Provoking Quotes

• We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better.

  Janet Mock

  Inspiring, Different Experiences, Thought Provoking

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• When I moved to the United States [from Asia] in 2001, I experienced a more rigid concept of gender, but somehow I was allowed to change my name and my gender marker. Why is there that paradox? How do I get those two things to be the same?

  Geena Rocero

  Inspiring, Names, Two

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• If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Twitter post from Jan 15, 2017

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• Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

  Albert Einstein

  Funny, Hilarious, Education

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• A house that has a library in it has a soul.

  Plato

  Healing, Thought Provoking, House

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• Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Jobs, Perfection, Thought Provoking

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• The world has never before had as much drama as today. Radio, films, television and video inundate us with drama. But while these forms can engage or even enrage the audience, in none of them can the viewer’s response alter the artistic event itselfThat is why theatre is signing its own death warrant when it tries to play too safe. On the other hand, that is also the reason why, although its future often seems bleak, theatre will continue to live and to provoke.

  Girish Karnad

  Drama, Hands, Play

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• Everybody knew that you should never provoke a rattlesnake, much less tie it into a bow. But that didn't stop Judd. What did stop him was the rattlesnake.

  Demetri Martin

  Ties, Bows, Should

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• That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

  Gregory Maguire

  Art, Real, Thinking

  Gregory Maguire (2013). “The Wicked Years Complete Collection: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz”, p.86, Harper Collins

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• Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Imagination, Conventions, Release

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• Vacation time offers the unique opportunity to pause before the thought-provoking spectacles of nature, a wonderful "book" within reach of everyone, adults and children. In contact with nature, a person rediscovers his correct dimension, rediscovers himself as a creature, small but at the same time unique, with a "capacity for God" because interiorly he is open to the Infinite.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Children, Book

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• I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sorry, Apology, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.128, Courier Corporation

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• No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Country, Writing, Past

  Vladimir Nabokov (2010). “Lolita”, p.314, Vintage

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• There are lots of great movies coming out of the U.S. but it's not something I've ever really been interested in. They're great films but I much prefer the smaller independent films, which are more thought provoking and experimental.

  Billie Piper

  Independent, Thought Provoking, Film

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used, not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.

  Vladimir Putin

  Powerful, Believe, Army

  "A Plea for Caution From Russia" by Vladimir Putin, www.nytimes.com. September 11, 2013.

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• Rian Johnson's 'Looper' is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing.

  Jason Reitman

  Writing, Thought Provoking, Watches

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• Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

  Theodor Adorno

  Love, May, Weak

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.192, Verso

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• It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.

  Jerry Lewis

  Years, Laughing, Looks

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• When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

  George Henry Lewes

  Men, Views, Law

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• I'm not interested in provoking people, but only in trying to be consoling.

  Martin Kippenberger

  People, Trying, Consoling

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• When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.

  Erica Jong

  Kissing, Dust, Years

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

  Martin Heidegger

  Philosophical, Thinking, Thought Provoking

  "'Was heisst Denken?' ('What is Called Thinking?')". Book by Martin Heidegger, translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray, 1968.

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• While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, War, Ideas

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

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• What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.

  Marquis de Sade

  Would Be, Causes, Chaos

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• Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people, which makes it hard to provoke them. Human-rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on humans, which makes them potentially dangerous.

  Frans de Waal

  Animal, People, Exotic

  "Jump, Tiger, Jump!" by Frans de Waal, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 27, 2007.

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