Yes, I’m still going to misbehave!

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

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.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

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.

I’m not a sheep.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

You see, rebellion, and the disobedience it causes, keeps us from having the power of God that’s available to us as Christians.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules.

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

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.

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.

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

Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

When you’re thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.

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

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

It’s true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves – motifs of rebellion.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

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.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

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

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

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.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

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.

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

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

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