Top 256 Defiance Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

But beyond the bright searchlights of science, Out of sight of the windows of sense, Old riddles still bid us defiance, Old questions of Why and of Whence.

My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

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.

Charlie Chaplin said something to the effect that humor is an act of defiance, that we must laugh in the face of our helplessness in the forces of nature or go insane. And where is he now? Dead.

Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.

Nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands.

The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame, - when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning.

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

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.

But the safety of the world, in some sense, depends on your saying no to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one's own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.

It was my mother, despite the limitations placed on women of her time by society, who insisted I be allowed to go abroad to study, in sturdy defiance of the male elders of the family, who protested and decided that I should be married off instead.

I voted against Gerald Nabarro in my first general election, but my defiance made no difference. If you had put a Conservative rosette on a mustachioed hamster, it would have been elected.

Despereaux marveled at his own bravery. He admired his own defiance. And then, reader, he fainted.

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.

Mrs. Parks' act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

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.

Being a founder is about being so driven to distraction by the world that you want to put something new in it. It's an act of creation, of irreverence, of defiance, of hope, and arguably one of narcissism.

Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.

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

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.

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

Defiance in itself is a sign of strength, and strength is a light side of human nature - when at all present, that is.

Another great illusion that woman must ... destroy . .. is the impurity of sex, the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex - except in the mental attitude toward it.

Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils

There are so many things that are incompatible with a single life. No one can learn fully in one life the lessons of unbroken health and of bodily sickness, of riches and of poverty, of study and action, of comradeship and isolation, of defiance and of obedience, of virtue and of vice.

What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.

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

What if a puppet could cut its own strings, and in that act of defiance and strength of will become truly alive? Become is own puppetmaster?

The sets on 'Defiance' are incredible. I've never really seen a set like this, where the world is so built around us. There's not too much left for us to have to imagine.

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West when standing up for Russia's interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their heart's impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble.

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.

To look for a continuation in harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publicatio n was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

As one, they leap, laughing, and that is where we leave them - mouths open, arms spread wide, fingers splayed to take in the whole world, bodies flying high in defiance of gravity, as if they will never fall.

Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?

We British and Americans have never been conquered and occupied by the Germans, or forced to make the choice between defiance and collaboration, or haunted by the choices, evasions and moral ambiguities that only a defeated and occupied country can feel.

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

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

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Our nation is founded on the principal that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.

In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane

I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

A wasteland is a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place like that cries out to be conquered and civilised.

To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to happen.

The stunt team were great on Defiance. They were there, every day.

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.

Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publication was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.