Quotes About Defiance

Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.

We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.

All the beatings she had suffered had not subjugated her, only taught her prudence and a calm and sly scorn for men's anger.

No, it couldn't all be bad the way Stonebreaker insisted it was. There were people who hid the children from the sanctioned murderers; people who looked the horror in the eye and said, no, no, you can't do it any more, we're against you even if you kill us. Thus had Sweeney's friends acted, and they had redeemed belief and tradition for millions.

Punk' is nothing but death and crime...and the rage of a beast.

I am my own damned princess!

I felt the reckless abandon of one who knows she stands already among the damned. "Why not, then, another sin?

All the times, all the very many times, I had been forced to thwart and stifle my own nature seemed to gather together then, in that hot and dismal corridor. I heard a rushing sound in my head and felt a pressure in my breast, like floodwaters rising behind a flimsy dike. Before I knew I did it, the soup bowl was rising in my hand as if elevated by some supernatural force. Then, its yellow-gray contents were running down the nurse's pudgy face.

The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.

I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous to say No.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

This man Wellington is so stupid he does not know when he is beaten, and goes on fighting.

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the halls. We shall never surrender.

In the clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud; Under the bludgeoning of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed.

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize - get the thing done and let them howl.

They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.

Mother: It's broccoli, dear. Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.

In the world of mules there are no rules.

I respect only those who resist me, but cannot tolerate them.

I suppose you've heard all those wicked stories about me. Well, I've lived my life as it came and I've done bloody marvels with a bad hand.

Tell your master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs, I would enter.

It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul, and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration.