Top 45 Defiance Quotes

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

We know that if gold, if fraud, if force can defeat us, they will all be used. And we have resolved that they shall not defeat us. We shall arm. We shall meet fraud and falsehood with defiance, and force with force, if need be.

What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space – and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time.

I come from a family of teachers, and I believe ideas matter; the good ones deserve reverence, and the bad ones, defiance.

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publication was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways.

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance.

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West when standing up for Russia‘s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

We British and Americans have never been conquered and occupied by the Germans, or forced to make the choice between defiance and collaboration, or haunted by the choices, evasions and moral ambiguities that only a defeated and occupied country can feel.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

Shock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public’s whipsawing stages of acceptance.

Saddam Hussein has set an example of defiance, especially against the first President Bush, that other Arab leaders cannot and should not emulate; the example leads only to empty gestures and developmental stagnation, both of which the Arab nations have had enough of already.

Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.

With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

When you create something new, you’re breaking tradition – which is an act of defiance.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.

Serious art has been the work of individual artists whose art has had nothing to do with style because they were not in the least connected with the style or the needs of the masses. Their work arose rather in defiance of their times.

Barr has thrown himself in with Trump in ways unbecoming to the nation‘s highest legal official. His conduct in trying to clear Trump is of a piece with his baseless attacks on ‘spying‘ by the FBI and his defiance of Congress‘s subpoenas.

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

Being a founder is about being so driven to distraction by the world that you want to put something new in it. It’s an act of creation, of irreverence, of defiance, of hope, and arguably one of narcissism.

How do you know Hollywood is getting serious about video games? They want to make one of their own. In ‘Defiance,’ the remaining humans on Earth, as well as alien species looking for a new home, find themselves settling for peace after a massive war desecrated the world and destroyed most of the alien ships along with it.

Trump’s alliance with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America’s own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack.

If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.

Street art, of course, is political, because it’s illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

Well, there’s been plenty of ultimatums, and one thing that we better be very clear is that we can’t continue to have the kind of defiance of the United Nations, the defiance of the international community that we’ve had.

Under Clinton, the defiance of world order has become so extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts.

The bold defiance of a woman is the certain sign of her shame, – when she has once ceased to blush, it is because she has too much to blush for.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had this feeling – it’s in my nature, and so it’s not even pretentious – that if everyone‘s going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

It was during the Reagan years that defiance of international law and the U.N. Charter became entirely open.

Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.

To Southerners like my mother, ‘Gone With the Wind‘ was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

We need an attitude of defiance, not an attitude of cowardice. Out in the street, that’s how we are winning against the TransCanada Pipeline. This is how we have delayed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and forced it into an election season, gotten everybody to stand against it. Democracy is not about surrender.

Defiance in itself is a sign of strength, and strength is a light side of human nature – when at all present, that is.

It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans – in grief, as in defiance.

You’ve got to know what your ‘thing’ is, and you’ve got to call it a ‘thing,’ whether it’s meanness, nastiness, un-forgiveness, arrogance, ego, resistance, rebelliousness or defiance. Everybody’s got a ‘thing,’ and once you call your ‘thing’ a ‘thing,’ we can give it a place to be or dismiss it.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

Mrs. Parks‘ act of brave defiance rocked the foundation of American society and inspired generations of civil rights leaders and created a sense of hope for every American facing legal discrimination in this country.

Larry Hogan Sr. was the first Republican to break with President Richard Nixon during his impeachment hearings, weakening not only the GOP firewall of support for the embattled president, but also Nixon’s own defiance.

My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you’re seeing… I don’t mind being dashed on the rocks… My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.