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

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

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

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

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.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 not a sheep.

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

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.

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

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

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’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.

I don’t want followers.

Yes, I’m still going to misbehave!

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

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

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

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.

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

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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.

I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

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.

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.

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting: the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

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

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

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

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

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

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.

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.‘

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

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

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

You are remembered for the rules you break.