149 Rebellion Quotes

Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

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.

All dese governments and dis this and that, these people that say they're here to help, why them say you cannot smoke the herb? Herb... herb is a plant, you know? And when me check it, me can't find no reason. All them say is, 'it make you rebel'. Against what?

The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.

White collar conservative flashin' down the street, Pointing that plastic finger at me, Hoping soon my kind will drop and die, But I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest, And tilt at windmills under a wild sky! For who would live so petty and unblest That dare not tilt at something ere he die; Rather than, screened by safe majority, Preserve his little life to little end, And never raise a rebel cry!

This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what you will.

Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower. Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice! And you tell Mr. Harding right back - he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low - that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.

He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.

Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third - ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] - may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Cut word lines - Cut music lines - Smash the control images - Smash the control machine - Burn the books - Kill the priests - Kill! Kill! Kill!

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

Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's rebellion.

I never thought I was normal, never tried to be normal. Normal runs in that little rut down there. I don't know nothing about being normal. I've been in jail all my life, man. I lived on the handball court. This guy raised me up. All the men in the joint raised me up, told me what to do, what was right and wrong, told me where to sit down , where to stand up, I just did whatever I was told. You know, and I got to the end of it and I just turned around and said 'Wow, far out.'

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

It is not actual suffering but a taste of better things which excites people to revolt.

If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.

It was pretty sad, because for the first time I found how stupid people could be. It sort of made me feel alone in the world. The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it.

If I had observed all the rules, I'd never have gotten anywhere.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

I think for it to be unhip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me had some sense of hope in them.

June 16, 1971, mama gave birth to a Hell raising heavenly son.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy - the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops.

... the task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.

Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll'd Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc

Now some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little piece by piece. Some guys come home from work and wash up And go racing in the streets. Tonight, tonight the strip's just right, I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats. We're callin' out around the world, we're going racin' in the street.

I have X'd myself from your world... You have created the monster. I am not of you, from you, nor do I condone your unjust attitude toward things, animals, and people that you do not try to understand...I stand opposed to what you do and have done in the past...You make fun of god and have murdered the world in the name of Jesus Christ...My faith in me is stronger than all of your armies, governments, gas chambers, or anything you may want to do to me. I know what I have done. Your courtroom is man's game. Love is my judge...

Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free

In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.

Conformity is one of the nihilistic temptations of rebellion which dominate a large part of our intellectual history. It demonstrates how the rebel who takes to action is tempted to succumb, if he forgets his origins, to the most absolute conformity. And so it explains the twentieth century.

History, undoubtedly, is one of the limits of man's experience; in this sense the revolutionaries are right. But man, by rebelling, imposes in his turn a limit to history, and at this limit the promise of a value is born... The triumphant revolution must prove by means of its police, its trials, and its excommunications that there is no such thing as human nature. Humiliated rebellion, by its contradictions, its sufferings, its continuous defeats, and its inexhaustible pride, must give its content of hope and suffering to this nature.

In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as does the 'cogito' in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel - therefore we exist.

Rebellion's demand is unity; historical revolution's demand is totality.

Well we can't salute ya Can't find a flag If that don't suit ya That's a drag School's out for summer School's out forever School's been blown to pieces.

I've said it before, and it's absolutely true: we were the group that drove a stake through the heart of the love generation.

An individual may perceive a way of life, or a method of social organisation, by which more of the desires of mankind could be satisfied than under the existing method. If he perceives truly, and can persuade men to adopt his reform, he is justified. Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

Ce qu'il y a d'enivrant dans le mauvais gout, c'est le plaisir aristocratique de deplaire.

Baudelaire is the great symbol of l'art pour l'art (art for the sake of art): sickness as beauty. Baudelaire is thus Liberalism in literature, disease as a principle of Life, crisis as health, morbidity as soul-life, disintegration as purpose.

I wanna go to jail. To me It's fuckin cool to go to jail.

'I'm so in the world of Nina Simone, Etta James, Billie Holiday and Eartha Kitt, one of the original bad girls.'

In Geneva lived Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He too was a rebel, mighty in war. Voltaire was keener, wittier, deeper, greater. Rousseau was more fiery, emotional, passionate. Both were really warriors in the same great cause. From their different places, three miles apart, both sent forth their thunderbolts to wake a sleeping world. When the world awakened and shook itself, churches, thrones, institutions, laws, and customs were buried in the wreck. Some charged the wreck to Voltaire, some to Rousseau.

He who hopes to grow in spirit will have to transcend obedience and respect. He'll hold to some laws but he'll mostly violate both law and custom, and go beyond the established, inadequate norm. Sensual pleasures will have much to teach him. He won't be afraid of the destructive act: half the house will have to come down. This way he'll grow virtuously into wisdom.

This ain't no damn afterschool special. Smoke it.

Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du pretre, Au defaut d'un cordon pour etrangler les rois.

'Little Hellions, kids feelin rebellious, embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis'

'Elvis' early vocals, was a witches' brew of gospel swoops, falsetto shrieks, growls, howls, and scat...an anthem to human cockiness, to the healing, transcendent powers of the life-force...'

To think for oneself is not only, as Gide said, counterrevolutionary but also apostasy and, at certain times, treason.

It's as if what the system opposes, the kids are going to do it harder. Saying no is the greatest aphrodisiac there is...

The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.

I wasn't like everyone, you know. What everyone did, I was sure not to do.

We are your parents' worst nightmare.

We were the kids that made America famous. The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to dispair. We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost confused, and copping out. Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care.

We are not exciting rebellion. Opposition, nay, open, avowed resistance by arms against usurpation and lawless violence, is not rebellion by the law of God or the land.

Hark you shadows that in darkness dwell, Learn to contemn light, Happy, happy they that in hell Feel not the world's despite.

The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling, have left this condition of things unassailed in principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some of its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals. They preferred endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points on which they were themselves heretical, rather than make common cause in defence of freedom, with heretics generally. (p. 12)

I know it works for me. As we cross the bridge - the burning bridge - With flames behind us, We front the line. It's you and me, baby, against the world.

I watched and tried to figure out what he would have done. I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.

McMurphy is not merely up against the Big Nurse and her ward, but against all the controlling aspects of society, which molds its conformists into dull mechanical robots for the Combine.

Love and what generates it. Rebellion and what creates it. Liberty and what nourishes it. Three manifestations of God. And God is the conscience of the rational world.

From the beginning there had been a revolutionary group. Its name had changed several times, and Matt had no idea what it was now. He had never known a revolutionary. He had no particular desire to be one. They accomplished nothing, except to fill the Hospital's organ banks. How could they, when the crew controlled every weapon and every watt of power on Mount Lookitthat? If this was a nest of rebels, then they had worked out a good cover. Many of the merrymakers had no hearing aids, and these seemed to be the ones who didn't know anyone here. Like Matt himself. In the midst of a reasonably genuine open-house brawl, certain people listened to voices only they could hear.

'The only time I've seen any rebellion was in the fifties, sixties and early seventies. The rest of it you can keep.'

You see, dear reader, so much of what's doled out as punk merely amounts to saying I suck, you suck, the world sucks, and who gives a damn - which is, er, ah, somehow insufficient. Don't ask me why; I'm just an observer, really. But any observer could tell that, to put in in terms of Us vs. Them, saying the above is exactly what They would want you to do, because it amounts to capitulation.

People think there's some real subversive thing playing against whoever it is; a lot of it is just people who want to go along and get along. And they also want to make money. And the bottom line is, they're going to put out as much stuff as they can - stupid, banal stuff that makes money.

As the liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, So we, boys, we Shall die fighting or live free, And down with all kings but King Ludd!

I was surprised as anyone when T-shirts, jeans and leather jackets suddenly became symbols of rebellion. In the film there was a scene in which somebody asked my character, Johnny, what I was rebelling against, and I answered 'Whaddya got?' But none of us involved in the picture ever imagined that it would instigate or encourage youthful rebellion.

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong Oh, but who are they to judge us Simply because our hair is long Oh, you know we've got to find a way To bring some understanding here today.

If I weren't an actress playing a socialite, I'd have lavender hair, wear crappy vintage clothes and have tattoos. I'd be some kind of crazy lawless rebel - an alternative underground riot girl.

It is better to deny God, than to defy God.

The worm stood straight on God's blood-splattered threshold then and beat his drum, beat it again, and raised his throat: 'You've matched all well on earth, wine, women, bread, and song, but why, you Murderer, must you slay our children? Why?' God foamed with rage and raised his sword to pierce that throat, but his old copper sword, my lads, stuck at the bone. Then from his belt the worm drew his black-hilted sword, rushed up and slew that old decrepit god in heaven! And now, my gallant lads - I don't know when or how - that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands; I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!

Yet [Chomsky's The Responsibility of Intellectuals essay] defined the peace movement as much as any document and pushed the name Chomsky up there with Thoreau and Emerson in the literature of rebellion. --Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992 [188]

Wahrhafte Anarchie ist das Zeugungselement der Religion. Aus der Vernichtung alles Positiven hebt sie ihr glorreiches Haupt als neue Weltstifterin empor...

Sylla was the first of victors; but our own The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell; he Too swept off the senates while he hewed the throne Down to a block - immortal rebel! See What crimes it costs to be a moment free And famous through all ages.

Never mind that the rules are stupid and counterproductive. I broke them.

Lorsque l'obeissance a tant d'impiete, La revolte devient une necessite.

Non sono mai stato un generale ribelle e l'ho dimostrato sino all'ultimo.

It wasn't that [my management or the label] told me what to do, It was more of what I couldn't do. I couldn't wear red lipstick. I couldn't wear my hair in a ponytail; all kinds of stupid things. Being 'Rihanna' wasn't natural. So I rebelled. I'm doing me. Now, Robyn (Rihanna's first name) and Rihanna are much more similar.

Bad is not sleazy. Bad has its own term to every individual and in my case it just means I've gotten a little rebellious on the album, broken out of my shell and I'm taking risks... Michael Jackson 'bad' kind of way. (about her Good Girl Gone Bad album)

You know you get that tattoo of a barbed wire now when you're 18 and by the time you're 80 it's a fucking picket fence.

The tide of undecipherable signatures of mutinous adolescents which has washed over and bitten into the facades of monuments and the surface of public vehicles in the city where I live: graffiti as an assertion of disrespect, yes, but most of all simply an assertion... the powerless saying: I'm here, too.

Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs He turns revolt into a style, prolongs The impulse to a habit of the time.

My baby is a rock n' roller.

Bear it aloft, O roaring flame! Skyward aloft, where all may see. Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same; One is the immemorial shame; One is the struggle, and in One name - Manhood- we battle to set men free. 'Uncurse us the Land!' burn the words of the Dead, Written-in-red.

We're going streaking!!!!

'They say jump and you say how high, ya brain dead, you gotta fucking bullet in ya head!!!'

'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!'

'More for Gore, or the son of a drug lord? None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord [from Guerilla Radio]'