Defiance Quotes - Page 4

• I think it's an American curse that most of us think we are special. ... everyone believes themselves to be superior to the majority of the population in some way. Sometimes it's their looks, other times their perceived sex appeal (often in obvious defiance of their looks), and other times it is their real or imagined talent for acting, writing, painting or banging on the drums. And because people are so susceptible to flattery, there exists an entire industry made up of scam artists whose sole goal is to fleece the flatterable.

  Fay Faron

  Sex, Real, Believe

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• As a democratic Socialist profoundly committed to the rule of law, I could not condone, let alone encourage, defiance of the law.

  Anthony Crosland

  Law, Democratic, Socialist

  Speech in the House of Commons, November 6, 1974.

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• Ever since I was a small child, Ive had this feeling - its in my nature, and so its not even pretentious - that if everyones going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

  Charlotte Rampling

  Children, Feelings, Way

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• Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others.

  Stanley Milgram

  Men, Dwelling, Isolation

  Stanley Milgram (2017). “Obedience to Authority”, p.1, HarperCollins

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• If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions, not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly, alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Soul, World

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.65, Library of America

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• For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.

  Ernest Becker

  Sports, Men, Feds

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• Those who see and observe kings, heroes, and statesmen, discover that they have headaches, indigestion, humors and passions, just like other people; every one of which in their turns determine their wills in defiance of their reason.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Kings, Hero, Passion

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• There is no "beginning" of feminism in the sense that there is no beginning to defiance in women.

  Sheila Rowbotham

  Feminism

  1972 Women, Resistance and Revolution, ch.1.

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• Get your sense of outrage back, and your sense of defiance and spirit back, and try to put these pieces together and confront the excesses of empire at every turn.

  John Cusack

  Trying, Together, Excess

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• A woman’s duty: To look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes… to speak and act in defiance of convention.

  Margaret Sanger

  Eye, Looks, World

  Margaret Sanger (2012). “The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger”, p.110, Courier Corporation

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• People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself.

  Meryl Streep

  Being Yourself, People, Want

  Source: movieweb.com

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• That is why in adult life, people generally tend to relive rather than live, that is, to repeat the patterns of the past and defend the primary fantasy in the defiance, and avoid the real gamble or real adventure of taking a chance on something new. They are afraid that if they really cry out, if they really ask, if they really scream for help, that it won't come, and they'll be in the same panicky frightened state they were in when they were little.

  Robert W. Firestone

  Fear, Real, Adventure

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• But the United States is neither a Christian nation nor the exclusive home of any particular religious group. Non-Christians are not guests. We are as much hosts as any Mayflower-descendant Protestant. It is our home as well as theirs. And in a home with so many owners, there can be no official sectarian prayer. That is what the First Amendment is all about, and the first act by the new administration was in defiance of our Constitution.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Christian, Religious, Prayer

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• In defiance of all the tortue, of all the might, of all the malice of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich; for God's providence is his estate, God's wisdom and power are his defence, God's love and favor are his reward, and God's word is his security.

  Isaac Barrow

  Men, World, Favors

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• To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Effort, Cost, Able

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• Only the fools are certain and assured.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Wisdom, Fool, Certain

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.111, Stanford University Press

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• There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.

  Hannah Arendt

  Eye, Ill Will, Hands

  Hannah Arendt (1972). “Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every day people engaged in the clever defiance of their own intuition become, in midthought, victims of violence and accidents. So when we wonder why we are victims so often, the answer is clear: It is because we are so good at it.

  Gavin de Becker

  Clever, People, Intuition

  Gavin De Becker (1998). “The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence”, Dell Publishing Company

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• Til shade is gone, til water is gone Into the shadow with teeth bared Screaming defiance with the last breath To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.

  Robert Jordan

  Eye, Water, Shadow

  Robert Jordan (2010). “The Fires of Heaven: Book Five of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.88, Macmillan

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• The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us. ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid. ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency.

  Molly Ivins

  Stupid, Memorable, Ignorance

  Molly Ivins (2010). “Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?”, p.104, Vintage

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• one learns best, and writes best, in a state of defiance.

  Fay Weldon

  Writing, Learning, States

  Fay Weldon (2007). “Auto da Fay: A Memoir”, p.137, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It was during the Reagan years that defiance of international law and the U.N. Charter became entirely open.

  Noam Chomsky

  Years, Law, Charter

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• I say to myself if you believe deeply in your heart you must defy, and if you are willing to pay for your defiance, you must always do it, even though the pain may be much. Too many times in our lives we do not do it, and we pay even more.

  James Frey

  Pain, Believe, Heart

  James Frey (2011). “The Final Testament”, p.45, Hachette UK

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• In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.

  Mark Rowlands

  Heart, Ends, Ifs

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• Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

  Robert Kennedy

  Children, Taken, Passion

  Robert F. Kennedy's Speech On the Mindless Menace of Violence at the City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, www.jfklibrary.org. April 5, 1968.

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