Disavowal Quotes

#1. For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. What they could not deny or disavow, they could distort. They could blame the victims, who deserved to die for fighting or crying or for failing to fight or cry. They found encouragement for such a stance in a general culture accustomed to blaming victims for their misfortunes, and in specific contact with child victims eager to blame themselves. By believing that victims had a choice when there was none, they could see victims as culpable. They could even see the deaths as right and purposeful in the nobility of sacrifice. #Quote by Judith Spencer

#2. I know that disavowal is an unusal form of betrayal. From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation. But you, who are doing the disowning, you know what you're doing. And disavowal pulls the underpinnings away from a relationship just as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal. #Quote by Bernhard Schlink

#3. I thought to do something good by giving an interview to People, which was exceedingly foolish of me. I asked Aaron [Asher] to tell you that the Good Intentions Paving Company had fucked up again. The young interviewer turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like disavowal, denunciation and excommunication. Well, we're both used to this kind of thing, and beyond shock. In agreeing to take the call, and make a statement I was simply muddle-headed. But if I had been interviewed by an angel for the Seraphim and Cherubim Weekly I'd have said, as I actually did say to the crooked little slut, that you were one of our very best and most interesting writers. I would have added that I was greatly stimulated and entertained by your last novel, and that of course after three decades I understood perfectly well what you were saying about the writer's trade - how could I not understand, or miss suffering the same pains. Still our diagrams are different, and the briefest description of the differences would be that you seem to have accepted the Freudian explanation: A writer is motivated by his desire for fame, money and sexual opportunities. Whereas I have never taken this trinity of motives seriously. But this is an explanatory note and I don't intend to make a rabbinic occasion of it. Please accept my regrets and apologies, also my best wishes. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the dee #Quote by Saul Bellow

#4. It is as if, in today's permissive society, transgressive violations are allowed only in a "privatized" form, as a personal idiosyncrasy deprived of any public, spectacular, or ritualistic dimension. We can thus publicly confess all our weird private practices, but they remain simply private idiosyncrasies. Perhaps we should also invert here the standard formula of fetishistic disavowal: "I know very well (that I should obey the rules), but nonetheless ... (I occasionally violate them, since this too is part of the rules)." In contemporary society, the predominant stance is rather: "I believe (that repeated hedonistic transgressions are what make life worth living), but nonetheless ... (I know very well that these transgressions are not really transgressive, but are just artificial coloring serving to re-emphasize the grayness of social reality). #Quote by Slavoj Zizek

#5. Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude - even dishonor and betrayal- to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self effacement, surrender to the "others", disavowal of any personal dignity and freedom-on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces. #Quote by Ernest Becker

#6. I have always been in favor of a healthy Americanization, but that does not mean a complete disavowal of our German heritage. It means that our character should take on the best of that which is American, and combine it with the best of that which is German. By doing this, we can best serve the American people and their civilization. #Quote by Carl Schurz

#7. The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason. #Quote by Blaise Pascal

#8. In youth,' he said, speaking as if from a great distance, 'we believe, and the death of belief forces us to disavow all belief. But that disavowal, time softens, and if we do not believe, we hope. Belief is easier to kill, somehow, and its death easier to bear. #Quote by Michelle Sagara West

#9. regardless of the false nature of racial categories, the concept of race holds great social force. Our society uses race in spite of some people's disavowal and often treats us differentially as a result. Race has truly gotten under our skin, into our psyche, and lingers within the layers of our unconscious. To begin honestly, we must discuss what may be the most challenging aspect of any discussion of race. We must deal with the terms racist, racism, and systemic white supremacy. We must also confront the fact that some people might ask us to associate those words with our speech and actions. #Quote by Shelly Tochluk

#10. A Disavowal of the pursuit of Middleclassness', the heading read. While it is permissible to chase 'middleincomeness' with all our might, the text stated, those blessed with the talent or good fortune to achieve success in the American mainstream must avoid the psychological entrapment of Black 'middleclassness' that hypnotizes the successful brother or sister into believing they are better than the rest and teaches them to think in terms of 'we' and 'they' instead of 'US'! #Quote by Barack Obama

#11. Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is Thou shalt not question. #Quote by Sigmund Freud

#12. In accepting as two primary texts, Singer's Animal Liberation and Regan's The Case for Animal Rights--texts that valorize rationality--the animal defense movement reiterates a patriarchal disavowal of emotions as having a legitimate role in theory making. The problem is that while on the one hand it articulates positions against animal suffering, on the other hand animal rights theory dispenses with the idea that caring about and emotionally responding to this suffering can be appropriate sources of knowledge.
Emotions and theory are related. One does not have to eviscerate theory of emotional content and reflection to present legitimate theory. Nor does the presence of emotional content and reflection eradicate or militate against thinking theoretically. By disavowing emotional responses, two major texts of animal defense close off the intellectual space for recognizing the role of emotions in knowledge and therefore theory making.
As the issue of caring about suffering is problematized, difficulties with animal rights per se become apparent. Without a gender analysis, several important issues that accompany a focus on suffering are neglected, to the detriment of the movement.
Animal rights theory offers a legitimating language for animal defense without acknowledging the indebtedness of the rights-holder to caring relationships. Nor does it provide models for theoretically engaging with our own emotional responses, since emotions are seen as untrustworthy.
#Quote by Carol J. Adams

#13. Capitalist ideology in general, Zizek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Zizek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads. #Quote by Mark Fisher