What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

What, man, defy the devil. Consider, he’s an enemy to mankind.

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.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

I’ve always kinda been a little outcast myself, a little oddball, doin‘ my thing, my own way. And it’s been hard for me to, to be accepted, certainly in the early years of my life.

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.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

When everybody looks at our generation of kids, they always call us the misfits – you know, like we just don’t give a damn.

What someone else does or doesn’t do has no effect on me and what I do.

There are two kinds of people in this world. ‚I‘ people and ‚we‘ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‚we‘ person.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Work alone is noble.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting ‚All the Gods are bastards.‘

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you’re nuts, and you’re not as popular with girls as you should be.

I don’t fight in chase of an individual. I hear this sometimes where fighters work their whole careers to reach a matchup with a certain individual. I do not think in that way.

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

I don’t want followers.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla – a rebel.

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

I’m not a sheep.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

Yes, I’m still going to misbehave!

You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy’s ranks.

Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

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

I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I’m working for me.

In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

The United States and our allies are determined: we refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger.

I’m old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I’d tell them where to put it.

Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn’t want to give up power.

I don’t like being told what to do and kissing you-know-what to get up the corporate ladder.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.