Abdication Quotes

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Quotes About Abdication

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Submissiveness to fate, the total abdication of your own will in the shaping of your life, the recognition that it was impossible to guess the best and the worst ahead of time but that it was easy to take a step you would reproach yourself for-all this freed the prisoner from any bondage, made him calmer, and even ennobled him. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Abdication quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life. ~ Erica Jong
Abdication quotes by Erica Jong
Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.

The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them.

When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: 'Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.'

And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such 'wisdom', why not allow him to rule the country?

The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern u ~ Paulo Coelho
Abdication quotes by Paulo Coelho
I didn't know why he became a tree. I don't really know anything about why druids become trees-

Peace and quiet, said Elisandria matter-of-factly. Abdication of responsibility. A good long sleep. All of that. ~ Garth Nix
Abdication quotes by Garth Nix
The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perce ~ Alexander Lowen
Abdication quotes by Alexander Lowen
To suggest that the first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing rather than nothing, is a being capable of designing the universe and of talking to a million people simultaneously, is a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation. It is a dreadful exhibition of self-indulgent, thought denying skyhookery. ~ Richard Dawkins
Abdication quotes by Richard Dawkins
I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They're representing a constituency. ~ Jon Stewart
Abdication quotes by Jon Stewart
I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cozy homelike comfort of a fenced-in dogmatic creed? To this the answer is many-sided.
First, I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained by the abdication of reason. I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained from drink or drugs or amassing great wealth by swindling widows and orphans. It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted. ~ Bertrand Russell
Abdication quotes by Bertrand Russell
The precept: "Judge not, that ye be not judged" ... is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.
There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.
The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged. ~ Ayn Rand
Abdication quotes by Ayn Rand
They scattered with no melody, no harmony, no rhythm to hold them. If music was emotion and emotion came from thought, then this was the scream of chaos, of the irrational, of the helpless, of man's self-abdication. ~ Ayn Rand
Abdication quotes by Ayn Rand
There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication of human responsibility. ~ Jaron Lanier
Abdication quotes by Jaron Lanier
Our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities. ~ R.D. Laing
Abdication quotes by R.D. Laing
For moderns - for us - there is something illicit, it seems, about wasted time, the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls, figures of speech budding and blossoming, articulation drifting like spent petals onto the dark table we all once gathered around to talk and talk, letting time get the better of us. _Just taking our time_, as we say. That is, letting time take us.

"Can you say," I once inquired of a sixty-year old cloistered nun who had lived (vibrantly, it seemed) from teh age of nineteen in her monastery cell, "what the core of contemplative life is?"

"Leisure," she said, without hesitation, her china blue eyes cheerfully steady on me. I suppose I expected her to say, "Prayer." Or maybe "The search for God." Or "Inner peace." Inner peace would have been good. One of the big-ticket items of spirituality.

She saw I didn't see.

"It takes time to do this," she said finally.

Her "this" being the kind of work that requires abdication from time's industrial purpose (doing things, getting things). By choosing leisure she had bid farewell to the fevered enterprise of getting-and-spending whereby, as the poet said, we lay waste our powers. ~ Patricia Hampl
Abdication quotes by Patricia Hampl
Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate. ~ Mariama Ba
Abdication quotes by Mariama Ba
A citizenship of wholesale delegation and abdication to public and private power systems, such as prevails now, makes such periodic checks as elections little more than rituals. ~ Ralph Nader
Abdication quotes by Ralph Nader
In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd. ~ Julian Fellowes
Abdication quotes by Julian Fellowes
The task of all Christian scholarship - not just biblical studies - is to study reality as a manifestation of God's glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it, and to make it serve the good of man. It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God's glory is not scholarship but insurrection. ~ John Piper
Abdication quotes by John Piper
That many if not most people ... who want fresh leafy greens in January buy them at the supermarket after they've been bleached and plastic-bag shipped from California or beyond is not a tribute to modern technology; it's an unprecedented abdication of personal responsibility and a ubiquitous benchmark of abnormality. ~ Joel Salatin
Abdication quotes by Joel Salatin
We have had word that some political groups are calling for the forced abdication of Emperor Kaito. ~ Marissa Meyer
Abdication quotes by Marissa Meyer
We are witnessing the total collapse of a bad idea. Obamaism, a quasi-socialist commitment to a more powerful government at home and an abdication of American leadership around the world, is being exposed as a historic calamity. It is fueling domestic fear and global disorder and may well lead to a world war. ~ Michael Patrick Goodwin
Abdication quotes by Michael Patrick Goodwin
One can have a society without God," writes Régis Debray, "but there cannot be a society without religion." He adds, "Those nations on the way to disbelief are on the path to abdication." One can also cite Georges Bataille, according to whom, "religion, whose essence is the search for lost intimacy, boils down to a clearly conscious effort to become entirely self-conscious. ~ Alain De Benoist
Abdication quotes by Alain De Benoist
To whom should we listen? The loudest voices? The most educated? The formerly marginalized? The formerly powerful? Those with the most retweets? Those who have traditionally spoken for God are now looked at askance by many people, and with good reason. Too often they've used their Christian platform for political and military gain. They've forgotten that the story of God, exemplified in Jesus, is an abdication of power. It's a story of self-limitation and humility. It's a story lived in solidarity with those at the margins. To whom should we listen? To Jesus on the cross. ~ Tony Jones
Abdication quotes by Tony Jones
Voter apathy is a civic abdication. ~ Charles M. Blow
Abdication quotes by Charles M. Blow
This is a perfect snapshot of the West at twilight. On the one hand, governments of developed nations microregulate every aspect of your life in the interests of 'keeping you safe.' ... On the other hand, when it comes to 'keeping you safe' from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing ... It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. ~ Mark Steyn
Abdication quotes by Mark Steyn
Uncritical acceptance of any party line is an idolatrous abdication of one's core identity as Abba's child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses human dignity, which is often dressed in rags.
Abba's children find a third option. They are guided by God's Word and by it alone. All religious and political systems , Right and Left alike, are the work of human beings. Abba's children will not sell their birthright for any mess of pottage, conservative and liberal. They hold fast to their freedom in Christ to live the gospel - uncontaminated by cultural dreck, political flotsam, and the filigreed hypocrisy of bullying religion ~ Brennan Manning
Abdication quotes by Brennan Manning
Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.
Abdication quotes by Walter M. Miller Jr.
No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights. ~ Arthur Goldberg
Abdication quotes by Arthur Goldberg
In the past, the U.S. has shown its capacity to reinvent its gifts for leadership. During the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Nixon abdication and the Ford and Carter presidencies, the whole nation peered into the abyss, was horrified by what it saw and elected Ronald Reagan as president, which began a national resurgence. ~ Paul Johnson
Abdication quotes by Paul Johnson
Our happiest times are those in which we forget ourselves, usually in being kind to someone else. That tiny moment of self-abdication is an act of true humility: the man who loses himself finds himself and finds his happiness. ~ Fulton J. Sheen
Abdication quotes by Fulton J. Sheen
The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we, too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture! ~ Carl Bernstein
Abdication quotes by Carl Bernstein
This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to myself. I had found that "feeling special" was a private experience, and no one else's projected fascination could substitute for quiet absorption in your own life. ~ Lionel Shriver
Abdication quotes by Lionel Shriver
"Next," said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne, "I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour." ~ Charles Dickens
Abdication quotes by Charles Dickens
What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom? ~ John Stuart Mill
Abdication quotes by John Stuart Mill
I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it. ~ Geoffrey Rush
Abdication quotes by Geoffrey Rush
It is tempting to think that in order to change our experience of our world we need to force others to change. Such thinking is an abdication of our power to change ourselves. ~ Michael Lee
Abdication quotes by Michael Lee
When it comes to leaders we have, if anything, a superabundance - hundreds of Pied Pipers…ready and anxious to lead the population. They are scurrying around, collecting consensus, gathering as wide an acceptance as possible. But what they are not doing, very notably, is standing still and saying, ' This is what I believe. This I will do and that I will not do. This is my code of behavior and that is outside it. This is excellent and that is trash.' There is an abdication of moral leadership in the sense of a general unwillingness to state standards….Of all the ills that our poor…society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards. We are too unsure of ourselves to assert them, to stick by them, if necessary in the case of persons who occupy positions of authority, to impose them. We seem to be afflicted by a widespread and eroding reluctance to take any stand on any values, moral, behavioral or esthetic. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman
Abdication quotes by Barbara W. Tuchman
The combination of parental abdication and social liberalism in our schools means that kids are easy targets for nihilism and moral subjectivism. ~ Ben Shapiro
Abdication quotes by Ben Shapiro
Cruel and paradoxical though it undoubtedly is, the record shows that yje most succesful 20th century monarchs have been those who were not actually born to succeed. King George VI was 41 when the abdication of Edward VIII propelled him suddenly and unexpectedly to take up the crown; and Queen Elizabeth II spent her first decade with no inkling thay she herself might one day have to reign. Taken together, these examples suggest that the best preparation for the job of sovereign is not to be prepared for it at all, ir not to be too well prepared for it, or for too long. ~ David Cannadine
Abdication quotes by David Cannadine
Yet there comes a time in the life of a patriot when abdication would amount to a betrayal if not outright treachery. ~ Olusegun Obasanjo
Abdication quotes by Olusegun Obasanjo
No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice. ~ Ayn Rand
Abdication quotes by Ayn Rand
The poet found illness a convenient language for his skewed relation to normal life, for his inability at times to function, for his radical abdication of responsibilities. Illness offered, for decades, a comfortable way for him to think about himself. Ever the poet, he pretty much set up camp and lived in the metaphor of being sick. ~ Katie Roiphe
Abdication quotes by Katie Roiphe
From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a heavenly law which we can escape by remaining earthly, nor an earthly law which we can escape by being saved. What is outside the system of self-giving is not earth, nor nature, nor 'ordinary life', but simply and solely hell. ~ C.S. Lewis
Abdication quotes by C.S. Lewis
It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends. ~ George Will
Abdication quotes by George Will
Partying at this time of ecological meltdown is not affirming of reality, but an abdication from it. It is a place of false refuge especially so when there is no evidence of an acknowledgement of affirming life as it is, for this would require of these people a heartbrokeness. ~ Stephen Jenkinson
Abdication quotes by Stephen Jenkinson
The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
Abdication quotes by Mikhail Bakunin
But in the morning Lust is always furtive. It dresses as mechanically as it undressed and heads straight for the door, to return to its own solitude. Like all the sins, it also makes us solitary. It is self-abdication at the very core of one's own being, a surrender of our need and ability to give and receive. Lust does not come with open hands, certainly not with an open heart. It comes only with open legs. ~ Henry Fairlie
Abdication quotes by Henry Fairlie
and only much later, when Mascha wanted a child, did I realize that love is a deadly poison, a vice, a vice that one wants to see shared, & that if one of the two involved is smitten, the other is often no more than a passive participant, or vixxtim, or possessed. And Moravagine was possessed.

Love is masochistic. These cries & complaints, these sweet alarms. this anguished state of lovers, this suspense, this latent pain that is just below the surface, almost unexpressed, these thousand & one anxieties over the loved one's absence, this feeling of time rushing by, this touchiness, these fits of temper, these long daydreams, this childish fickleness of behavior, this moral torture where vanity & self-esteem, or perhaps honor, upbringing & modesty are at stake, these highs & lows in the nervous tone, these leaps of imagination, this fetishism, this cruel precision of senses, whipping & probing, the collapse, the prostration, the abdication, the self-abasement, the perpetual loss & recovery of one's personality, these stammered words & phrases, these pet-names, this intimacy, these hesitations in physical contact, these epileptic tremors, these successive & even more frequent relapses, this more & more turbulent & stormy passion with its ravages progressing to the point of complete inhibition & annihilation of the soul, the debility of the senses, the exhaustion of the marrow, the erasure of the brain & even t ~ Blaise Cendrars
Abdication quotes by Blaise Cendrars
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked ... The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on ... There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. ~ Ayn Rand
Abdication quotes by Ayn Rand
Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication. ~ Simone Weil
Abdication quotes by Simone Weil
The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes. ~ Ayn Rand
Abdication quotes by Ayn Rand
Abdication Isn't Empowerment ~ Miles Anthony Smith
Abdication quotes by Miles Anthony Smith
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