Defiance Quotes

Rules, whether they govern sexual morality or financial probity, regardless of whether they are justifiable or undesirable, always provoke bold recalcitrants to devise clever, defiant ways to breach them.

~ Richard Davenport-Hines

For your sake, jewel,I am glad at soul I have no other child;For thy escape would teach me tyranny,To hang clogs on them.

~ William Shakespeare

Making-out is one thing that won’t change even if civilization fizzles and humanity is reduced to two people. So each time Jack and I kiss, it’s as if we’re flipping off the jerks who destroyed our planet, as if we’re screaming at the top of our lungs… We know your secret.And we won’t be made invisible.

~ Caroline George

In this landI have made myself sick with silenceIn this landI have wandered, lostIn this landI hunkered down to seeWhat will become of me.In this landI held myself tightSo as not to scream.-But I did scream, so loudThat this land howled back at meAs hideouslyAs it builds its houses.In this landI have been sownOnly my head sticksDefiant, out of the earthBut one day it too will be mownMaking me, finallyOf this land.-Charlie's poem

~ Anna Funder

One response was given by the innkeeper when Mary and Joseph wanted to find a room where the Child could be born. The innkeeper was not hostile; he was not opposed to them, but his inn was crowded; his hands were full; his mind was preoccupied. This§ is the answer that millions are giving today. Like a Bethlehem innkeeper, they cannot find room for Christ. All the accommodations in their hearts are already taken up by other crowding interests. Their response is not atheism. It is not defiance. It is preoccupation and the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Christianity.

~ Billy Graham

You know how it feels to think you've ruined everything. You're hoping if my story has a happy ending there's hope for yours too...

~ Cj Redwine

Dalek: I will talk to the Doctor.The Doctor: Oh will you? That's nice. Hello!Dalek: The Dalek strategem nears completion. The fleet is almost ready. You will not intervene.The Doctor: Oh really? Why's that, then?Dalek: We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated. The Doctor: No.Dalek: Explain yourself.The Doctor: I said, No.Dalek: What is the meaning of this negative?The Doctor: It means, No.Dalek: But she will be destroyed!The Doctor: No! 'Cause this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rescue her. I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth. And then—just to finish off—I'm gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!Dalek: But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan.The Doctor: Yeah! And doesn't that scare you to death? Rose?Rose: Yes, Doctor?The Doctor: I'm coming to get you.

~ Russell T. Davies

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain.

~ Charles Dickens

The way I look at it is this: If you try to obey the law, and the judges call you a criminal anyway, then you might as well live up to the name.

~ Ken Liu

The old, defiant chant rose in her mind: If I want, I will learn. If I want, I will fight. If I want, I will live. And I want. And I will. This was going to be fun.

~ P.c. Hodgell

We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.

~ Primo Levi

Never apologize for correct actions.

~ R.j. Lawrence

An ancient gate, sealed by the powers of Light and Darkness, barred the way to the Pillars beyond. To depart this place and continue my journey, I would have to find the means to open it.

~ Amy Hennig

Darkness enveloped us again, and for the first time in years, I welcomed it.

~ Melika Dannese Lux

It doesn't take an army to change the world, or an average-sized militia group, either. All it takes is one individual to say the word No. Be it a man refusing to register for the draft, or be it a gun owner refusing to register his weapons in Connecticut, it is the same: defiance in the face of arbitrary authority.

~ Mike Klepper

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

~ Emiliano Zapata

Dominance. Control. These things the unjust seek most of all. And so it is the duty of the just to defy dominance and to challenge control.

~ Robert Fanney

When your ideas shatter established thought, expect blowback.

~ Tim Fargo

Are the Trials starting?” The girl claps her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I—”“It's all right.” I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing. “I'm actually wondering the same thing. What's your name?”“S-slave-Girl.” Of course. My mother would already have scourged her name out of existence.“Right. You work for the Commandant?” I want her to say no. I want her to say that my mother roped her into this. I want her to say she's assigned to the kitchens or infirmary, where slaves aren't scarred or missing body p

~ Sabaa Tahir

What is it like to be so free - so trapped, but so free? What kind of bird sings only when caught? What kind of slave outshines and rises above her master?

~ Courtney M. Privett

I burned by bridges so the devil couldn't follow me.

~ L.m. Browning

If they think they can stop me, I defy them to bring the best they have and I shall roast them over a pit of their own arrogant stupidity.--Maxis

~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

My master jecked up my dress and gived my mistress the whip and told her to teach me a lesson. Every time she hit me she asked me what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown. She hit me again: what I said my name was. I said Jane Brown.

~ Ernest J. Gaines

Whenever my colleagues and I encounter a boy who acts normal—not explosively violent, not oppositional to every word, not obsessed with killing and dying, not focused on sexual objectification—we are overjoyed with his potential. Here is one who has a stronger foundation on which to build, one who will not knock down his every success like a child with a brick castle to see if the adults will keep helping him rebuild.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Be yourself, don't take anything from anyone, and never let them take you alive.

~ Gerard Way

An Atheist is a person who questions every kind of authority, and this is the thing that is important. Because if we can, without blinking an eye, question the ultimate authority, god - who must be obeyed, then we can question the authority of the state, we can question the authority of a university structure, we can question the authority of our employer, we can question anything. So I think the primary thing that an Atheist is, is a person who looks at an authoritarian idea, or an authority structure, and says to that authority structure: from whence do you derive your authority and why should I be obedient to you? It appears to me that if I have human intelligence that this is enough for me to try to challenge whatever you're doing.

~ Madalyn Murray O'hair

I know the consequences, Manon,” Ilyse conceded. “I know the fate you endured might one day be my own. But I refuse to be a prisoner for the rest of my life.

~ Melika Dannese Lux