Quotes about rebellion

As summer neared, my mother suffered yet another stroke of paralysis and again I had to watch her suffer, listen to her groans, powerless to help. I used to lie awake nights and think back to the early days in Arkansas, tracing my mother’s life, reliving events, wondering why she had apparently been singled out for so much suffering, meaningless suffering, and I would feel more awe than I had ever felt in church. My mind could find no answer and I would feel rebellious against all life. But I never felt humble.

Alone; it was the one active passion I had left now, the only real obsession. I had acquired, I hoped, with the passage of the years, the bad years, a measure of patience, and I thought of myself as being somewhat tight-mouthed, and even persevering, virtues I had always so conspicuously lacked, and I thought the time was at last gone when I had exhausted myself with futile rebellions. The rebellions seemed now, from this cool distance, this slight eminence I had achieved, silly and wasteful, and it was cunning that now struck me as the valuable quality to have, the distinctive characteristic. There had been so much blind impetuosity in the past; there had been so many indiscriminate wounds inflicted; I had lacerated myself as well as others so unhappily so many times. Now I fought, or it seemed to me I was fighting, a much sounder although a much more limited and more circumspect war: it consisted mostly of careful withdrawals, of very conscious retreats.

Some things are more important than following the rules.

Aren’t they?

To scandalize has always been the pride of rebels, but much of it may satisfy itself in provocativeness of doctrine rather than deeds. Yet we must not underrate the extremes to which revolutionary defiance and the vertigo of freedom could go in the value-vacuum created by the spiritual crisis. The very discovery of a new vista, invalidating all former norms constituted an anarchical condition, and excess in thought and life was the first response to the import and dimensions of that vista.

Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit. You hope for results, but you don't depend on them. ("When We Lost" in 2016 edition)

when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection. ("False Hope and Easy Despair" in 2016 edition)

In history obedience rarely pays; what pays is defiance.

In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.

I am rebelling against imprisonment, I am rebelling against tyranny of the mind, I am rebelling against a collection of machines with interchangeable faces. Above all, I am rebelling against my own ignorance and your deliberate deception.

In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they’d been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he’d tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog’s leg.

If a rebellion is small and just starting, it looks crazy; but if it begins to succeed, lasts, and builds up momentum, it inevitably legitimizes itself.