Quotes about rebellion

The Day the Palestinians become institutionalized, I will no longer be on their side.

The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their elders and copying each other.

Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation.

The spirit of Muad'Dib is more than words, more than the letter of the Law that arises from his name. Muad'Dib must always be that inner outrage against the complacently powerful, against the charlatans and the dogmatic fanatics. It is that inner outrage that must have its say because Muad'Dib taught us one thing above all others: that humans can endure only in a fraternity of social justice.

“‘He should not have been destroyed like that. That was wrong.’

“‘It was His will.’

“Lucifer stood. ‘Then perhaps His will is unjust. Perhaps the voices in the Darkness speak truly, after all. How can this be right?’

“‘It is right. It is His will. I merely performed my function.’

“He wiped away the tears with the back of his hand. ‘No,’ he said flatly.”

I struck the board, and cry'd, No more.

I will abroad.

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn

Before my tears did drown it;

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it?

But as I rav'd and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

And I reply'd, My Lord.

The law was sacred. Yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It flashed upon her mind that the problem before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before Savonarola—the problem where the sacredness of obedience ended, and where the sacredness of rebellion began.

How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled.

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

"You're only a rebel from the waist downwards," he told her.

The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration for order.