Quotes about rebellion

63 quotes · 47 authors

Quotes

  1. If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.

    p. 96

  2. In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine, Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry the Second, whose paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but, the moment he became a king against whom others might rebel, he found out that rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished all the leading people who had befriended him against his father. He could scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of his real nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites not to trust in lion-hearted princes.

  3. Respect authority while questioning it.

  4. “The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code — but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."

    "They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."

    "Yes. Some of them never challenge it — they grow up to be small-minded people, who can tell you what they believe, but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel."

    "Which path do you intend to take, Nell? Conformity or rebellion?"

    "Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded — they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."

  5. Every great work of art ... is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life.

  6. Dissent, is like a Gurkha’s ‘khukri’ , once it emerges form its sheath it must draw blood before it can be put away again.

  7. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.

  8. This makeover would make piercings and tattoos and brandings look so lame, all those little fashion revolts so safe that they themselves only became fashionable. Those little paper tiger attempts to reject looking good that only end up reinforcing it.

  9. Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins—or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

  10. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

  11. Gabriel Syme was not merely a detective who pretended to be a poet; he was really a poet who had become a detective. Nor was his hatred of anarchy hypocritical. He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion.

  12. You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules