“The Psalms offer us a way of joining in a chorus of praise and prayer that has been going on for millennia and across all cultures. Not to try to inhabit them, while continuing to invent non-psalmic 'worship' based on our own feelings of the moment, risks being like a spoiled child who, taken to the summit of Table Mountain with the city and the ocean spread out before him, refuses to gaze at the view because he is playing with his Game Boy” WayTryingChildrenHas BeensMomentsFeelingsCultureGamesPrayerViewsCitiesBoysTakenRiskOffersMountainOceanWorshipPraiseTablesRefuseSpreadContinuingSummitJoiningSpoiledChorusPsalmsSpoiled ChildrenJoining In Author:N. T. Wright
“As a composer, I believe that music has the power to inspire a renewal of human consciousness, culture, and politics. And yet I refuse to make political art. More often than not political art fails as politics, and all too often it fails as art. To reach its fullest power, to be most moving and most fully useful to us, art must be itself.” BelieveHumansArtMovingPoliticalCultureI BelieveConsciousnessFailingInspireRefuseComposerRenewalHuman ConsciousnessPolitical Art Author:John Luther Adams
“As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world.” WorldHumansFormOrderCultureCausesNaturalEnemyEffectsEventsClaimsRefuseListsNarrativeTerritoryContrastCompetingItemsExclusiveCause And EffectTrajectoryDatabasesNatural Enemies Author:Lev Manovich
“Together, these advocates create a pro-Israeli case so compelling that the idea and reality of Israel has worked itself deep into American culture, politics and foreign policy. Many American Jews refuse to accept it, but the real debate between Israel’s supporters and detractors in America is all but over.” IdeasRealRealityTogetherAmericaCultureAcceptingCasesPolicyJewRefuseIsraelDebateForeign PolicyCompellingSupporterIsraeliAmerican Culture Author:Aaron David Miller
“Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.” MayIdeasWholeProblemCultureIndividualNumbersMental HealthRefuseSanityLackingPsychiatristPsychologist Book:The Sane Society Source: The Sane Society
“Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it's a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.” IfsWantPersonsMatterWould BeCultureCrazyParticularRefuseRationalSanityJudgedConventionsIrrationalConform Book:A Stranger in My Grave Source: A Stranger in My Grave
“When a man loses superiority, he loses potency. That's what all this talk about castrating women is about. Castrating women are those who refuse to pretend men are better than they are and better than women are. The simple truth - that men are only equal - can undermine a culture more devastatingly than any bomb. Subversion is telling the truth.” MenCultureLosesSimpleEqualRefuseBombsTelling The TruthSuperioritySimple TruthsPotencySubversion Book:The Women's Room Source: The Women's Room
“Could you achieve the possible without trying? Could you achieve the impossible if you refuse to stop trying?” IfsTryingCultureImpossibleAchieveRefuseStop TryingService Culture Author:Ron Kaufman