Accept Quotes

It is fraud to accept what you cannot repay. ~ Publilius Syrus

I'm a secular priest ordained by training, experience, and, most important, the willingness to accept the mantle of command. That willingness encompasses the realization that failure is easy, and such failure could kill me or, worse, kill someone else. ~ Laurence Gonzales

Accept the past; embrace the present; consider the future. ~ Russell Eric Dobda

When I'm triggered, I think, "This will last forever" or "What if this lasts forever?" I get thoughts about how I should give up, run away, hide, protect myself. These thoughts, I cannot change. What I can change is how I respond to them. Will I unconditionally believe these ideas, or will I accept them as side effects of the temporary experience of pain? Will I act on each thought that arises in the burning fire, or will I hold myself gently and say, "It'll be okay. I know it hurts. I love you"? My power lies in these choices. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

Accept people, don't stereotype people. Don't think because right now they're driving a cab, they're not going to have a master's degree or that they're dumber than you. ~ Isabel Coixet

If you are married, then accept that. Accept the husband that God has given you. If you are single, accept your singleness and take it as if today was the last day of your life. Don't be looking constantly to the future. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Accept what it, forget what was. ~ Sue Fitzmaurice

Schools are in many ways perhaps the first step in getting us to understand that institutions control our lives and that we should accept unquestionably that there can be no objection to this. ~ Mango Wodzak

In this life, we don't meet many people who truly love us, who accept us for who we are, who put us before themselves. ~ Neil Strauss

We must realize our own talents and, having realized, accept them; and play on them like a symphony in which all other instruments are harmonized to make a better universe. ~ Jeane Dixon

If you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst to profound reinvention. ~ Conan O'Brien

What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again? ~ Audre Lorde

I realize life is a beautiful mess. You can make it more beautiful by accepting the way it is. If you don't accept, you'll mess it up. ~ Manasa Rao

We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die or hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

Let us beware of the prayer for forgiveness becoming a formality: only what is really confessed is really forgiven. Let us in faith accept the forgiveness as promised: as a spiritual reality, an actual transaction between God and us, it is the entrance into all the Father's love and all the privileges of children. Such forgiveness, as a living experience, is impossible without a forgiving spirit to others: as forgiven expresses the heavenward, so forgiving the earthward, relation of God's child. In each prayer to the Father I must be able to say that I know of no one whom I do not heartily love. 'And ~ Andrew Murray

Dad's voice falters as he says goodbye. He is choking down his own grief to protect Mum, I know. He loves her deeply. I accept that he is incapable of expressing all this, and I am incapable of even saying the right thing, should he ever do so. And lurking deeper, is the knowledge that he has been here, himself. When I was aged about 5, his father - my grandfather - had cancer and took his own life by walking into the sea. My dad found his body under a jetty. What would it have been like to experience that tragedy? And then, to try and live, to go on raising a family, with those images haunting you? ~ Linda Collins

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier. ~ Anthony Hopkins

Those which defend liberty, equality and fraternity, seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred. ~ Claude Gueant

I was talking to Jesus, and I said, Jesus, I feel like no one will ever accept me. And Jesus looked at me and said, You know what my theory is? Accept me or go to hell. ~ Gilbert Gottfried

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. ~ Christopher Lasch

First accept the reality that we are all prejudiced because we have things and issues we have biases towards or against, based on our beliefs, thoughts and experiences. Accept that it is possible to differ on opinions, beliefs and philosophies without necessarily becoming inhumane or acrimonious towards each other. ~ Archibald Marwizi

I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. ~ C.S. Lewis

I have found that most young people really want us to spell out a moral code. They may not accept it or believe it, but they want to hear it, clearly and without compromise. ~ Billy Graham

Accept nothing nearly right or good enough ~ Henry Royce

As parents, we may as well accept that we will "lose it" at times. Perfect equanimity is beyond us. Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful, unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting "forgiveness." There ~ Gabor Mate

I know why you came. Because you couldn't stay away. I understand that. Now you're just going to have to accept what comes with it. ~ Nora Roberts

We live in the information age and the sheer volume of it being available everywhere, creates a need for information that has value. Yes, we can look anything up on Google but who has the time? Can we trust that the information comes from a trustworthy source? Your experience has given you a deep knowing of your subject matter. You have insights and ideas that others may not figure out on their own. You are holding a roadmap that has great value to someone. What has been stopping you from sharing your knowledge? Perhaps you have been afraid to put yourself out there because of a fear of rejection? Let me get straight to the point. Get over it right now! Ponder the following quote for a moment and then move on with the decision to write rather than not to write, because not to write is not "to be". You deny yourself and your audience. You have had an incredible journey to get to where you are and have amassed experience and knowledge. Now combine that with your unique voice and be heard. You are already an expert. Accept it. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

I fought for the values of responsibility, and I'm not a man who does not accept his responsibilities. ~ Nicolas Sarkozy

Do not love half lovers
Do not entertain half friends
Do not indulge in works of the half talented
Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
Do not silence yourself to say something
And do not speak to be silent
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half a drink will not quench your thirst
Half a meal will not satiate your hunger
Half the way will get you no where
Half an idea will bear you no results
Your other half is not the one you love
It is you in another time yet in the same space
It is you when you are not
Half a life is a life you didn't live,
A word you have not said
A smile you postponed
A love you have not had
A friendship you did not know
To reach and not arrive
Work and not work
Attend only to be absent
What makes you a stranger to them closest to you
and they strangers to you
The half is a mere moment of inability
but you are able for you are not half a being
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life ~ Kahlil Gibran

The past is an illusion. You must learn to live in the present and accept yourself for what you are now. What you lack in flexibility and agility you must make up with knowledge and constant practice. ~ Bruce Lee

People need devils and dark gods, if only to give them a foe to rally against, an obstacle to overcome. Your people understood that there can be no light without darkness, no good without evil, no triumph without setbacks. You can't kill me because I'm part of all that you are, all you've done and plan to do. You don't have to like me. You can even loathe me. But you must accept me. ~ Darren Shan

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.' ~ C.S. Lewis

No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine. ~ Hermann Hesse

Many people think that love represents chains, bondage, the opposite of freedom. But people who believe such things are simple-minded creatures who have been lied to, and who easily accept the general trend of the lie. It is in fact love that is the only thing powerful enough to set one free from even the most deeply-embedded and thoroughly-wound chains of the soul, the mind, and the body. The fact is that we are born into chains and born into bondages; these things are put upon us by fear, pain and doubt. When you are thoroughly loved by someone in mind and in heart, this has the power to set you so free, more free than you have ever been before. And that is because freedom is not the equivalent of detachment. Freedom is the equivalent of that which sets you free. And when someone loves you the way that only they can, that is what sets you free. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

People make a lot of effort not to remember, not to accept their immense magical potential. ~ Paulo Coelho

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. ~ Ann Landers

I consider chess an art, and accept all those responsibilities which art places upon its devotees. ~ Alexander Alekhine

I am sure the majority of Iranians want a peace agreement with Israel and want Iran to integrate with the international community and accept its universal values. ~ Moshe Katsav

I take my cues from the world around me and carefully paint a self-portrait that the world can't help but accept. However, I would be much wiser to put down all such artistic notions and hold up the portrait of me painted by God simply because that is a picture at which the world can't help but marvel. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Neither refuse to give help when it is needed, ... nor refuse to accept it when it is offered. ~ Lloyd Alexander

We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades. ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

If you accept that your only job is to be the keeper of your life force, you will make powerful choices. ~ Debbie Ford

She was too much - for Zenith, Ohio. She'd tried at times to make herself smaller, to fit neatly into the ordered lines of expectation. But somehow, she always managed to say or do something outrageous - she'd accept a dare to climb a flagpole, or make a slightly risqué joke, or go riding in cars with boys - and suddenly she was "that awful O'Neill girl" all over again. ~ Libba Bray

If you accept the situation, you will find strength for strategic adaptation. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We can't spend all day trying to get the performance exactly right and you just have to accept that and move on and accept the medium that you're working in and you know, there's a beauty in working under constraints and limitations. I think a lot of great things can come out of that. ~ Emily Deschanel

We are a heterogeneous society. We have to accept that. Growth has to be such that the most backward sections also benefit from it. Otherwise, it will be a very imbalanced growth. ~ Baba Kalyani

I accept that I am affected by the things that affect me. I am independent and I am free. ~ James Constable B.1976

The great danger of humane punishment is that people will come to accept state murder as something sanitary. I don't think bureaucracy should ever be entrusted with that kind of power. ~ Jerry Brown

Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. ~ Norman Maclean

I think if you do a lot of interviews, you're laying yourself open. If you put yourself out, accept every invitation to every premiere, then you can't really complain when people knock on your front door and photograph you in the street. ~ Keeley Hawes

When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Most people try to keep what they're losing or become depressed about what they can't maintain, but the right attitude is to accept change and have faith in a bright new future, because you must be aware of the opportunities that any calamity brings. ~ Daniel Marques

That surprised me. Not that it wasn't a damn good game. We saw it again, in fact, after he took up with Kate. Not that either of them paid much attention to what was going on down on the field. That was actually the day I had to accept that things had gone too far between the two of them. Otherwise, she never could have taken his mind off baseball. ~ Rysa Walker

Wisdom is knowing what you can accept. ~ Wallace Stegner

In order not to find life unbearable, you must accept two things: the ravages of time and the injustices of man. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

There is no reason for a person to accept the limitations placed on them by any other individual. ~ Daniel Margolin

Our ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality. ~ Stanislaw Lem

What a vicious circle we can put ourselves in: we have come to accept the notion of "fix me first," when part of the essential fixing we all need is to be compassionately involved with others. ~ Bo Lozoff

The only thing that's ours to accept is the fact that we don't always get to know the answers. ~ Sarah Ockler

Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer. ~ Brian Eno

The day you accept a position or promotion under the handshake of quid pro quo in exchange to look the other way you forfeit the duty to lead by example. ~ Donavan Nelson Butler

Whatever clutter may be getting in your way during a conversation or communication, use the simple acronym HEAR to enter a more spacious and less defensive awareness. HEAR stands for: hold all assumptions; enter the emotional world; absorb and accept; and reflect, then respect. H ~ Donald Altman

Choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition. If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein "real" beauty is said to reside. ~ Dave Hickey

I've found that one must try and teach people that there's no top limit to disaster-that, so long as breath remains in your body, you've got accept the miseries of life. They will often seem infinite, insupportable. They are part of the human condition. ~ Ian Fleming

I look for people who have raw intelligence and a great work ethic and loyalty, and I can quickly identify people who have the right ingredients. But sometimes it is more difficult to get them to accept the fact that they can take on increasing responsibility. Oftentimes individuals will decide how far [they] go by how much work they're willing to put in and how quick they are to ask for help. Too many people have this deep-seated fear that if they ask for help, they will be thought less of. ~ Hillary Clinton

Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West's handwriting.

Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position


To Whom It May Concern,
I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred.

Your servant,
Galoshes the Cat

Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents' questioning gazes on her. "Job application," she explained sourly. "From the cat."
"How charming," Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder.
"'Personal companion,' my foot," Phoebe muttered. "This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin."
"I wonder," Seraphina said thoughtfully. "If she were truly feral, she wouldn't want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "It seems we'll find out."
The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe's lap and curled up with a sigh.
"I'd say she's adjusting quite well," Seraphina commented with a grin, and elbowed Phoebe ge ~ Lisa Kleypas

Not all residents could stand the pressure. One was simply unable to accept blame or responsibility. He was a talented surgeon, but he could not admit when he'd made a mistake. I sat with him one day in the lounge as he begged me to help him save his career. "All you have to do," I said, "is look me in the eye and say "I'm sorry. What happened is my fault, and I won't let it happen again. " "But it was the nurse who---" "No. You have to be able to say it and mean it. Try again." "But---." "No. Say it." This went on for an hour before I knew he was doomed. ~ Paul Kalanithi

My mom is a very religious woman. So when I began recording music, I was afraid she wouldn't accept it. But when I played her a song, she loved it. ~ Leon Bridges

I'm not saying I'm perfect, or fixed, but I am learning to love and accept myself. My outlook is more positive and I am happy. ~ Demi Lovato

There is nothing else for it, I shall have to solve my own problems. I always get the feeling that when I solve them for myself I shall have also solved them for a thousand other women. For that very reason, I must come to grips with myself.

All this devouring of books from early youth has been nothing but laziness on my part. I allow others to formulate what I ought to be formulating myself. I keep seeking outside confirmation of what is hidden deep inside me, when I know that I can only reach clarity by using my own words. I really must abandon all that laziness, and particularly my inhibitions and insecurity, if I am ever to find myself, and through myself, find others. I must have clarity, and I must learn to accept myself. Everything feels so heavy inside me, and I want so much to feel light. For years I have bottled everything up, it all goes into some great reservoir, but it will have to come out again, or I shall know that I have lived in vain, that I have taken from mankind and given nothing back. I sometimes feel I am a parasite and that depresses me and makes me wonder if I lead any kind of useful life.

Perhaps my purpose in life is to come to grips with myself, properly to grips with myself, with everything that bothers and tortures me and clamors for inner solution and formulation. For these problems are not just mine alone. And if at the end of a long life I am able to give some form to the chaos inside me, I may well have fulfilled my ow ~ Etty Hillesum

You did not kill Silas Stone, or Zannah's child. The war killed both of them. You must accept that." "But I might have saved them. There was a man, Jesse, he handed me a gun, and I handed it back to him. I valued my principles more than I valued their lives. And the outcome is, they are slaves again, or dead." "You are not God. You do not determine the outcome. The outcome is not the point." "Then what, pray, is the point?" His voice was a dry, soft rattle, like a breeze through a bough of dead leaves. "The point is the effort. That you, believing what you believed - what you sincerely believed, including the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' - acted upon it. To believe, to act, and to have events confound you - I grant you, that is hard to bear. But to believe, and not to act, or to act in a way that every fiber of your soul held was wrong - how can you not see? That is what would have been reprehensible." And even as I said this, I knew that if I stood again in the cattle show ground, and heard him promise to go to war, I would hold my piece, again, even knowing what terrible days were to follow. For to have asked him to do otherwise would have been to wish him a different man. And I knew then that I loved this man. This inconstant, ruined dreamer. ~ Geraldine Brooks

When I was a child, the lessons my father taught me had been about perseverance, never to accept limitations that stood in my way. As an adult, watching him in his final years, I also saw how to come to terms with limits that couldn't simply be wished away. When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value. Helping my father through the struggle to define that moment was simultaneously among the most painful and most privileged experiences of my life. Part of the way my father handled the limits he faced was by looking at them without illusion. Though his circumstances sometimes got him down, he never pretended they were better than they were. He always understood that life is short and one's place in the world is small. But he also saw himself as a link in a chain of history. ~ Atul Gawande

These people in the North-east of Ireland, from old prejudices perhaps more from anything else, from the whole of their past history, would prefer, I believe, to accept the government of a foreign country rather than submit to be governed by honourable gentlemen below the gangway [i.e. the Irish Nationalist Party]. ~ Bonar Law

A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves. ~ Paul Bloom

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it. ~ Tom Wicker

Out of Mind spring in-numerable things, conditioned by discrimination (i.e., classification) and habit-energy; these things people accept as an external world. ... ~ Alan W. Watts

Beloveds, you are fine, just the way you are! Perfect in your imperfection! You are divine! Growing brighter and more brilliant each day, you can accept the truth of who you are. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

Several times in my ministry people have expressed the fear that self-acceptance will abort the ongoing conversion process and lead to a life of spiritual laziness and moral laxity. Nothing could be more untrue. The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo. On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure. ~ Brennan Manning

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe. ~ Andy Rooney

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd. ~ Tony Blair

Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept things as they are. ~ Karen Maezen Miller

The individual human life span is brief and, in the long view, inconsequential,' he said. 'We are children one day and signing out the next. Therefore, in the brief moment we are allotted, live reasonably, be compassionate, and when your hour comes, accept it without histrionics. Never forget that your handful of hours is a supreme gift. Use them wisely, do not fritter them away, and remember that your life is not an entitlement. ~ Jack McDevitt

I would like you to accept only one prayer, and that is laughter, because when you are totally laughing you are in the present. You cannot laugh in the future and you cannot laugh in the past. All those people who have created this retarded humanity have taken away all juice, all laughter, all smiles, and dragged everybody into being inauthentic. And if you are inauthentic, insincere, you can never grow the seed that has been given to you by this great compassionate universe. ~ Rajneesh

Around 2008 and again in 2013 NATO officially offered the Ukraine the opportunity to join NATO. That's something no Russian government is ever going to accept. It's right at the geopolitical heartland of Russia. ~ Noam Chomsky

I have been challenged by the concept of meditation ... I decided recently to accept the invitation of a friend to experience the sheer silence of meditation-undirected prayer ... I had before only sensed intellectually ... But by going deep into prayer I could almost feel it. ~ Laurie Beth Jones

Settle down and be Good forever. Find the hardest things to accept in me, and reconcile what I am with what I hope to be. ~ Jen Wang

Nevertheless, the only way we can move from where we are now to where we would like to be is to accept where we are now. ~ Stephen Covey

If I can bring Him nothing but my tears, He will put them with His own tears in His own bottle for He once wept; if I can bring Christ nothing but my groans and sighs, He will accept these as an acceptable sacrifice, for He once was broken in heart, and sighed heavily in spirit. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

People often think faith consists of forcing oneself to accept something that one does not and cannot understand. Often we call people believers if they just accept what others tell them. Some seek faith by denying reason and forcing themselves into something that has not yet become a personal experience. God requires a different faith, though. He is content if you believe what you can experience. Be faithful and hold on to what you have, not to what you do not have. ~ Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it. ~ John Steinbeck

We both see strangers and react. We don't like to walk by people without nodding. We're broken when people are rude. Were broken when people can't meet us halfway. We can't accept the limits of normal human relations-chilly, clothed, circumscribed. Our hearts pull against their leashes. ~ Dave Eggers

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

That is why all romantics are anti-Voltairean, even Michelet, whose political fervor ought to have made him stand aligned with Voltaire; and that is why, on the other hand, all the minds which accept the world and recognize its irony and indifference are Voltairean. ~ Voltaire

Frank Fay turned into the most consistent stand-up comic of the late 1920s and essentially changed the art form. Crowds and critics eventually came to accept a man standing alone, cracking wise. No longer did Fay bill himself as a 'Nut Monologist. ~ Kliph Nesteroff

Satisfy people's desire for the ridiculous and they will accept your idea of the sublime. ~ Maurice Willson Disher

Grace is the ability to accept change. Be open and supple; the brittle break. ~ Ethan Hawke

Looking back on it, could there possible have been a more confusing acronym for trying to keep kids from experimenting with drugs than DARE?
"Kids, we're here today to DARE you not to do drugs! We DARE you to accept our DARE!"
"Office, does that mean you want us not to do drugs, or to do drugs?"
"We DARE you not to do drugs!"
"But I thought we weren't supposed to do things We're dared to do. If you dared me to jump out of a tree, I should do that, right?"
"It's just an acronym, son."
"What is an acronym? ~ Mike Birbiglia

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever. ~ Sam Harris

Accept that you are strong enough to endure the present. The rest doesn't matter. ~ Pepper Winters