Capitulation Quotes

At a certain age, he thought, it is better for one's health not to do what I am about to do. At a certain age, a man's outlook is best tempered by moderation, if not resignation, if not outright capitulation. At a certain age, one should live without either harking too much back to grievances of the past or inviting resistance in the present by embodying a challenge to the pieties that be. Yet to give up playing any but the role socially assigned, in this instance assigned to the respectably retired - at seventy-one, that is surely what is appropriate, and so, for Coleman Silk, as he long ago demonstrated with requisite ruthlessness to his very own mother, that is what is unacceptable. ~ Philip Roth

Today, Democrats not only have the White House; they have the Senate too. So we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve, while at the same recognizing that realism should never be confused with capitulation. ~ Mitch McConnell

I'm disappointed, depressed, and demoralized. [ ... ] It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president. ~ William Kristol

Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table. ~ George Schultz

In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21 ~ Thomas Merton

Today we ought to be able to see first that Booker T. Washington faced a situation in which he was seeking desperately for a way out, and he could see no way out except capitulation. ~ C.L.R. James

Nonetheless even in capitulation there is still hope, and this hope of human beings never ends, will never end. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

Pure unconditional aggression and pure unconditional capitulation are destined to fail as strategies of social exchange in a society of multiple interaction and mutual dependence. ~ Kevin Dutton

There is a tendency under capitalism system to reduce everything to a kind of commodity fetish, and this order tends to promote extremely conventional and uniform expressions of gender and sexuality in order to promote certain products and lifestyle choices that are commercialized. This necessarily entails a capitulation to heteronormativity, or in the case of the new gay movement, a "homonormativity" that doesn't stray far from the heterosexual paradigm. Anyone who questions these normative values and conventions is subject to disapproval, hostility, or even violence. ~ Bruce LaBruce

Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration. ~ Malcolm Lowry

I myself and my wife - in order to escape the disgrace of deposition or capitulation - choose death. It is our wish to be burnt immediately on the spot where I have carried out the greatest part of my daily work in the course of a twelve years' service to my people. ~ Adolf Hitler

I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible--separation. Brokeness. An end without an ending. ~ Kate Bowler

Value change can change our pathetic capitulation to consumerism, which will help us psychologically as well as environmentally. ~ James Gustave Speth

Or perhaps the syndrome we are witnessing is preemptive capitulation: If we reduce our conscience to rubble before the bad men get here, they will have nothing to destroy. ~ J. Budziszewski

In his 1978 Harvard commencement address, Solzhenitsyn listed a litany of woes facing the West: the loss of courage and will, the addiction to comfort, the abuse of freedom, the capitulation of intellectuals to fashionable ideas, the attitude of appeasement with evil. ~ Charles W. Colson

There is a point beyond which conciliation looks like capitulation. I do not believe I passed that point, but others have thought otherwise. ~ Salman Rushdie

The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation. ~ Raymond E. Feist

We pledge our loyalty; we affirm our determination to be of good courage; we declare, sometimes even publicly, that come what may we will do the right thing, that we will stand for the right cause, that we will be true to ourselves and to others. Then the pressures begin to build. Sometimes these are social pressures. Sometimes they are personal appetites. Sometimes they are false ambitions. There is a weakening of the will. There is a softening of discipline. There is capitulation. And then there is remorse, self-accusation, and bitter tears of regret. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Conciliation is not capitulation, nor is compromise to be deemed equivalent to imbalanced concession. ~ Jalal Talabani

If the ultimate goal is lasting love, women are going to have to become comfortable with sacrifice and capitulation. Because those are the underpinnings of a long-term marriage – for both sexes. ~ Suzanne Venker

The cycle of optimism and euphoria leading to greed, fear and capitulation, giving way to hope and building back to optimism, drives the expansion and contraction of our financial world in a market cycle of collective human emotion. ~ Coreen T. Sol

The engineer's ready capitulation, however, did not hide from the poet's mother the sad realization that the adventure into which she had plunged so impulsively
and which had seemed so intoxicatingly beautiful
had no turned out to be the great, mutually fulfilling love she was convinced she had a full right to expect. Her father was the owner of two prosperous Prague pharmacies, and her morality was based on strict give-and-take. For her part, she had invested everything in love (she had even been willing to sacrifice her parents and their peaceful existence); in turn, she had expected her partner to invest an equal amount of capital of feelings in the common account. To redress the imbalance, she gradually withdrew her emotional deposit and after the wedding presented a proud, severe face to her husband. ~ Milan Kundera

After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews. ~ Anne Frank

Instead, it was a Christianity engaged with modernity (and postmodernity) - grappling with its issues, sensitive to its questions and concerns, aware of its spiritual vacuum, in vital dialogue with its artistic and intellectual leaders. It was a "third-way" faith seeking to steer a course that would avoid defensive retreat and isolation on the one hand and capitulation and sellout on the other. ~ Brian D. McLaren

I loved begging him, following his rules. I loved the freedom I found in complete capitulation. ~ Penny Reid

Submission does not mean being weak or passive. It leads to neither fatalism nor capitulation. Just the opposite. True power resides in submission. A power that comes from within. Those who submit to the divine essence of life will live in unperturbed tranquility and peace even when the whole wide world goes through turbulence after turbulence. ~ Elif Safak

To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Supreme authority in both church and home has been divinely vested in the male as the representative of Christ, who is Head of the church. It is in willing submission rather than grudging capitulation that the woman in the church (whether married or single) and the wife in the home find their fulfillment. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

But you find - surprise - that you like this capitulation from her, this helpless acceding, from the most recent embodiment of all the girls over all the years who've given you nothing, not even a curious glance. Welcome to the darker side of love. ~ Michael Cunningham

Where the hell had the years gone by? How had he spent them?

In a strange kind of capitulation, that's how. An acceptance of the very privilege most people spend a lifetime trying to achieve. ~ Cynthia Freeman

Getting drunk ... you're in complete control up to a point. It's your choice, every time you take a sip. You have a lot of small choices. It's like ... I guess it's the difference between suicide and slow capitulation ... ~ Jim Morrison

Suffering, therefore, is not merely the abrupt delivery of violence and death. Its greatest and most valuable expression is in dashed hopes, ruined dreams, perennial pain, torment, confusion, misunderstanding, prolonged anxiety, recovery, repair, exhaustion, and, eventually, full bodily capitulation in a drama where warm survivors, not cold victims, are more valuable to the Omnimalevolent Creator. ~ John Zande

How unlucky I am that this should happen to me. But not at all. Perhaps, say how lucky I am that I am not broken by what has happened, and I am not afraid of what is about to happen. For the same blow might have stricken anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation and complaint. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Was it happiness I'd found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation? ~ Maria Semple

The fact that some things are mysterious or that they touch on mystery isn't in some way a capitulation, and one should realize that there are some things that we may never understand and, to that extent, should be humbled by that. ~ Simon Conway Morris