Defiance Quotes - page 3
The consciousness in [Australia and New Zealand] of the elevation of a substandard dialect into a national tongue has been responsible for a mixture of attitudes to citizens of the mother country - inferiority, defiance, contempt. A blending of the first two may be responsible for the upward intonation pattern of answers, more appropriate to questions.... slang is of its nature defiant. It is also demotic.... But the ruling class of Australia is itself demotic.
Anthony Burgess
He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.
Ken Kesey
I doubt whether the public has fully grasped the change which has come over the nature of modern wealth. If the nature of that change were grasped by our publics, we should be much nearer to accepting the international organizations necessary for the defense of welfare and of civilization than we are. As it is, we are in danger of being diverted to the discussion of schemes for a vast rearrangement of frontiers in defiance of national feeling - for the boundaries of the national and the economic unit do not conveniently coincide - before which the difficulties of a Disarmament Conference would pale into insignificance.
Norman Angell
If what we are discussing were a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best. But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself. Therefore, Simplicio, give up this idea and this hope of yours that there may be men so much more learned, erudite, and well-read than the rest of us as to be able to make that which is false become true in defiance of nature.
Galileo Galilei
What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village:
"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages."
Walter Cronkite
Precisely similar ideas are applicable to the molecules that form the air in a room. ...The classical mechanics now predicts that the whole energy of motion will be changed into radiation [heat], so that the molecules will shortly be found lying at rest on the floor... In actual fact they continue to move with undiminished energy, forming a perpetual-motion machine in defiance of classical mechanics. ...We have passed from one to another of three worlds... from the man-sized world to the world of the electron.
James Jeans
"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail- its roof may shake- the wind may blow through it- the storm may enter- the rain may enter- but the King of England cannot enter- all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement." So be it- unless he has justification by law.
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning
It took little time for most Iranians, including those who believed in and contributed to "Khomeini's revolution”, to become disillusioned. Resistance and the earliest forms of defiance of the regime soon began in war-torn Iran. It began first among the courageous women of Iran who have endured the harshest treatment since the arrival of the regime. Today, it is the very children of those brave parents whose blood is been spilled on the streets of Iran.
Reza Pahlavi
Deeply impressed with the conviction that the continuance of slavery is one of the most active causes of the continuance of the unhappy condition in Cuba, I regret to believe that citizens of the United States, or those claiming to be such, are large holders in Cuba of what is there claimed as property, but which is forbidden and denounced by the laws of the United States. They are thus, in defiance of the spirit of our own laws, contributing to the continuance of this distressing and sickening contest. In my last annual message I referred to this subject, and I again recommend such legislation as may be proper to denounce, and, if not prevent, at least to discourage American citizens from holding or dealing in slaves.
Ulysses S. Grant
The modern man is... certain about his essential virtue... [and since] he does not see that he has a freedom of spirit which transcends both nature and reason... [he] is unable to understand the real pathos of his defiance of nature's and reason's laws. He always imagines himself betrayed into this defiance either by some accidental corruption in his past history or by some sloth of reason. Hence he hopes for redemption, either through a program of social reorganization or by some scheme of education.
Reinhold Niebuhr
There can be but two modes of cantonment, to prevent the enemy from disturbing us in quarters. One is, to keep such a force together as to bid defiance to all their menaces; the other is, to disperse the troops in such a manner as to afford no object. The first is infinitely the most favorable to discipline and economy. To disperse the troops among the inhabitants, will be attended with a certain loss of discipline to the soldiers and a general corruption of manners among the people. They will mutually debauch each other. Besides these disadvantages, the expense and waste of stores will be nearly double, and a great addition to the list of Staff Officers (al ready too numerous from the state of our money) will be found necessary. For these, and many other reasons too obvious to need explanation, dispersing the troops should be avoided at all events.
Nathanael Greene
To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a philautos, not a philosophos [a lover of self, not a lover of wisdom]. For this title of honor is well and wisely conceived precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one's whole heart, and thus unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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.
Samuel Lover
Whatever be the effect of slavery upon the States where it exists, there can be no doubt that its moral influence upon the North has been most disastrous. It has compelled our politicians into that first fatal compromise with their moral instincts and hereditary principles which makes all consequent ones easy; it has accustomed us to makeshifts instead of statesmanship, to subterfuge instead of policy, to party-platforms for opinions, and to a defiance of the public sentiment of the civilized world for patriotism.
James Russell Lowell
Little child
Who was me once,
My pity on you-
And reverence.
If we could meet
Where I once strayed,
The betrayer
And the betrayed.
If we could win back
In Time's defiance,
Would you be afeared of me,
Ten-year-old Terence?
No, you would not fear.
You would love, trust,
Cherish, admire
This tedious dust.
For oh! we were all brimming once
With the sun-sparkled dew.
One heart could have loved this hulk-
The ignorant heart of you.
T. H. White
In this excessive display of armorial bearings - for the two Roses above are crowded with them - one likes to think that these great princes had in their minds not so much the thought of their own importance - which is a modern sort of religion,- as the thought of their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power and attachment by one is met by the assertion of equal devotion by the other, and while both loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, each glares defiance across the church.
Henry Adams