how to hear my heart racing but refused to allow my feelings to sway me. That resilience came from my family. It flowed through our bloodline.

I have had an actor squeeze himself up against me during a shot in a song and whisper in my ear that he was so glad that I was in the film with him. When I threw him off me and refused to speak to him again, he made my experience miserable.

Once, I had a huge fight on a film set with an actor who threw tea on a spot boy’s face. I refused to shoot until he apologised.

I just have these terrible memories of our first European tour back in 2007. We had hired this van and tour service from the former Czech Republic called Fluff Wheels, and they sent us out with this 19-year-old vegan driver kid who had no money and refused to eat anything.

We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.

Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

The Obama administration has consistently refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory, let alone as the capital of Israel.

I’ve always refused to associate myself with a brand.

During our travels, the Indians entertained me well; and their affection for me was so great, that they utterly refused to leave me there with the others, although the Governor offered them one hundred pounds sterling for me, on purpose to give me a parole to go home.

I went out with some old friends and we were having fun. A couple of them were very intoxicated. When I went to leave, I refused to let them drive. So when I got pulled over, I was the driver.

After the release of ‘Ashta Chemm,’ several producers and directors came with similar roles in their films. But I doesn’t want to do stereo type roles and do something different for each film, and refused them.

When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.

My family has been through a lot – just a lot of trials, tribulations and failures – and we didn’t have a lot of anything besides love. So, when it came my time to do something, my family refused to let me fail. They didn’t want me to fall into the trail that they followed to stay in Alabama.

Some of the projects we’ve proposed over the years have been refused. But we never do other people’s ideas; our ideas come out of our two hearts and our two heads.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

I guess when you take a look at the book ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ I think most people always like to identify with the main character – that would be John Galt. I guess I identify with Hank Rearden, the fella that just refused until the very end to give up.

If the adjustment made by a court can be accepted or not, it will be refused whenever the men can gain more by continuing the strike, with whatever of violence that involves.

In Ghazalia, Mr. Hussein showed his contempt for the majority Shiites in ways large and small. He refused to allow them even one mosque, while the Sunnis had nearly a dozen. To worship, the Shiites had to cross an inconveniently located bridge over the sewage canal to Shula.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

Somebody wanted me to autograph her breast and I kindly refused. She was in college. I thought maybe I shouldn’t do that.

As I grew up, I always refused to cook Indian food very vehemently, and to this day, I don’t cook chapatis at home. I’d always say, ‘Why do I have to do it? Why don’t the men do it?’

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.

I refused to describe myself as an actress until ‘EastEnders’ because, until then, I couldn’t support myself without doing other jobs.

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.

I served in the NYPD for 22 years, and I can vividly recall trying to extract information from people who refused to cooperate.

Yes, they wanted me to sign a contract of exclusivity, and I refused.

I trialled at Brentford in two games. I scored and assisted one. They said I was good and they’d keep an eye on me. I went to AFC Wimbledon but went back to Mitcham and signed my contract because they refused to pay my 7 registration fee.

I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I’ve never had a drink in a Westminster bar.

A distinguished producer called Kenith Trodd actually lived in his office for over a year – the cleaners refused to go in because it was such a tip.

I’ve made six films for Disney, and they have a clause in their contracts called the morality clause that I’ve always refused to sign.