#defiance

There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#day #defiance #enter #hour #lose

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#called #cringe #defiance #evil #evils

In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us. ↗

— Mark Rowlands

#defiance #heart #inspiring #learning #philosophy

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#authority #day #decade #defiance #established

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. ↗

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

#defiance #despair #done #god #greatest

There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve. ↗

— Dick Cheney

#beyond #comes #confronted #danger #deceit

Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall. ↗

— Leon Uris

#defiance #ghetto #inspirational #jew #mila-

And I swore it to myself the night Maurice ran away,” Ilyse screamed, terror and fury coursing through her veins, “and I’ll swear it again; no matter what you do, you will never conquer me. ↗

— Melika Dannese Lux

#defiance #courage

While he spoke, my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger — look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair — soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?" Still indomitable was the reply — "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot." I did. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#empowerment #independence #individuality #integrity #self-assurance

We know that if gold, if fraud, if force can defeat us, they will all be used. And we have resolved that they shall not defeat us. We shall arm. We shall meet fraud and falsehood with defiance, and force with force, if need be. ↗

— Denis Kearney

#defeat #defiance #falsehood #force #fraud