Provoking Quotes

• We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better.

  Janet Mock

  Inspiring, Different Experiences, Thought Provoking

  53 Copy quote

• When I moved to the United States [from Asia] in 2001, I experienced a more rigid concept of gender, but somehow I was allowed to change my name and my gender marker. Why is there that paradox? How do I get those two things to be the same?

  Geena Rocero

  Inspiring, Names, Two

  16 Copy quote

• If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Twitter post from Jan 15, 2017

  480 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Hilarious, Education

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

  362 Copy quote

  Show source

• A house that has a library in it has a soul.

  Plato

  Healing, Thought Provoking, House

  44 Copy quote

• Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Jobs, Perfection, Thought Provoking

  50 Copy quote

• The world has never before had as much drama as today. Radio, films, television and video inundate us with drama. But while these forms can engage or even enrage the audience, in none of them can the viewer’s response alter the artistic event itselfThat is why theatre is signing its own death warrant when it tries to play too safe. On the other hand, that is also the reason why, although its future often seems bleak, theatre will continue to live and to provoke.

  Girish Karnad

  Drama, Hands, Play

  40 Copy quote

• Everybody knew that you should never provoke a rattlesnake, much less tie it into a bow. But that didn't stop Judd. What did stop him was the rattlesnake.

  Demetri Martin

  Ties, Bows, Should

  4 Copy quote

• That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

  Gregory Maguire

  Art, Real, Thinking

  Gregory Maguire (2013). “The Wicked Years Complete Collection: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz”, p.86, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Imagination, Conventions, Release

  8 Copy quote

• Vacation time offers the unique opportunity to pause before the thought-provoking spectacles of nature, a wonderful "book" within reach of everyone, adults and children. In contact with nature, a person rediscovers his correct dimension, rediscovers himself as a creature, small but at the same time unique, with a "capacity for God" because interiorly he is open to the Infinite.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Children, Book

  55 Copy quote

• He pulled away the glove, and at the first glimpse of her fragile, white hand, all thoughts of negotiation fled. "I don't see how matters could become worse," he muttered. "I am already besotted with a needle-tongued, conceited, provoking ape leader of a lady." Her head jerked up. "Besotted? You're nothing like it. Vengeful is more like it. Spiteful.

  Loretta Chase

  Conceited, Hands, White

  4 Copy quote

• I think the role of the artist today is about being provocative. I don't mean shocking, but you have to provoke people into action. As an artist, you ask people for their time. It's the most precious thing anyone has. I'm asking audiences to come to my work and spend some time with it. What I'm really doing, of course, is asking people to take time for themselves.

  Mira Calix

  Mean, Thinking, Artist

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.

  E. O. Wilson

  Feels, Enjoyed

  4 Copy quote

• Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people, which makes it hard to provoke them. Human-rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on humans, which makes them potentially dangerous.

  Frans de Waal

  Animal, People, Exotic

  "Jump, Tiger, Jump!" by Frans de Waal, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 27, 2007.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Méret Oppenheim was a very erotic woman. She also liked provocation, and if you could provoke surrealists at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, or similar Dadaist hangouts in Basel, where you could normally get away with these things, you were truly a provocateur.

  Rebecca Horn

  Get Away, Cabaret, Surrealist

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Youth need guidance, direction, and proper restraint...Parents, too, have a responsibility in this training not to provoke children to wrath. They should be considerate not to irritate by vexatious commands or place unreasonable blame. Whenever possible they should give encouragement rather than remonstrance or reproof.

  David O. McKay

  Encouragement, Children, Responsibility

  20 Copy quote

• Theatre can entertain, provoke, challenge, investigate, comfort and educate. It's arrogant of a playwright to think education is more important than anything else. Writing for the theatre does not give you permission to lecture, hector or bore.

  Alistair Beaton

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.theguardian.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is universal," spluttered the priest. The imam nodded strong approval. "There is only one God." "And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,: pronounced the pandit. "Says the slave-driver of the cast system," huffed the imam. "Hindus enslave people and worship dressed-up dolls." "They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before the cows," the priest chimed in. "While Christians kneel before a white man! They are flunkies of a foreign god. They are nightmare of all nonwhite people.

  Yann Martel

  Christian, Strong, Men

  Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.75, Vintage Canada

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Country, Writing, Past

  Vladimir Nabokov (2010). “Lolita”, p.314, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

  Marquis de Sade

  Would Be, Causes, Chaos

  7 Copy quote

• The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes.

  David Mitchell

  Longing

  4 Copy quote

• I do not think I responded immediately, for it took me a moment or two to fully digest these words of Miss Kenton. Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed- why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking.

  Kazuo Ishiguro

  Broken Heart, Thinking, Two

  Kazuo Ishiguro (2009). “The Remains of the Day”, p.176, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since when does a dog care about what it humps? (Dev) I could go so low with that that even the gutter would envy us, but…I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to provoke a fight with me so that you can legally turn me away. I really, really want to give you that fight, too, but I have to see Sasha and it can’t wait. Sorry. We’ll have to hump and fight later. (Fury)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Dog, Sorry, Fighting

  4 Copy quote

• Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people's suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it's untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Loss, Men

  13 Copy quote