Often motivated by a desire to maintain the existing status quo, sloth almost cost the U.S. its auto industry, as it refused for decades to build fuel-efficient cars to compete with Japanese, Korean and European imports.
Our government has failed us. From the billion-dollar bailouts to the 'stimulus' package that failed to stimulate to the government takeover of health care, you cried 'Stop!'... but the Democratic Majority in Washington has refused to listen.
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.
I went out with some old friends and we were having fun. A couple of them were very intoxicated. When I went to leave, I refused to let them drive. So when I got pulled over, I was the driver.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
I have been offered the highest paid contracts in the world. I refused them all. It's not my thing. I don't want to cheat people.
We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to account for his weapons of mass destruction, consistently violated UN resolutions and in a post-9/11 world no American president could afford to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt.
One of the reasons MSNBC is plummeting is that I, not long ago, refused to play any content from them. I figured, why? I mean, it's genuine depraved partisan politics insanity, genuine extremist radical ignoramuses on that network.
It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.
What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.