Exclusionary Quotes & Sayings

I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals. — Alan Dershowitz

Reign is no doubt wording that is a little too grand for the contemporary mind, though what it refers to is what everyone actually pursues in life. We have been trained to think of "reigning" as exclusionary of others. But in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God. — Dallas Willard

The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys or girls, is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion of American cultural standards. Casual, colloquial language also conveys an implicit denial of the seriousness of whatever issue is being debated: talking about folks going off to war is the equivalent of describing rape victims as girls (unless the victims are, in fact, little girls and not grown women). Look up any important presidential speech in the history of the United States before 1980, and you will find not one patronizing appeal to folks. Imagine: 'We here highly resolve that these folks shall not have died in vain; and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth. — Susan Jacoby

The rejection of all homosexual acts is rooted in a desire to uphold what is understood to be the meaning of the prohibitive Scriptures and the tradition of heterosexual marriage. It is an attempt to be careful to walk in faithfulness to God. The rejection of exclusionary practices aimed at gay and lesbian people is rooted in a desire to uphold Scripture by seeking to carefully understand its meaning in the original historical context and to apply Scripture's teaching carefully. It is an attempt to uphold Scripture's caution against religious zeal that unintentionally accepts harm of the neighbor or fails to love the neighbor well. Both positions are principled positions seeking to uphold important goods. — Ken Wilson

I shrugged uncomfortably, leaning my head against hers, almost forgetting Mr. Gardner's presence as Mo and I fell into that sort of exclusionary, near-telepathic best-friends communion. She knew that I would argue that I wasn't ashamed, but that I hadn't quite figured out how to truly mean it when I held my head up high. My entire life, people had been telling me to keep it down and stop being an embarrassment. So, I was still in that "fake it 'til you make it" stage, hoping genuine pride would come if I pretended confidence long enough. For now, I was relying on bravado and a complete lack of give-a-fuck to carry me through. — Amelia C. Gormley

I don't believe in nationalism. I think it's a bunch of slogans. It's a bunch of poor attempts at creating pride. My problem with nationalism is that it becomes exclusionary. We start to exclude people. — Miguel Syjuco

Trans activism in the US has most frequently been grassroots, centered on poverty and criminalization, and often oppositional to the exclusionary "mainstreaming" threads in gay and lesbian politics and feminist politics. — Dean Spade

Yet the very phrase "pro-life" has too often meant "harsh and exclusionary," and associating myself with such a movement made me judgmental and giving a witness that was contrary to the Gospel call. — Simone Campbell

The religion itself may have some great ideas, but I can't take it seriously if it's blatantly exclusionary. — David O. Russell

One either has to believe in a God who's terribly prejudiced, or disbelieve the teachings of such exclusionary theologies. Religions have taught us that 'we are better than they.' — Neale Donald Walsch

But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism. — Arthur Phillips

Beyond the Catholic exclusionary paradigm is a larger one which is the Christian one. Christians claim that if you don't believe in Christ, you can't get to heaven. Well that eliminates two thirds of the world's population! — Neale Donald Walsch

right" way to be Chicana/o also could be a hegemonic discourse and exclusionary of those who do not fit. They recognized the possibility of multiple hegemonic structures and the danger of policing claims to identity. — Dolores Delgado Bernal

The offspring of nationalist thinking too often expresses itself in exclusionary and passively-violent legal policies, and then sadly, through militarism, which becomes manifest on the endless blood-soaked borders and battlefields of humanity's great failure as a humane species. — Bryant McGill

I don't believe in creating exclusionary art. — Joss Whedon

Here's a simple way to abolish golf's elitist and exclusionary image and make it a truly all-American sport: ditch that fifties-Republican-martini-drinker's green Brooks Brothers-style sport jacket and make the winner of the Masters slip on something in, say, black leather with plenty of metal studs. — Bruce McCall

A lot of people don't belong in our clothes, and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either. — Mike Jeffries

In an essay published in 2000, Said concluded that "the notion of an exclusionary civilization ... is an impossible one." Instead, he insisted that the more important question is whether "we want to work for civilizations that are separate or whether we should be taking the more integrative, but perhaps more difficult, path, which is to try to see them as making one vast whole whose exact contours are impossible for one person to grasp, but whose certain existence we can intuit and feel. — Anonymous

I lived near Santa Cruz for ten years, and the whole time, it bothered me what an exclusionary definition of 'inclusion' was in force. Social censure was applied to those who expressed unpopular or uncomfortable ideas. — Kent Beck

When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness9 it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever. It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of "sinner." At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peacemaking. When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation. Let me sum up, then, the foundational ways that I believe Jesus and the Twelve Steps of A.A. are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary: We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it. This counterintuitive wisdom will forever be resisted as true, denied, and avoided, until it is forced upon us - by some reality over which we are powerless - and if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality. — Richard Rohr

You make music to move people and you don't get to pick who you move. You just don't. It's exclusionary and elitist and I just never felt that way about music, of all things. The great unifier. — Mark Lanegan

I wanted to do something different. Therefore, the first person I thought would have been too exclusionary. It would have said me, me, me, me, me. I, I, I, I, I. As if I were pushing away my experiences from the experiences of others. Because basically what I was trying to do was show our commonality. I mean to say, in the very ordinariness of what I recount I think perhaps the reader will find resonances with his or her own life. — Paul Auster

Democracy's a farce, Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, that he could've very well learned from Ronan. — Maggie Stiefvater

My Vocabularies vary, its so exclusionary You'll find my baby pictures in modern dictionaries Next to mighty mercenaries, and visual visionaries — Andre Nickatina

While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122) — David N. Elkins

Worship is exclusionary. You cannot compromise on worship. Worship — Ravi Zacharias

I do find some of the meanest, most exclusionary people are the nerds. And they rebel against other nerds! What are you doing? As much as I love nerds and the nerd movement, the nerd-on-nerd violence is really bad. A lot of times, nerds are the meanest ones online. And also, the trolling can be very extensive because they're smart. — Chris Hardwick

Dance has become an exclusionary enterprise. To participate, one must be thinner than thin, of pleasing form, flexible, athletic and young. If you are not all these things, you will be allowed to dance in the privacy of your own living room. You just wouldn't dare to put yourself onstage. — Clive Barnes

There are even some radical leftists who look at it as that but then go further and say, "Because we have been so exclusionary and because it's been so unfair that America has been so rich, it's so unfair that America has been this one place in the world, it's not because of us, and we deserve to pay a price." — Rush Limbaugh

The government's rationale here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. "Removal proceedings," wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, "are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them." So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches. The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all. Strangest — Matt Taibbi

Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist, in love with art, smitten with art history. You're also a woman, with almost no mentors to look to; art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country, a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language. — Jerry Saltz

I am attempting to move away from the exclusionary practices of feminist theory, particularly anti-pornography rhetoric, in order to amplify the discussion about the complexity of pleasure for women. — Barbara Degenevieve

Because of our interconnectedness we all know that extreme poverty and exclusionary practices are violations against the basic dignity of people. — Bryant McGill

The ordained minister, the one set aside and consecrated, is to illuminate the vocation of
the Church and the vocations of the many people who are the Church. That means that ordination is not exclusionary but exemplary."28 — L. Gregory Jones

I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious antineighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be. — Walter Brueggemann