Provocation Quotes - Page 3

• No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives.

  Walt Disney

  Jobs, Business, Men

  Walt Disney, Kathy Merlock Jackson (2006). “Walt Disney: Conversations”, p.45, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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

  Joseph Gordon-Levitt

  Thinking, Challenges, Done

  "Inception - Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington - not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, Stupid, Men

  Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy, www.dwightdeisenhower.com. June 03, 1947.

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• 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 to use 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

  Priorities, Defense, Nuclear

  "Einstein's Monsters". Book by Martin Amis, 1987.

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• Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent. ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Spiritual, Character, Judging

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• The vice named surrealism is the immoderate and impassioned use of the stupefacient image or rather of the uncontrolled provocation of the image for its own sake and for the element of unpredictable perturbation and of metamorphosis which it introduces into the domain of representation; for each image on each occasion forces you to revise the entire Universe.

  Louis Aragon

  Vices, Use, Elements

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• Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.

  Joseph Hall

  Christian, Men, Evil

  Joseph Hall, Josiah Pratt (1808). “The Works: Now First Collected : with Some Account of His Life and Sufferings. Devotional works”, p.21

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• The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.

  Sigmund Freud

  Reality, Ego, Suffering

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• If we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world's good-humor. It may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it.

  Agnes Repplier

  Loss, Ill Health, Anxiety

  Agnes Repplier (1904). “Compromises”

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• Everything has two handles; the one soft and manageable, the other such as will not endure to be touched. If then your brother do you an injury, do not take it by the hot hard handle, by representing to yourself all the aggravating circumstances of the fact; but look rather on the soft side, and extenuate it as much as is possible, by considering the nearness of the relation, and the long friendship and familiarity between you--obligations to kindness which a single provocation ought not to dissolve. And thus you will take the accident by its manageable handle.

  Epictetus

  Brother, Kindness, Two

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• Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Numbers, People, Enemy

  "Zbig Brzezinski: Israel’s Actions in Lebanon Essentially Amount to 'the Killing of Hostages'” by Steve Clemons, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 26, 2006.

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• 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

  Real, People, Documentaries

  "Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett and Six More Top Actresses on Pay Gap, Sex Scenes and the Price of Speaking Frankly: "There Is Always a Backlash"". "Actress Roundtable" with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 18, 2015.

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• 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

  War, Thinking, Differences

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• If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

  George Washington

  Attitude, War, Government

  George Washington, United States. President (1789-1797 : Washington) (1847). “Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America: Published in September, 1796”, p.11

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• I'm very proud of being persona non grata. I've never been that before in my life, and that suits me extremely wellI'm known for provocations, but I like provocations when they have a purpose. And this had no purpose whatsoever. Because I'm not Mel Gibson. I'm definitely not Mel Gibson.

  Lars von Trier

  Purpose, Proud, Suits

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• I have some security that could protect me against provocations but of course there are more terrible actions that could not be stopped by any security.

  Garry Kasparov

  Action, Terrible, Protect

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• Every great artist has the sense of provocation.

  Arthur Cravan

  Artist, Great Art, Great Artist

  "The forgotten story of ... Jack Johnson's fight with Oscar Wilde's poet nephew" by Graham Parker, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2016.

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• The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Ocean, Thinking

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• 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

  Father, War, Egypt

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Inspiration, Sleep

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “The Journals”

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• Today too, the most important issue in the world is Palestine. If a war breaks out in Iraq, we believe it is due to the provocation of the Zionists. If it happens in Afghanistan, it is because of their provocation. If Sudan is oppressed, it is due to Zionist seduction. We consider all the arrogant, colonialist schemes to be inspired by the Zionists.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  War, Believe, Iraq

  "Iranian President Ahmadinejad Denies the Holocaust and Warns Europeans of the Zionists: They Cling Like Ticks". www.memri.org. September 18, 2009.

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• Provocation polio. That is the truth about those outbreaks of polio. And I offer a well considered personal opinion that polio is a man made disease.

  Viera Scheibner

  Men, Personal Opinions, Polio Vaccine

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• When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No - no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad - distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention - and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned.

  Rajneesh

  Sex, Fire, Judging

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• I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.

  Rex Stout

  Men, Oddities, Technique

  Rex Stout (2013). “Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men”, p.63, Bantam

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• The ultimate goal of radical politics is gradually to displace the limit of social exclusions, empowering the excluded agents (sexual and ethnic minorities) by creating marginal spaces in which they can articulate and question their identity. Radical politics thus becomes an endless mocking parody and provocation, a gradual process of reidentification in which there are not final victories and ultimate demarcations

  Slavoj Žižek

  Creating, Space, Goal

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