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

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  333 Copy quote

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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

  455 Copy quote

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

  Plato

  Healing, Thought Provoking, House

  43 Copy quote

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

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Jobs, Perfection, Thought Provoking

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  39 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

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• Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Imagination, Conventions, Release

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  54 Copy quote

• Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Thought Provoking, Charity, Poverty

  3 Copy quote

• Human beings want to see each other. We want to be heard by each other.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Thought Provoking, Want, Heard

  3 Copy quote

• When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  People, Thought Provoking, Choices

  3 Copy quote

• All people deserve access to health at prices they can afford.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  People, Thought Provoking, Access

  3 Copy quote

• The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.

  Paul Muldoon

  Eye, Feet, Noses

  Princeton University Library Chronicle, Spring 1998.

  14 Copy quote

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• The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences.

  E. B. White

  Country, War, Bombs

  3 Copy quote

• Things are always harder than you think they're going to be.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Thinking, Thought Provoking, Harder

  "Patient capitalism". TEDGlobal Talk, www.ted.com. June 2007.

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• What we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Distance, People, Thought Provoking

  3 Copy quote

• Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.

  Richard Dawkins

  World, Details, Culture

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

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• However , it’s over, and I’ll take no revenge on his folly – I can afford to suffer anything, hereafter! Should the meanest thing alive slap me on the cheek, I’d not only turn the other, but I’d ask pardon for provoking it – and, as proof, I’ll go make my peace with Edgar instantly – Good night – I’m an angel!

  Emily Bronte

  Good Night, Revenge, Angel

  23 Copy quote

• listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy --- let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it... --- ye-es... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Thinking, Fire, Mind

  3 Copy quote

• It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Suicide, Distance, Eye

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1999). “The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader”, p.5, University of Virginia Press

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• We don't see profit as a blind instrument.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Thought Provoking, Blind, Profit

  3 Copy quote

• It provokes the desire but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off.

  William Shakespeare

  Alcohol, Desire, Mars

  Macbeth II. 3

  85 Copy quote

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• Africans didn't want saving, thank you very much, least of all not by me.

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  Thought Provoking, Saving, Want

  "Is 'Patient Capitalism' The Answer To Poverty?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. October 18, 2013.

  3 Copy quote

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