Quotes & Sayings About Being Discredited

I visit my assistant mistress. "Well, Azalea," I say, sitting in the best chair, "what has happened to you since my last visit?" Azalea tells me what happened to her. She has covered a sofa, and written a novel. Jack has behaved badly. Roger has lost his job (replaced by an electric eye). Gigi's children are in the hospital being detoxified, all three. Azalea herself is dying of love. I stroke her buttocks, which are perfection, if you can have perfection, under the capitalistic system. "It is better to marry that to burn," St. Paul says, but St. Paul is largely discredited now, for the toughness of his views does not accord with the experience of advanced industrial societies. — Donald Barthelme

Political science came into being as alchemy was being discredited, although history has since proved that alchemy had a better record. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Despite being discredited, the studies by Kanin and McDowell named above are still routinely cited on numerous websites dedicated to advancing the notion that American society suffers from an epidemic of spurious rape allegations by malicious women, resulting in the wrongful conviction of many thousands of innocent men. — Jon Krakauer

Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material comforts. — Ayn Rand

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law. — John Hasnas

To comprehend Crowley, one must comprehend what he meant by "Magick" - the "discredited" tradition he swore to "rehabilitate."
Magick, for Crowley, is a way of life that takes in every facet of life. The keys to attainment within the magical tradition lie in the proper training of the human psyche itself - more specifically, in the development of the powers of will and imagination. The training of the will - which Crowley so stressed, thus placing himself squarely within that tradition - is the focusing of one's energy, one's essential being. The imagination provides, as it were, the target for this focus, by its capacity to ardently envision - and hence bring into magical being - possibilities and states beyond those of consensual reality. The will and imagination must work synergistically. For the will, unilluminated by imagination, becomes a barren tool of earthly pursuits. And the imagination, ungoverned by a striving will, lapses into idle dreams and stupor. — Lawrence Sutin

Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. For when we fail in attempting the possible, the blame is solely ours; but when we fail in attempting the impossible, we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task. There is less risk in being discredited when trying the impossible than when trying the possible. It is thus that failure in everyday affairs often breeds an extravagant audacity. One — Eric Hoffer