Quotes About Provocation

“H. L. Mencken famously said that "every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." By now, however, I am no longer ashamed, because I do not identify with the government under which I live. Rather, I view it as a criminal organization that without provocation has chosen to make war on my just rights-not only mine, of course, but everyone's. Although this vile enterprise is my problem, because it robs and bullies me relentlessly and without mercy, it is not my responsibility: the nail is not the hammer.”

— Robert Higgs

“I trust you not to kill, main, or drown me without just provocation.”

— Jena Leigh

“Recently I've been dreaming
of cursing old people
with little provocation,
because their culture
has a long history of enslaving,
raping, and segregating,
and they have special lights
which prevent us from dancing.”

— Matthew Rohrer

“It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side, of us and them - it was all over. It was no longer the Lord's Crusade. We were no longer fighting to overthrow Satan. We have been tested, I thought to myself, and we have been found wanting. Our faith was corrupted. My comrades and I - we'd become the endless days, days without light. What does that mean, you ask? We were sick and tired of living. At the least provocation, we would spit out, Fuck it, and kill whoever happened to be involved. (2007: 222)”

— Hwang Sok-yong

“You happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless hair trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness
a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of the kitchen chair”

— David Rakoff

“You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution.”

— Caroline Kettlewell

“These are the few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one's self.
To mind one's own business.
Not to want to manage other people's affairs.
To avoid curiosity.
To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.
To pass over the mistakes of others.
To accept insults and injuries.
To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Never to stand on one's dignity.
To choose always the hardest.”

— Mother Teresa

“My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”

— Michael Haneke

“I remember being in the mood for love at the slightest provocation- your nubile body feeling undeniably illicit, under mine, rhyming, heaving, breathing together, each other, squirrel hands, down and across and stolen kisses, on and not on the lips. Then leaving scorching beds the color of the red desert sun and strawberry flavored. Your mysterious skin, salt lips: touching, each other. My libido, your mascara- getting all messed up in those rains, realizing for the first time that lust gnaws had no language, race, religion or brotherhood.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari')”

— Kunal Sen

“I know that whatever the complex origins of my own homosexuality are, there have been conscious choices I've made to indulge - and therefore to intensify, probably - my homoerotic inclinations. As I look back over the course of my life, I regret the nights I have given in to temptations to lust that pulsed like hot, itching sores in my mind. And so I cling to this image - washed. I am washed, sanctified, justified through the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I look back on my baptism, I can remember that God has cleansed the stains of homosexual sin from the crevasses of my mind, heart, and body and included me in his family, the church, where I can find support, comfort, and provocation toward Christian maturity.”

— Wesley Hill

“... he remained restrained and strangely composed. It was a composure born of extreme provocation. It stemmed from a lucidity that lies beyond rage.”

— Arundhati Roy

“It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him: I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge or provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear of uneasy restraint: this suited both him and me.”

— Charlotte Brontë

“[T]hose who have not been enclosed in the walls of prison without cause or provocation, can have but little idea how sweet the voice of a friend is; one token of friendship from any source whatever awakens and calls into action every sympathetic feeling; it brings up in an instant everything that is passed; it seizes the present with the avidity of lightning; it grasps after the future with the fierceness of a tiger; it moves the mind backward and forward, from one thing to another, until finally all enmity, malice and hatred, and past differences, misunderstandings and mismanagements are slain victorious at the feet of hope; and when the heart is sufficiently contrite, then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers, [D&C 121:7-25].
[DHC3:293-294]”

— Joseph Smith, Jr.

“She was on edge, feeling that she might snap or cry at the smallest provocation.”

— J.K. Rowling

“A movie is really provocation. It's not a message, it's not a statement.”

— Ang Lee

“What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.”

— Martin Amis

“For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.”

— Garry Trudeau

“You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.”

— George Konrad

“Writing is a provocation.”

— Marty Rubin

“Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Provocation is on the opposite lane of resolution.”

— Toba Beta

“To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.”

— John Tillotson

“The provocation with Holmes is the fact that he's described by Doyle as a man without a heart - all brain ... and that's very difficult to play, or even indicate.”

— Jeremy Brett

“In the next days it took little provocation for us to flick the flint of our Zippo lighters. Thatched roofs take the flame quickly, and on bad days the hamlets of Pinkville burned, taking our revenge in fire. It was good to walk from Pinkville and to see fire behind Alpha Company. It was good, just as pure hate is good.”

— Tim O'Brien

“War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“When the attack is "due" (or a little overdue), it will occur, explosively, whether or not there is any provocation.”

— Oliver Sacks

“I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then ...”

— Diana Gabaldon

“With regards to the expansion of NATO, I see it as a mistake, even a provocation in a way.”

— Sergei Lavrov

“It may be that America is developing a whole new category of essentially social criminals  ...  persons who threaten the police and the traditional social structure even when they are breaking no law  ...  because they view The Law with contempt and the police with distrust, and this abiding resentment can explode without warning at the slightest provocation.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

“Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him.”

— Meg Rosoff

“So this is the way we live now: conditioned by the awareness that no North Korean provocation, however egregious, can be confronted, lest it furnish the occasion or pretext for something truly barbarous and insane.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“Voices urging her to try, to reach into herself, to draw out the power. Voices that could turn hard and cold at the slight provocation. Voices that wheedled and threatened and lied.”

— Cassandra Clare

“Patience ... speaks of a person's steadfastness under provocation ... enduring ill-treatment without anger or thought of retaliation or revenge.”

— Billy Graham

“There are also many instances where people hostile to the Soviet state are attempting by means of deceit and provocation to poison the minds of our citizens and compel them to believe in monstrous lies.”

— Filipp Golikov

“You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic.”

— Michael Haneke

“Tuthmosis IV was, like his father Amenhotep II, a belligerent pharaoh and one of the first to wage war without provocation beyond Egypt's boundaries. As a result of his aggressive attacks slaves and foreign elements were common in Egypt. Consequently, there was more intermarriage during his reign than at other times. Egypt was visited by merchants and traders and was extremely prosperous and cosmopolitan during this period.”

— Michael Tsarion

“We should always settle disputes through dialogue and cooperation, and should not resort to the use or threat of force on the slightest provocation. We should get rid of Cold War thinking and broaden the converging points of our common interests, notwithstanding the differences in social systems and ideologies.”

— Wu Bangguo

“Education is the food of youth, the delight of old age, the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity, and the provocation to grace in the soul.”

— Saint Augustine

“Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.”

— Samuel Johnson

“There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in provocation.”

— Aldous Huxley

“Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.”

— Alexander Pope

“So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.”

— Edward Gibbon

“Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.”

— Jeremy Collier

“There is a claim coming from the West that says that all art must be outside any moral consideration. I can understand this as a provocation, but I also believe that we can still have very profound creativity with a moral sense.”

— Tariq Ramadan

“For a man solemnly to undertake the interpretation of any portion of Scripture without invocation of God, to be taught and instructed by His Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who thus proudly engages in a work so much beyond his ability.”

— John Owen

“I enjoy a challenge or provocation, something to think about, to talk about after it's done.”

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.”

— Cate Blanchett

“What is indispensable to inspiration? ... sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Love, to the inferior man, remains almost wholly a physical matter. The heroine he most admires is the one who offers the grossest sexual provocation; the hero who makes his wife roll her eyes is a perambulating phallus.”

— H.L. Mencken