Quotes About Provocation

Rock music was never written for or performed for conservative tastes.

My nature is to provoke, that's true. I can't help myself. But it's always with good intentions.

Tonight I am going to defecate on stage because I think that is the only way to express the nature of my soul according to rock and roll.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.

Artists are here to disturb the peace.

It's just that very few poets disturb the peace to any degree.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

What poetry can, must, and will always do for us: it complicates us, it doesn't 'soothe.'

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.

One must write poetry in such as way that if one threw the poem in a window, the pane would break.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers.

In English, we were still on the Introduction to Poetry Unit, and I'm not lying, if I ever meet Percy Bysshe Shelley walking down the streets of Marysville, I'm going to punch him right in the face.

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac

The Koran is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror.

I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl. The secret mischiefs that I set abroach I lay unto the grievous charge of others.

Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.

Stop bothering me with your pathetic politics - I'd rather go to the whorehouse.

I think what I do is positive, in its own way.

Any truth creates a scandal.

With due respect, Truck-off.

Anger is the most effective inspiration.