Top 58 Most Provocative Quotes
#1. Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.
Lee Daniels
#2. But you can still find good films if you read your local film critics and are willing to drive a bit. You have to be a proactive film viewer to have the most provocative cinema life.
Stephen Hunter
#3. Maybe the most provocative thing one can do - and I'm not the first one to do it - is to ask the moral and philosophical question: why are some people better than others? Why are some people more moral than others?
David Bezmozgis
#4. I think the first album cover was considered most provocative. I think that contributed a great deal.
Julie London
#5. David Cronenberg is the most provocative, original, and consistently excellent North American director of his generation.
J. Hoberman
#6. I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#8. While nothing in the Bible is contradictory, many of the Bible's most provocative and profound truths appear to us paradoxical.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#9. Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her.
Cecelia Ahern
#10. Robert Glennon is a leading-edge legal scholar and passionate water advocate whose thinking is central to an intense debate on the path forward to a water-secure world. I heartily recommend his provocative, information-packed, and highly readable new book Unquenchable.
Maude Barlow
#11. Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
William Zinsser
#12. When I write stuff that's provocative, I want people to think about that, too. I'm in between a pop musician and an artist in that way. I want people to be part of the music as they listen, but I also want them to think: What was that?
Jenny Hval
#13. Barbara Ehrenreich is smart, provocative, funny, and sane in a world that needs more of all four.
Diane Sawyer
#14. Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent ... The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words.
John G. Diefenbaker
#15. I think this show I'm going to do,' Awake,' if it's done well, will not only be provocative and entertaining, but help people. I want to do that.
Jason Isaacs
#16. I have a question to ask you." Beth stretched one arm across the back of the seat, hoping she looked provocative. "And what is that, husband?" Ian leaned down, his body hemming her in. His large fists rested on the seat back behind her. "Do I love you?
Jennifer Ashley
#17. I had so much fun developing and launching my first fragrance with Avon, so for my second fragrance, I really wanted to add a little more edge. Outspoken Intense is a provocative blend of sexy confidence and daring femininity that captures the thrill and excitement of being centre stage.
Fergie
#18. Say 'provoking' again. Your mouth looks provocative when you do.
Becca Fitzpatrick
#19. There are no more ideologies in the authentic sense of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world through its duplication and the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commands silence.
Theodor Adorno
#20. It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and provocative content of new forms that seem to pop up every few months.
David Rockefeller
#21. It's what the mainstream does - they absorb things and they blunt the power of it. And so the next generation and the next generation has to become more shocking and more provocative in order to get any rise out of anybody.
Billy Corgan
#22. Keep looking at me like that,"
he warned, leaning casually into the counter and sipping his coffee.
"see what happens."
"i'm going to lose my job over you."
"i'd give you another one."
i snorted. "as what? your sex slave?"
"what a provocative suggestion. let's discuss.
Sylvia Day
#23. That's what's provocative to me - that we can victimize people, we can torture and traumatize people with no consciousness that it is a shameful thing to do.
Bryan Stevenson
#24. Learning is not the consequence of teaching or writing, but rather of thinking ... so a playful, provocative, unclear but stimulating book could actually be more worth your money than a serious, clear book that tells you what to think but doesn't make you think.
Brian D. McLaren
#26. Most of us who work as professional futurists never really stop gathering information - you never know when a provocative, potentially disruptive new development might appear.
Jamais Cascio
#28. Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#29. Jeff Selingo is one of the most respected observers of American higher education ... Not all will agree with his observations, conclusions, predictions and recommendations, but all will gain from this thoughtful, well-written, provocative volume. I highly recommend it.
David J. Skorton
#30. Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.
Carl Hiaasen
#31. Southern newspapers hungry for fodder to roil the secession debate fed their subscribers the most inciteful material they could unearth in the Northern press. Northern journals scoured Southern papers for similarly provocative reports designed to confirm hotheaded Southern disloyalty.
Harold Holzer
#32. Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them.
Bret Easton Ellis
#33. More to the point: the growing universe of the Nones - the new nonreligious - is one of the most spiritually vibrant and provocative spaces in modern life. It is not a world in which spiritual life is absent. It is a world that resists religious excesses and shallows.
Krista Tippett
#34. She [Nana] listened to his [Steiner's] propositions, turning them down every time with a shake of the head and that provocative laughter which is peculiar to full-bodied blondes.
Emile Zola
#35. The public has no idea that writing is a disease, and that the writer who publishes is like a beggar who exhibits his sores.
Michael Kruger
#36. I think the interesting thing about the word 'posh' is that it is so relative; it's quite a provocative title because people have strong feelings about that word.
Laura Wade
#38. I remember saying to myself, those things are very, very important to hear, but there must be another way to say them so that they will truly be heard. I mean, that's what art is. Art is about being provocative; art is also about beauty and if you leave the latter out, the former doesn't matter.
Nikky Finney
#39. Glass & peace alike betray proof of fragility under repeated blows.
David Mitchell
#40. It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right.
Lyall Watson
#41. I know the aspect of my personality, being the vixen, the heartbreaker and the incredibly provocative girl is a very marketable image, but it's not insincere. You just can't take it seriously.
Madonna Ciccone
#42. The book is what we have come to expect from Marion: challenging, subtle and nuanced analyses, dassling formulations, . a provocative and original philosophical genius.
John D. Caputo
#43. I think it is really important to be in some way provocative
either intellectually or viscerally
in the films one makes.
Peter Greenaway
#45. Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes - he didn't go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.
Frans De Waal
#46. I want to show people as they are, not glorified, no shame - fat, bulges, wrinkles and all. I want the work to be disturbing, unsettling, provocative, challenging, and thought provoking.
Judy Dater
#47. I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.
Dorothy Allison
#48. And as cynical and jaded as many have become, you see the heroic nature of cops, who put aside a lot of their own personal concerns and their families to speak for the dead, which is a sacred thing. Over time there is this thing in them that is very powerful and interesting and provocative to me.
Veena Sud
#49. People have this idea that if you're sexual and beautiful and provocative, then there's nothing else you could possibly offer.
Madonna Ciccone
#50. It was suddenly heartachingly clear how much he wanted this and how easy it was to imagine it with near provocative clarity. She was not just his friend. She was more.
Jessica Park
#52. A convoluted noir infused extravaganza clogged with humans but also a bizarre cluster of unique creatures and provocative human chimeras customized via genetic manipulation and body augmentation, a reverie of alluring cultural ferment and cyberdelic imagery making a grand display
Unknown
#53. She grabbed his shirt and tore it open, buttons popping off and flying everywhere. She insinuated a knee between his thighs, meaning to apply some provocative friction to his private parts while she undid his pants. But he misread her intention. 'Oh, no, you don't,
Emma Darcy
#54. I'm part of what I consider the entertainment industry. For my photos to be entertaining, they have to be provocative and new.
David LaChapelle
#55. Let us consider that swearing is a sin of all others peculiarly clamorous, and provocative of Divine judgment.
Isaac Barrow
#56. Cop shows are by definition melodramatic; they're larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They're provocative, assuming they grapple with - to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture.
Steven Bochco
#57. Beneath the moons' shadowscape, wisdom, women, whiskey and you are a dangerous and provocative combination...
Virginia Alison
#58. To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.
John Updike
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
