Provoking Quotes - Page 21

• You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive.

  David E. Kelley

  Mean, Long, Challenges

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• I believe in any country, matters that relate to its territory would, of course, provoke strong sentiments amongst the people of that country.

  Naoto Kan

  Country, Strong, Believe

  "Naoto Kan: 'Japan has lost its vigor'". www.cnn.com. November 17, 2010.

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• I know I will be breaking a taboo. But I'm sure that it will provoke a new discussion. It's time things change. I feel 30 and want to look that way again.

  Brigitte Nielsen

  Looks, Want, Way

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• I love sci-fi, especially when it thrives on a thought-provoking story, rather than explosions.

  William Mapother

  Thought Provoking, Stories, Sci Fi

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• Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change. A company that stands still will soon be forgotten. Trying to provoke positive change is a principle we've embedded across the Virgin family for more than four decades.

  Richard Branson

  Change, Trying, Stories

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• Abdur Rab offers a comprehensive vision of Islam using the Quran as his sole religious textual source. He intentionally avoids the hadith literature, which he believes, and argues, has done much damage to the message of the Quran. His work provides many thought-provoking insights and should be a significant contribution to the 'Quran only' movement in modern Islam.

  Jeffrey Lang

  Religious, Believe, Thought Provoking

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• And so we have to be careful with looking at additional stimulus that we don't provoke an increase in the bond rate and then offset a lot of the stimulus we've already got.

  Franklin Raines

  Stimulus, Increase, Be Careful

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• Good satire hopefully provides thought-provoking conversation.

  Lizz Winstead

  Thought Provoking, Satire, Conversation

  "Lizz Winstead, Freely Speaking". Interview with Lianne Stokes, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 9, 2012.

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• When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to act, we cannot bear a provoking word.

  Hannah More

  Fancy, Bears, Martyr

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• If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man's enmity needlessly; since any man's love may be useful, and every man's hatred is dangerous.

  Isaac Barrow

  Mean, Men, Hatred

  Isaac Barrow (1839). “The Sermons and Expository Treatises of Isaac Barrow: With a Life of the Author”, p.271

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• I made the flames lick the surface of the painting in such a way that is recorded the spontaneous traces of the fire. But what is it that provokes in me this pursuit of the impression of fire? Why must I search for its traces?

  Yves Klein

  Fire, Flames, Burning

  "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962, Selected Writings" by Yves Klein, in 1961; p. 67, 1974.

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• The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Business, Men, Wind

  The Man with the Muck-rake, delivered 14 April 1906

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• After long centuries, agrarian civilization is weakening. Is sufficient attention being devoted to the arrangement and improvement of the life of the country people, whose inferior and at times miserable economic situation provokes the flight to the unhappy crowded conditions of the city outskirts, where neither employment nor housing awaits them?

  Pope Paul VI

  Country, Land, Civilization

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• As history shows, childless women in America eventually provoke hysteria.

  Michelle Goldberg

  Women, Hysteria, America

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• I'm not a film snob at all. I much prefer a really good Hollywood blockbuster than a thought-provoking art house movie because entertainment is sort of where it's at.

  Ricky Gervais

  Art, Thought Provoking, House

  "Night At The Museum - Ricky Gervais interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• My opinion is that somebody certainly has the right to do cartoons that make fun of somebody else's religion. But to reprint them just to provoke a fight and just to provoke it like thumbing your nose at someone else and going, "What are you gonna do about it?"

  David Byrne

  Fun, Fighting, Cartoon

  Interview with Chris Dahlen, pitchfork.com. July 17, 2006.

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• I love simple food. I like to serve the entire animal, not only because it somehow provokes a customer to think about it, but also because to honor of the animal that has been killed for us to eat, you have to eat the whole thing. It would be silly to just eat the chops and throw everything else away.

  Mario Batali

  Food, Silly, Animal

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• Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Heart, Animal, Men

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1209, Delphi Classics

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• Orientation in time, space, and status are the essentials of social existence, and the Balinese, although they make very strong spirits for ceremonial occasions, with a few startling exceptions resist alcohol, because if one drinks one loses one's orientation. Orientation is felt as a protection rather than as a strait jacket and its loss provokes extreme anxiety.

  Margaret Mead

  Strong, Loss, Space

  Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead (1942). “Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis”

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• Can storied urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

  Thomas Gray

  Dust, Voice, Fleeting

  'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751) l. 41

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• That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off... and still have no good idea why you were really fighting.

  Iain Banks

  Stars, Distance, Fighting

  "Consider Phlebas (The Culture, Book 1)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter 2 "The Hand of God 137", p. 32), 1987.

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• The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action.

  Jacques Ellul

  Ideas, Action, Propaganda

  "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner, 1965.

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• Frankly speaking, we all know that provoking military and political instability, regional, and other conflicts is a helpful means of distracting the public from growing domestic social and economic problems in certain countries. Such attempts cannot be ruled out, unfortunately.

  Vladimir Putin

  Honesty, Military, Responsibility

  Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the World Economic Forum, archive.premier.gov.ru. January 28, 2009.

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• Not in the name of a necessary protection of the white race did the European break into China, but for the benefit of the Jewish-mercantile greed for profit. He thus dishonored himself, destroying a whole civilization, provoking justified indignation. China fights for its myth, for its race, and its ideals, as does the renewal-movement in Germany against the mercantile race that rules all stock markets and the actions of most governments.

  Alfred Rosenberg

  Fighting, Civilization, Names

  "The Myth of the Twentieth Century". Book by Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

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• The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, May, Resentment

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Rambler”, p.394

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