Uncompromising Quotes

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. ~ Charles Dickens

We are born for the happiness. We are living for the happiness. To be happy we have to be morally free. To be morally free we have to treat the humanity with uncompromising sincerity. ~ Debasish Mridha

I have an uncompromising relationship with my goals. ~ Diana Nyad

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond. ~ John Sergeant Wise

The Spirit is as much a jealous lover as the ego. Both guard their path with an uncompromising passion but for very different reasons. ~ Donna Goddard

The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You cannot build a dream on a foundation of sand. To weather the test of storms, it must be cemented in the heart with uncompromising conviction. ~ T.F. Hodge

Challenged by the surge of nationalisms in many parts of the former Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks showed a great deal of political skill and flexibility. Their apparent willingness to make significant concessions to the nationalities, in sharp contrast to the White forces' uncompromising dedication to a "one and indivisible Russia," was a contributing factor to their victory in the Civil War. ~ Per Anders Rudling

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team.
Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit.
No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that.
Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it.
Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood.
Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist.
No matter who orders him to look the other way.
We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to.
We do it because we are compelled. ~ Alan Moore

Your uncompromising attitude makes people feel pathetic. Your very existence reminds them just how much they've sold out, ~ David Lagercrantz

In the first place, Descartes stands for the most explicit and uncompromising dualism between mind and matter. ~ James Mark Baldwin

Listen, I'm not cool. Being cool is about keeping your blood pressure steady. So no. Don't be cool. Be passionate. Be dedicated. Be tenacious. Be uncompromising. Be pissed. Be happy. Be sad. ~ Justin Timberlake

Every uncompromising ideology reduces faith to an idolatry, ~ Walter Brueggemann

Many people in this country who want to see us the minority, and who don't want to see us taking too militant or too uncompromising a stand, are absolutely against the successful regrouping or organising of any faction in this country whose thought and whose thinking pattern is international rather than national ... There's a world wide revolution going on, it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then, what power structure? An international Western power structure. ~ Malcolm X

Is there wisdom in innocence? I think there is, but there is a cult now of drab men and women, for whom the world, and even life itself, is a kind of commodity. These critics, having eaten, now study their excrement to see what they consumed. On this they base certain conclusions. Their ignorance is uncompromising. Let us rather stand before the unknown, in very humble, quiet observance and wait while it reveals itself. ~ Phillip Mann

All religions are not the same. All religions do not point to God. All religions do not say that all religions are the same. At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life's purpose. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Unlike Virgil, Homer is no part of the classical age, has no truck with judicious distinction or the calm management of life and society. He precedes that order, is a preclassic, immoderate, uncompromising, never sacrificing truth for grace. ~ Adam Nicolson

In a capitalist society a man is expected to be an aggressive, uncompromising, factual, lusty, intelligent provider of goods,and the woman, a retiring, gracious, emotional, intuitive, attractive consumer of goods. ~ Toni Cade Bambara

I counted his failings in my head: his obnoxious, cocky attitude; his pierced and painted wannabe girlfriend; his leather jacket and black motorcycle; his tattoos and multiple piercings. Even his name rankled. Dante. I'd spent my formative years dodging his type. I refused to be intimidated by him. That poncy lot. I seethed some more. And geeks? Surely he could come up with something more original. My entire year's work depended on a successful outcome here, and Tristan had assured me this guy was the real deal, not just another charlatan. We only had two night's use of the control tower. As of next week, it was scheduled for demolition. I'd convinced myself Dante was just a means to an end, and then he smiled at me, his hard, uncompromising face lighting up for just a second. With his sharp cheekbones and proud chin, he looked almost beautiful, and my stomach turned cartwheels. His eyes glittered like diamonds, pale silver that appeared luminous in the badly lit room. ~ Sofia Grey

People can and often do ignore or deny their common humanity with others, or deny, at least implicitly, that their common humanity commits them to sympathy or compassion for those less advantaged than themselves. Indeed, such an attitude towards one's fellows can be represented as tough, uncompromising, positively heroic: the supermen versus the wimps. But just as this ruthless world may be chosen - as it is chosen by the current rulers of the globalised neo-liberal market - so if may also be rejected. ~ David Smail

There was no doubt about it: Alexandra Finch Hancock was imposing from any angle; her behind was no less uncompromising than her front. ~ Harper Lee

One of the secrets a nation can unlock to have material wealth is, having a leader who will take an uncompromising stand to establish truth and honesty as a rule of building the nation ~ Sunday Adelaja

Photography isolates the world via an aperture and gives the photographer the means to see differently, to achieve a spontaneous vision that is direct and uncompromising. ~ Ellsworth Kelly

Beneath the water, I can know her. She was fierce, uncompromising. When she loved, she loved deeply, passionately. She loved the blue-eyed water god. She owned him. His heart.
But then she felt betrayal, she hated, and she was feared.
Hate gave her power. ~ Rachel Cohn

I think having an uncompromising ideology eventually forces you out of the norm. ~ David Bezmozgis

Leaders will have to give clear and decisive leadership towards a world of tolerance and respect for difference, and an uncompromising commitment to peaceful solutions of conflicts and disputes. ~ Nelson Mandela

I had blind faith in him. My faith in Elijah Muhammad was more blind and more uncompromising than any faith that any man has ever had for another man. And so I didn't try and see him as he actually was. ~ Malcolm X

It passed through his mind that if he missed this chance of talking to Katharine, he would have to face an enraged ghost, when he was alone in his room again, demanding an explanation of his cowardly indecision. It was better, on the whole, to risk present discomfiture than to waste an evening bandying excuses and constructing impossible scenes with this uncompromising section of himself. ~ Virginia Woolf

There is something embarrassing in ... the way in which, ... turning suffering into images, harsh and uncompromising though they are, ... wounds the shame we feel in the presence of the victims. For these victims are used to create something, works of art, that are thrown to the consumption of a world which destroyed them. ~ Theodor Adorno

In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entertainments of many kinds would stop over in those days for a single performance in Jackson's Century Theatre. Then, as now, my imagination was magnetized toward transient artists - toward the transience as much as the artists. I must have seen "Acrobats in a Park" at the time I wrote the story as exotic, free of any experience as I knew it. At the center of the little story is the Zorro's act: the feat of erecting a structure of their bodies that holds together, interlocked, and stands like a wall. Writing about the family act, I was writing about the family itself, its strength as a unit, testing its frailty under stress. I treated it in an artificial and oddly formal way; the stronghold of the family is put on view as a structure built each night; on the night before the story opens, the Wall has come down when the most vulnerable member slips, and the act is done for. But from various points within it and from outside it, I've been writing about the structure of the family in stories and novels ever since. In spite of my uncompromising approach to it, my fundamental story form might have been trying to announce itself to me. ~ Eudora Welty

There comes a time when to be uncompromising is the only realistic course. ~ Hamid Algar

You are the architect of your own future, so design your future with uncompromising sincerity. ~ Debasish Mridha

Epictetus has had a long-standing resonance in the United States; his uncompromising moral rigour chimed in well with Protestant Christian beliefs and the ethical individualism that has been a persistent vein in American culture. His admirers ranged from John Harvard and Thomas Jefferson in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the nineteenth. More recently, Vice-Admiral James Stockdale wrote movingly of how his study of Epictetus at Stanford University enabled him to survive the psychological pressure of prolonged torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam between 1965 and 1973. Stockdale's story formed the basis for a light-hearted treatment of the moral power of Stoicism in Tom Wolfe's novel A Man in Full (1998).52 ~ Epictetus

I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ~ Jimmy Page

If you ask the other John and Peggy (my parents) how they've managed to stay married for well over half a century, they'll credit an uncompromising level of honesty with each other. If you press them, though, you'll learn that their commitment to the truth did not extend to their children. Indeed, when it came to raising three boys on a public school teachers salary, my parents lied like rugs./
It was a strange sort of snobbery to develop at such an early age - this sympathy for the more fortunate - but that's precisely what my parents engendered. With duplicity and guile, they Turn envy to pity. By the time I was eleven, I felt nothing but compassion for classmates of mine who had been forced to wear the latest fashions. Sadly, they had no older cousins to provide them with a superior wardrobe of "softer, sturdier, broken-in alternatives. ~ Mike Rowe

I owe as much of my success to an uncompromising obstinacy as to any original ideas. ~ Albert Einstein

'Tough' meant it was an uncompromising image, something that came from your gut, out of instinct, raw, of the moment, something that couldn't be described in any other way. So it was tough. Tough to like, tough to see, tough to make, tough to understand. The tougher they were the more beautiful they became. ~ Joel Meyerowitz

It must be said that it is challenging to balance uncompromising artistic integrity with commercial requirements, but I've also come to learn that couture clients are adventurous and particularly unpredictable in their taste. ~ Stephane Rolland

Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition. ~ Karel Capek

The oldest of the three Abrahamic religions, and the clear ancestor of the other two, is Judaism: originally a tribal cult of a single fiercely unpleasant God, morbidly obsessed with sexual restrictions, with the smell of charred flesh, with his own superiority over rival gods and with the exclusiveness of his chosen desert tribe. During the Roman occupation of Palestine, Christianity was founded by Paul of Tarsus as a less ruthlessly monotheistic sect of Judaism and a less exclusive one, which looked outwards from the Jews to the rest of the world. Several centuries later, Muhammad and his followers reverted to the uncompromising monotheism of the Jewish original, but not its exclusiveness, and founded Islam upon a new holy book, the Koran or Qur'an, adding a powerful ideology of military conquest to spread the faith. ~ Richard Dawkins

His words are not the uncompromising utterances of politicians or the sanctimonious banalities that try to appease everyone's good conscience. Rather, ~ Jose Angel N.

USURY: Everybody's looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management consultants won't tell you what they do until they've sunk five pints. I don't think anybody should give themselves air just because they don't have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If you're an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But don't fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just won't do it. ~ Zadie Smith

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody. ~ James Joll

Partisans present some of the most refreshing music I've heard in a long while, uncompromising, very well written and very well played. It demands serious attention. I hear in these players a sense of common purpose and resolve, and a strong command of a dialect uniquely suited to this music. It's heartening to hear music that looks to find its own particular place. ~ Steve Swallow

But we most of us lose our sense of proportion in the presence of a nun; and George, thus exposed at short range to this bride of Christ in her uncompromising medieval habit, finds himself becoming flustered, defensive. An unwilling conscript in Hell's legions, he faces the soldier of Heaven across the front-line of an exceedingly polite cold war. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Character is one factor that will guide all our actions and decisions.
We invested in uncompromising integrity that helped us take difficult stands in some of the most difficult business situations. ~ Azim Premji

Margaret Thatcher was beyond argument a great Prime Minister. Her tragedy is that she may be remembered less for the brilliance of her many achievements than for the recklessness with which she later sought to impose her own increasingly uncompromising views. ~ Geoffrey Howe

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

That voice. It couldn't be.
She turned.
The Marine.
Her brain tried to compute the man before her. The same uncompromising blue-gray eyes, but more distant. The same fit body, but more space filling. The same rugged features, but more bearded.

Bearded! ~ Kate Meader

If we want to reach them, our articulation of the problem has to avoid ascribing personal evil to them, while also being uncompromising in describing the dynamics of the problem. I cannot offer a formula for how to do this. The right words and strategies arise naturally from compassion: from the understanding that the bankers or whoever do as I would do, were I in their shoes. In other words, compassionate - and effective - words arise from a deeply felt realization of our common humanity. And this is possible only to the extent to which we have applied the same to ourselves. Truly, to be an effective activist requires an equivalent inner activism. ~ Charles Eisenstein

The days became for Christina endless preparation. Ceaseless winds tore through her massing battle ranks, the grey cold sun above marking the timeless date. With skies of blue and cloud overhead, driving, uncompromising time stood still, lingering, as if giving Christina precious eons to perfect her shaving straight razor cuts of mind and sword. She worked alone now, forging the essence of herself in the policies and ways of hammer and anvil, pounding away with the classic, living Japanese blade. Her deft hands spun dervishly, wroughting out the iron of her will, fashioning a blade-mind remade unto her. --Brickley, The Lady and the Samurai ~ Douglas Laurent

The uncompromising example of Jesus Christ places upon every Christian minister the responsibility to withstand the temptation to align oneself with the secular ruling powers. It is true that it is part of every minister's calling to be a pastor to his or her parishioners, to be a spiritual leader and teacher and a comforter of the sick at heart and those afflicted in mind, soul, spirit, or body. Ministers of the Gospel must comfort the afflicted, but they also have the prophet's duty to afflict the comfortable. ~ Obery M. Hendricks Jr.

Young children are for the most part just and moral. They love preachy stories because they do in fact understand that actions have consequences. Yet they turn to adults for the mercy and subtlety that they themselves can't yet summon. And who can blame them? They are still little and vulnerable, uncompromising to a fault. . . . they want an adult's protection from their own rough justice. This, I think, is the one true story of early childhood, the yin and yang of being a small person.

It's confusing emotional terrain for children to inhabit, and we must guide them gently through it. Is it intimacy you want, or freedom? Protection or power? Childhood is a kind of enslavement, but it's a liberation, too. Young children's emotions are all about this basic conflict. Feed me. Hold me. Comfort me. Fix me. I hate you! I can do it myself. ~ Erika Christakis

But it's just that he is basically a very honest person. That makes him uncompromising sometimes. ~ Barack Obama

Superficial views of God and His holiness will produce superficial views of sin and atonement. God hates sin. It is His uncompromising foe. Sin is vile and detestable in the sight of God ... The sinner and God are at opposite poles of the moral universe. ~ Billy Graham

What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone. ~ William Gilmore Simms

The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it ... ~ Dwight Macdonald

It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble. ~ John Keegan

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ~ Tim O'Brien

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternatinve service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war. ~ Albert Einstein

So is he a radical?" non-Muslims often asked when I told them about the Sheikh. "Not at all," I'd say, assuming we were all speaking in post-9/11 code. "Of course not."

And I'd meant it. He is not a radical. Or rather, not their kind of radical.

His radicalism is of entirely another caliber. He's an extremist quietist, calling on Muslims to turn away from politics and to leave behind the frameworks of thought popularised by Islamists in recent centuries. Akram's call for an apolitical Islam unpicked the conditioning of a generation of Muslims, raised on the works of Abu l'Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb and their nineteenth-century forerunners. These ideologues aimed to make Islam relevant to the sociopolitical struggles facings Muslims coping with modernity. Their works helped inspire revolutions, coups, and constitutions. But while these thinkers equated faith with political action, the Sheikh believed that politics was puny. He was powered by a certainty that we are just passing through this earth and that mundane quests for land or power miss Islam's point. Compared with the men fighting for worldly turf, Akram was far more uncompromising: turn away from quests for nation-states or parliamentary seats and toward God. "Allah doesn't want people to complain to other people," he said. "People must complain to Allah, not to anyone else."

All the time spent fulminating, organising, protesting? It could be saved for prayer. So unjust governments run ~ Carla Power

Nothing but a miracle of grace can lead to the saving of any sinner. Oh, my reader, be not deceived on this vital matter; to mortify the lusts of the flesh, to be crucified unto the world, to overcome the Devil, to die daily unto sin and live unto righteousness, to be meek and lowly in heart, trustful and obedient, pious and patient, faithful and uncompromising, loving and gentle; in a word, to be a Christian, to be Christ-like, is a task far, far beyond the poor resources of fallen human nature. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Dharma practice is founded on resolve. This is not an emotional conversion, a devastating realization of the error of our ways, a desperate urge to be good, but an ongoing, heartfelt reflection on priorities, values, and purpose. We need to keep taking stock of our life in an unsentimental, uncompromising way. ~ Stephen Batchelor

I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable ... I suppose I'm larger than life. ~ Bette Davis

The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time. ~ Chuck Klosterman

This was a mouth that had suffered many slings and arrows along with the occasional thrashing and several hundredweight of tobacco and Cadbury's milk chocolate. This was a mouth through which a great deal of life had passed at, it would appear, an uncompromising speed. ~ Bill Buford

Be with a person who treats you like their crown,
proudly honoring you infront of the world.
Not with someone who treats you like a trophy,
secured for their sense of achievement ~ Henna Sohail

I'm actually quite a nice person. It's to do with the way I look, an uncompromising sort of face, brusque delivery and voice, and I think the combination of all that. When I'm doing pantomime, children will scream the place down before I open my mouth. There's obviously something that really gets them. ~ Kate O'Mara

Her expression is fierce and uncompromising, full of the intrepid bravery of a small boat in an uncertain sea. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I realize that many Christians have not been praying because they have not accepted the reality of war in which we find ourselves. There is a spiritual war mode that we must appropriate. It is an aggressive stance that we take against evil. It is governed by love for people, but it is fearless and uncompromising with the powers of darkness that manipulate people to fulfill evil plans. ~ Francis Frangipane

We needed to be uncompromising with our workforce, to expect 100 percent of our employees to comply 100 percent of the time with complex and ever-changing government mandates. Striving to comply with every law does not mean agreeing with every law. But, even when faced with laws we think are counter-productive, we must first comply. Only then, from a credible position, can we enter into a dialogue with regulatory agencies to demonstrate alternatives that are more beneficial. If these efforts fail, we can then join with others in using education and/or political efforts to change the law. ~ Charles Koch

I grabbed a robe and a fireplace poker and headed down the stairs at a snail's pace. I was sure I loved him, but I wasn't prepared to be brutally murdered to save a man of his size. He was on his own. Unless of course, it was a mob of uncompromising zombies. Then I might have attempted to fight beside him. I shook my head, nearly laughing at this point. ~ Holly Hood

Strenuous intellectual work and the study of God's Nature are the angels that will lead me through all the troubles of this life with consolation, strength, and uncompromising rigor. ~ Albert Einstein

To the horror of those who can genuinely claim to have suffered from its effects, alienation has proved a highly profitable commodity in the cultural marketplace. Modernist art with its dissonances and torments, to take one example, has become the staple diet of an increasingly voracious army of culture consumers who know good investments when they see them. The avant-garde, if indeed the term can still be used, has become an honored ornament of our cultural life, less to be feared than feted. The philosophy of existentialism, to cite another case, which scarcely a generation ago seemed like a breath of fresh air, has now degenerated into a set of easily manipulated clichés and sadly hollow gestures. This decline occurred, it should be noted, not because analytic philosophers exposed the meaninglessness of its categories, but rather as a result of our culture's uncanny ability to absorb and defuse even its most uncompromising opponents. ~ Martin Jay

Starting a successful business is not tricky. Starting a successful business does not require above average intelligence. Starting a successful business does require having a pig-headed, purpose-driven tenacity about achieving your life goals and fulfilling your life's vision through providing products and services that offer
uncompromising quality in a scalable and duplicatable way. ~ Clay Clark

They say the personal is political and it's certainly fair to say that, like her politics, Rebecca Epstein's kissing is radical, forthright and uncompromising. ~ David Nicholls

George liked it so, that this island was uncompromising and hard for tourists to negotiate. Not all welcome smiles and black men in Hawaiian shirts, playing pan by the poolside. No flat, crystal beaches, no boutique hotels. Trinidad was oil-rich, didn't need tourism. Trinidadians openly sniggered at the sunburnt American women who wandered down the pavement in shorts and bikini top. Trinidad was itself; take it or leave it. ~ Monique Roffey

If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth
any man of integrity. ~ Ayn Rand

No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion
the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke, she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line. ~ Betty Smith

Loyalty is uncommon, unconditional
and uncompromising. Every winning
team has it. ~ Dan McCarney

What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men ... In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. ~ G.K. Chesterton

...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much...

Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world.

The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. ~ Francis Spufford

Finding a seat in the back, she worshipped with the early service congregation, eyes closed, arms held wide, her heart offering it all to the One who wooed her with love and grace. Unconditional and uncompromising. Perfectly done on His part, not so much hers. But ~ Rachel Hauck

However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

My character in 'Shame' is an outrageous person. Loud and uncompromising and I begged Steve McQueen to give me the job. ~ Carey Mulligan

was Goldman's ideas that were dangerous: her ideal of a just and beautiful society inspired struggles for social change, and her uncompromising presence in public life exposed the hypocrisies of allegedly democratic governance. She had a unique ability to generate coalitions among liberal and radical groups, and among immigrants and native-born citizens, by articulating their common struggles for freedom of speech (including freedom to organize the workplace), right to a fair trial, availability of birth control, right to travel, and an overall spirit of individual freedom. Looking back at Goldman's time from within this gaze, the authorities look extreme, if not paranoid and even ridiculous, for their fervent efforts to silence her rather than simply accept her words as a protected form of speech in American society. ~ Kathy E. Ferguson

People are more slothful than timid. Their greatest fear is the heavy burden that uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them. ~ John Armstrong

'Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties. ~ Manny Farber

Your prowess with a lightsaber is childish vanity. Your physical Force powers are no more than a conjurer's trick, sleight of hand to dazzle the ordinary beings you should be serving. You profane these powers by using them as weapons in war. And you fail to grasp the single, simple, uncompromising duty of the true Jedi. The Jedi is the rock-lion at the gate who says, "I will defend these beings with my life, and that is the sum of me." Etain Tur-Mukan died to save one life, a man she did not even know, but felt compelled to save, and that is what made her stronger in the Force and a truer Jedi than any of you acrobats, tricksters, and specious, empty philosophers. ~ Karen Traviss

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the sermon on the mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness, one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure. ~ Virginia Woolf

To lead by force all you need is a greater army, but to lead by example, to be a city on a hill, you need an uncompromising respect for basic dignity. And you don't gain either of those things by breeding monsters in dungeons. ~ Jonathan Maas

No regrets?" he murmured to Hunt as they strode down the hall, while Shaw and St. Vincent followed at a more leisurely pace.
Hunt glanced at him with a questioning smile. He was a big, dark-haired man, with the same sense of uncompromising masculinity and the same avid interest in hunting and sportsmanship that Marcus possessed. "About what?"
"Being led around by the nose by your wife."
That drew a wry grin from Hunt, and he shook his head. "If my wife does lead me around, Westcliff, it's by an altogether different body part. And no, I have no regrets whatsoever."
"I suppose there's a certain convenience in being married," Marcus mused aloud. "Having a woman close at hand to satisfy your needs, not to mention the fact that a wife is undoubtedly more economical than a mistress. There is, moreover, the begetting of heirs to consider…"
Hunt laughed at his effort to cast the issue in a practical light. "I didn't marry Annabelle for convenience. And although I haven't tabulated any numbers, I can assure you that she is not cheaper than a mistress. As for the begetting of heirs, that was the farthest thing from my mind when I proposed to her."
"Then why did you?"
"I would tell you, but not long ago you said that you hoped I wouldn't start - how did you put it? - 'pollinate the air with maudlin sentiment.'"
"You believe yourself to be in love with her."
"No," Hunt countered in a relaxed manner, "I am in love with her."
Marc ~ Lisa Kleypas

Whenever any black man in america shows signs of an uncompromising attitude, against the injustices that he experiences daily, and shows no tendency whatsoever to compromise with it, then the American press [characterizes him] as a radical, as an extremist someone who's irresponsible, or as a rabble rouser or someone who doesn't rationalize in dealing with the problem. ~ Malcolm X

The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's. ~ Joseph Joachim

The concrete floor beneath the airbed was hard and uncompromising, digging into her back and making it difficult to breathe. The stale air reeked of disinfectant and shit. And something else that she couldn't quite place. Death, perhaps? ~ Mark Tilbury

I know it sounds trite but I wanted to make a difference. Political debates with my father had been fraught because he was uncompromising and explosive but if he taught me one thing it was to air my views. ~ Vince Cable

The attitude of uncompromising heroism is attractive, and appeals especially to the dramatic instinct. But the purpose of the serious revolutionary is not personal heroism, nor martyrdom, but the creation of a happier world. Those who have the happiness of the world at heart will shrink from attitudes and the facile hysteria of "no parley with the enemy." They will not embark upon enterprises, however arduous and austere, which are likely to involve the martyrdom of their country and the discrediting of their ideals. It is by slower and less showy methods that the new world must be built [ ... ] To find fault with those who urge these considerations, or to accuse them of faint-heartedness, is mere sentimental self-indulgence, sacrificing the good we can do to the satisfaction of our own emotions. ~ Bertrand Russell

To make peace, one must be an uncompromising leader. To make peace, one must also embody compromise. ~ Benazir Bhutto