When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.
In 2009, I fractured my skull in a freak accident at an L.A. restaurant. I suffered a seizure and was rushed into hospital. I was so out of it that I refused to let them scan my brain. My dad rushed to my bedside and talked me into having the CAT scan - he told me that I might die if I didn't go through with it.
Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.
I had one nanny who made me sit in front of a bowl of porridge for three or four days running when I refused to eat it. I remember being very unhappy about that.
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
I came back from university thinking I knew all about politics and racism, not knowing my dad had been one of the youngest-serving Labour councillors in the town and had refused to work in South Africa years ago because of the situation there. And he's never mentioned it - you just find out. That's a real man to me. A sleeping lion.
Saddam Hussein has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.
Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.
But the good news was that my elder sister refused to get married straight away and I couldn't get married until she did so I had the licence to go off and dream.
I took a cabbie to taxi court once. Years ago, this guy didn't want to take me to Brooklyn. Just refused. I explained that I would absolutely take him to Taxi Court because, see, I'm an actor and have pretty much nothing but free time.
When cellphones came out, my girlfriend refused to get one for five years, because she thought it would turn her into somebody who couldn't connect with other people - and, of course, she got a cellphone.
The Obama administration has refused to back down on the insurance mandate that needlessly pits health care against the rights of the religious... This administration simply doesn't get it.
The House of Commons, refused to receive the addresses of the colonies, when the matter was pending; besides, we hold our rights neither from them nor from the Lords.
In the 1990s, Islamists in Algeria won elections like the Brotherhood did in Egypt. The Algerian military refused to allow the Islamists to take power. A war erupted, killing between 100,000 to 200,000 people, depending on which estimates are to be believed.
The owners said that they wanted the salary cap and refused to promise that they would abide by the rules of the just-expired contract after the season ended. Believing we had no choice, the players went on strike in August of 1994.
My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
First of all, we were never not speaking. It's gotten so blown out of proportion. It was a very straightforward difference of opinion. I think because we were so private and refused to talk about it, these stories just got out of control.
I've refused roles because they're too simplistic.
I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses.
I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.
The best holiday I went on as a kid was to Disney World. I wore the same Minnie Mouse dress for 5 days straight and refused to go on any rides apart from It's A Small World. I think my parents wanted to kill me.
In Rwanda that genocide happened because the international community and the Security Council refused to give, again, another 5000 troops which would have cost, I don't know, maybe fifty, a hundred, million dollars.
I had repeatedly made written requests to the Fuehrer that I might be allowed to join the Wehrmacht as an ordinary soldier. He refused to give me this permission.
We believe in honoring our mothers and fathers and keeping our smallest residents - our children - healthy. The politicians in charge of Texas now clearly don't. Perry has refused to even consider expanding health care coverage in Texas because he cares more about scoring political points than he does about our Texas families.
I refused to beat my head against stone, of course.
I refused to take no for an answer.
There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.
A few years ago no hotel or restaurant in Boston refused Negro guests; now several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionary stores, will not serve Negroes, even the best of them.
I never refused an autograph, never refused to buy someone a drink. Now I'm learning to say I've got other things on, instead of doing it and wondering why.
In the summer of 1952, when I was 30, the Army assigned me to an infantry unit fighting in Korea. Meanwhile, though, there was other news in my family: My father had become the Republican presidential nominee. As an ambitious young major, I refused any offers for other assignments.
Somebody wanted me to autograph her breast and I kindly refused. She was in college. I thought maybe I shouldn't do that.
All my friends went to the Madonna concert when I was in, maybe, the 9th grade, and my mother refused to let me go.
I absolutely refused to make out with the gorgeous male model.
The actress they'd hired had refused to appear naked in front of the camera. I didn't like to appear naked either, but the first thing I did was take off my clothes and jump into the pool completely naked.
In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks - a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.
Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.
