Abdicated Quotes & Sayings

In February 1912, ancient China came to an end when the last of three millennia of Chinese emperors abdicated.
Imagine twentieth-century Italy coming to terms with the fall of the Roman empire or Egypt with the last pharaoh abdicating in 1912. For China, the last century has been a period of transition - dramatic change and perpetual revolution. — Mark Kurlansky

Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated. — Anna Quindlen

Unfortunately, the Senate Democrats have become an extreme party. They have become a party that has abdicated their responsibilities. Under Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats, we have a do-nothing Senate. — Ted Cruz

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun. — Khalil Gibran

seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for my great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down - in her eyes - from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn their favours. — Marcel Proust

When Germany declared itself ready to discuss an armistice, Wilson refused to negotiate until the Kaiser abdicated. — Henry Kissinger

Because obviously she was the most qualified for the position. At long last Edward had arrived at the enlightened state of knowing that a woman could do a job just as well as a man. Yep. That's how it happened. Edward abdicated his throne. Elizabeth would be crowned queen at Westminster Abbey that same week, and we all know she'd be the best ruler of England ever. And now history can more or less pick up along the same path where we left it. — Cynthia Hand

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism. — Edward Snowden

The problem for me with liberals is that we've abdicated our moral responsibility to the universe. — Sherman Alexie

Indolent, and he was suffering greatly from gout. He abdicated. — H.G.Wells

From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. "Men make gods and women worship them," said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law. — Simone De Beauvoir

But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won? — Elie Wiesel

Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their responsibilities? Were there not more important ambitions to be met before Death showed himself on the horizon in his hooded black cloak, his scythe slung over his shoulder? — Alain De Botton

From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a heavenly law which we can escape by remaining earthly, nor an earthly law which we can escape by being saved. What is outside the system of self-giving is not earth, nor nature, nor 'ordinary life', but simply and solely hell. — C.S. Lewis

The creatures I have sent to their God are not men. They abdicated the right to the name by committing acts of inhuman savagery so that they cannot even count themselves among God's beasts. For even the beasts have better reason for what they do- and so have I. If those be men, I rank myself gladly with the animals. There are places in this world where the force of law holds sway; it is a great pity that Larissa is not one of them.
Laertes, Count of Samothrace — Rebecca Ashe

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I often think about Christ having all power, but He abdicated the power to live a sacrificial life for His children. In His own words he told his disciples that His meat was to do the will of the Father. — Monica Johnson

In becoming the universe God abdicated. He destroyed himself as God. He turned what he had been, his true self, into nullity and thereby forfeited the Godlike qualities which pertained to him. The universe which he has become is also his grave. He has no control in it or over it. God, as God, is dead. — Simon Raven

So we abdicated, and the predictable followed: one, the world as we know is unraveling, particularly in the Middle East; and, two, most suddenly want more, not less, U.S. engagement. — Anonymous

If the government were to invest that money in higher education and public services, these would be far better investments. But administrators and academics in the U.S. for the most part don't make these arguments; instead they have retreated from defending the university as a citadel of public values and in doing so have abdicated any sense of social responsibility to the idea of the university as a site of inspired by the search for truth, justice, freedom, and dignity. — Henry Giroux

Nothing in finance is more fatuous and harmful, in our opinion, than the firmly established attitude of common stock investors regarding questions of corporate management. That attitude is summed up in the phrase: "If you don't like the management, sell your stock." [ ... ] The public owners seem to have abdicated all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property — Benjamin Graham

If we have abdicated our birthright to scientific progress, we have done so by moving the debate into the realm of political and cultural argument, where we all feel more confident, because it is there that the Gut rules. Held to the standards of that context, any scientific theory is turned into mere opinion. Scientific fact is no more immutable than a polling sample. — Charles P. Pierce

Thus, the triumph of patriarchy was neither an accident nor the result of a violent revolution. From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. — Simone De Beauvoir

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story. — Neil Young

A few shy stars and a pale moon had already appeared in the sky, ready to take up reign from the sun that had abdicated for the night. — Irina Shapiro

The world has its own ways of treating us like what we will never be, but want to be. It relinquishes its grip on our souls while lulling us with the songs of freedom and conquest of beauty. It magnifies every tiny bit of something useless over an unfathomable presence of humanity. And we all waste the whole of our lives standing in queue for gaining its attention to be abdicated as if we never existed in the eyes of our fellow men. — Annie Ali

People would do well to ask themselves how many of their ambitions and aspirations derive from the type of economic system they inhabit and the insecurity and exhaustion it creates, and question the sense and purpose of a society where control of a large portion of life is abdicated under contract in the labour market, and where immense creativity and potential is stifled by the need to do difficult and repetitive tasks in order to earn a wage. — Tony Benn

(connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); — George Eliot

The Church is the Body of Christ, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. He fills the Body, directs its movements, controls its members, inspires its wisdom, supplies it's strength. He guides into truth, sanctifies its agents, and empowers for witnessing. The Spirit has never abdicated His authority nor relegated His power. — Samuel Chadwick

If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so. — Stephen Covey

For all I know,he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way- like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of magnanimity, and has been in a state of disgust ever since. — Henry James

See this abdicated beast, once king
Of them all, nibble his claws:
Not anger enough left - no, nor despair -
To break his teeth on the bars. — Cecil Day-Lewis

He felt as if he'd woken up, weak and confused, only to be told that he'd spent the last three weeks in bed with a fever
and that during his illness, Queen Victoria had abdicated the throne and run off with a lion-tamer from Birmingham. The world seemed an entirely different place. — Courtney Milan

It was that evening, when my mother abdicated her authority, that marked the beginning, along with the slow death of my grandmother, of the decline of my will and of my health. Everything had been decided at the moment when, unable to bear the idea of waiting until the next day to set my lips on my mother's face, I had made my resolution, jumped out of bed, and gone, in my nightshirt, to stay by the window through which the moonlight came, until I heard M. Swann go. My parents having gone with him, I heard the garden gate open, the bell ring, the gate close again ... — Marcel Proust

By simply refusing to fund a president's unconstitutional conduct, Congress can stop him dead in his tracks - even after the courts have abdicated their responsibilities to do so. — Mike Lee

Her parents had basically abdicated their roles as guardians and she was building a bomb. In order to kill a poodle. — Kristen Tracy

Starling lowered her voice, but it carried anyway. "He is FitzChivalry, son of Chivalry the Abdicated. And you are the Fool."
"Once, perhaps, I was the Fool. It is common knowledge here in Jhaampe. But now I am the Toymaker. As I no longer use the other title, you may take it for yourself if you wish. As for Tom, I believe he takes the title Bed Bolster these days."
"I will be seeing the Queen about this."
"A wise decision. If you wish to become her Fool, she is certainly the one you must see. But for now, let me show you something else. No, step back, please, so you can see it all. Here it comes." I heard the slam and the latch. "The outside of my door," the Fool announced gladly. "I painted it myself. Do you like it? — Robin Hobb