Top 100 Quotes About Provocation
#1. Although I have always rejected this fear of the other, and the racism that it inevitably fuels, I have learned from experience that it is a deeply rooted need in the human psyche. at the slightest provocation we will put distance between ourselves and those we cannot or do not want to understand
Susan Nathan
#2. I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
Rex Stout
#3. Who, in the midst of just provocation to anger, instantly finds the fit word which settles all around him in silence is more than wise or just; he is, were he a beggar, of more than royal blood, he is of celestial descent.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#4. Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#5. If I took it away, no doubt I'd find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within a fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation.
George R R Martin
#6. People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked.
Marcel Proust
#7. A movie is really provocation. It's not a message, it's not a statement.
Ang Lee
#8. It's always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation....Why do men behave the way they do, warring?"
"What do you think?" he asked.
"Maybe because they've got no sense of grief?
Nuruddin Farah
#9. Lay not the blame on me, O sailor, but on the winds. By nature I am as calm and safe as the land itself, but the winds fall upon me with their gusts and gales, and lash me into a fury that is not natural to me.
Aesop
#10. Much is said about English severity, but not a word about Irish provocation.
Robert Peel
#11. There are also many instances where people hostile to the Soviet state are attempting by means of deceit and provocation to poison the minds of our citizens and compel them to believe in monstrous lies.
Filipp Golikov
#12. I admit that invective is one of my pleasures. This only brings me problems in life, but that's it. I attack, I insult. I have a gift for that, for insults, for provocation. So I am tempted to use it.
Michel Houellebecq
#13. 'Funny Games' was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are, or respond to them as provocation, then that's quite different. 'Funny Games' is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience.
Michael Haneke
#14. A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.
Theodore Roosevelt
#15. I think the Eritrean government is aware that any full-scale invasion of Ethiopia along the lines of 1998 could turn out to be suicidal ... And we will not respond to any provocation short of all-out invasion. We are already engaged in a much more fruitful war - against poverty.
Meles Zenawi
#16. A gentlemen is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
H.L. Mencken
#17. The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.
Freeman Tilden
#18. One can go on saying for years that one doesn't listen to gossip, that the absent cannot defend themselves from slander, etc., etc.; but, after all, isn't the provocation of so much gossip an offense in itself?
Thornton Wilder
#19. a rowdy little girl who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter
F Scott Fitzgerald
#20. For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.
Garry Trudeau
#21. The provocation with Holmes is the fact that he's described by Doyle as a man without a heart - all brain ... and that's very difficult to play, or even indicate.
Jeremy Brett
#22. Patience ... speaks of a person's steadfastness under provocation ... enduring ill-treatment without anger or thought of retaliation or revenge.
Billy Graham
#23. Never was sin seen to be more abominably sinful and full of provocation than when the burden of it was upon the shoulders of the Son of God ... Would you, then, see the true demerit of sin?-take the measure of it from the mediation of Christ, especially his cross.
John Owen
#24. A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.
Edward P. Morgan
#25. It makes no difference how important the provocation may be, but into what kind of soul it penetrates. Similarly with fire; it does not matter how great is the flame, but what it falls upon.
Seneca.
#26. It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation.
G.K. Chesterton
#27. So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.
Edward Gibbon
#28. Through music I either tame my demons or unleash them and allow them to be what they are. I don't want the music to be about provocation, I want the music to bring you to a place where you feel at home.
Michael Franti
#29. I was born and raise din San Francisco, which explains my willingness to stay in a city that's historically been full of people who insist on trying to kill me at the slightest provocation.
Seanan McGuire
#30. Mammalian cells of all types disgorge prostaglandins at the slightest provocation, but the tissue content of prostaglandins is very low compared with the release.
John Vane
#31. A woman's voice is considered a sexual provocation (kol be-ishah ervah), so that a woman may not read or recite before men.
Rachel Biale
#32. Technology breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with them goes the provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group is a single individual. Moneo
Frank Herbert
#33. ... he remained restrained and strangely composed. It was a composure born of extreme provocation. It stemmed from a lucidity that lies beyond rage.
Arundhati Roy
#34. Provocation doesn't make me ill-tempered: it only shows me how ill-tempered I am.
C.S. Lewis
#35. the truth of all that the Savage now said about the worthlessness of friends who could be turned upon so slight a provocation into persecuting enemies.
Aldous Huxley
#36. Education is the food of youth, the delight of old age, the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity, and the provocation to grace in the soul.
Saint Augustine
#37. When the attack is "due" (or a little overdue), it will occur, explosively, whether or not there is any provocation.
Oliver Sacks
#38. War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#39. The rules of the game in Alabama politics is that no matter the provocation, no matter the justification, you take your whippings gracefully.
Bob Ingram
#40. One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time.
Idries Shah
#41. I suppose, yes, I've been guilty of provocation but it's also just common sense marketing - put a bottle of scent in a woman's cleavage, or between her thighs - and men will notice.
Tom Ford
#42. To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.
John Tillotson
#43. Provocation polio. That is the truth about those outbreaks of polio. And I offer a well considered personal opinion that polio is a man made disease.
Viera Scheibner
#44. What is indispensable to inspiration? ... sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#45. With regards to the expansion of NATO, I see it as a mistake, even a provocation in a way.
Sergei Lavrov
#46. Some felt as if 'Charlie Hebdo' was obsessed with its 'Screw Allah' stance. It's a sort of provocation that caused a lot of debates.
Patrick Chappatte
#47. Valten turned and stomped back to the Great Hall. He just might put his unbroken hand through someone's face, if given the slightest bit of provocation.
Melanie Dickerson
#48. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#50. She was on edge, feeling that she might snap or cry at the smallest provocation.
J.K. Rowling
#51. I am talking about anything that is a provocation - ignore it. When something falls under freedom of expression, you can read it and take a critical distance.
Tariq Ramadan
#52. It is unjust to provoke a man and then to complain he is a satyr if the provocation succeeds. You
Patrick O'Brian
#53. I'm probably the most militant person you'll ever meet and I speak my mind without provocation sometimes.
Octavia Spencer
#54. Recently I've been dreaming
of cursing old people
with little provocation,
because their culture
has a long history of enslaving,
raping, and segregating,
and they have special lights
which prevent us from dancing.
Matthew Rohrer
#55. You could get pretty angry with less provocation. She
Stieg Larsson
#56. Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.
Jeremy Collier
#58. That's Xenophilius Lovegood, he's the father of a friend of ours,' said Ron. His pugnacious tone indicated that they were not about to laugh at Xenophilius, despite the clear provocation. 'Come and dance,' he added abruptly to Hermione.
J.K. Rowling
#59. You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.
George Konrad
#60. So this is the way we live now: conditioned by the awareness that no North Korean provocation, however egregious, can be confronted, lest it furnish the occasion or pretext for something truly barbarous and insane.
Christopher Hitchens
#61. Let's just say, there's not much of a moon out tonight," Nose continued anyway, "but if Yale joined us, there would be.
Ripley Patton
#62. He's done what he said he'd do." She could feel the gentle provocation in his words, and it was what she needed. "He's done what he says he said.
James S.A. Corey
#63. The undutiful behaviour of children towards their parents is a very great provocation to God our common Father; and, if men do not punish it, he will.
Matthew Henry
#64. Provocation is on the opposite lane of resolution.
Toba Beta
#65. Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize aver its morality even if your life were threatened. I'm the tiebreaker.
Arthur C. Clarke
#66. No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives.
Walt Disney
#67. You know, fingers, they each have different meanings, but my interpretation of them are: promise, love, provocation, direction, and the thumb...well...GOOD LUCK!
Tohru Tagura
#68. I trust you not to kill, main, or drown me without just provocation.
Jena Leigh
#69. Any sin that any sinner ever committed, every sinner under proper provocation could commit.
Bob Jones, Sr.
#70. Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
Christopher Hitchens
#71. Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad.
Alexander Pope
#72. Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do that by telling a story or writing about a fresco by Giotto or studying how a snail climbs up a wall.
John Berger
#73. Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence
the drama of being her
was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation.
Jonathan Franzen
#75. I enjoy a challenge or provocation, something to think about, to talk about after it's done.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#76. Managers at [the nuclear] sector should know that we need diplomacy and not slogans, .. This [is] where we should use all our leverages with patience and wisdom, without provocation and slogans that can give pretexts to the enemies.
Bill Vaughan
#77. There are few who would not rather be taken in adultery than in provocation.
Aldous Huxley
#78. There is another serious thing to which many young men become addicted. This is anger. With the least provocation they explode into tantrums of uncontrolled rage. It is pitiful to see someone so weak. But even worse, they are prone to lose all sense of reason and do things which bring later regret.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#79. The life of the average person is often not based on provocation and grand adventures, but lived as homage to the wonder of the constant state of being.
Rhonda Laurel
#80. Write something the skeptics will sneer at.
Marty Rubin
#81. Funnily enough, it is the subject one dreads talking about at length one ends up talking about at length, often without the slightest provocation.
Marisha Pessl
#82. A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.
Edward Gibbon
#83. Try to reframe the provocation: Maybe he's having a rough day. There's no need to take it personally. Don't act like a jerk just because he is. He couldn't help it. This could be a testy situation, but easy does it.
Martin E.P. Seligman
#84. Some people think that my shows are just for shock value, but the provocation makes those classic pieces look different every six months. You don't need to see the same gray suit every season. But surrounding it with 40 really interesting ideas makes it feel new.
Thom Browne
#85. It seems to me probably that any one who has a series of intolerable positions to put up with must have been responsible for them to some extent ... they have contributed to it by impatience or intolerance, or brusqueness-or some provocation.
Robert Hugh Benson
#86. You don't need a provocateur,
if demon's been there within you.
Toba Beta
#88. All anger is not sinful, because some degree of it, and on some occasions, is inevitable. But it becomes sinful and contradicts the rule of Scripture when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long.
Wilson Mizner
#89. The world is a fabric woven of mysteries, and a mystery is a provocation to our humanity that cannot be dissolved by googling a few more bits of information.
Stratford Caldecott
#90. Agential realism is not a manifesto, it does not take for granted that all is or will or can be made manifest. On the contrary, it is a call, a plea, a provocation, a cry, a passionate yearning for an appreciation of, attention to the tissue of ethicality that runs through the world.
Karen Barad
#91. Voices urging her to try, to reach into herself, to draw out the power. Voices that could turn hard and cold at the slight provocation. Voices that wheedled and threatened and lied.
Cassandra Clare
#92. There is a claim coming from the West that says that all art must be outside any moral consideration. I can understand this as a provocation, but I also believe that we can still have very profound creativity with a moral sense.
Tariq Ramadan
#93. A skittish motorbike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness.
T.E. Lawrence
#94. For a man solemnly to undertake the interpretation of any portion of Scripture without invocation of God, to be taught and instructed by His Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who thus proudly engages in a work so much beyond his ability.
John Owen
#95. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation - much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.
Sarah Palin
#96. Every great artist has the sense of provocation.
Arthur Cravan
#97. Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him.
Meg Rosoff
#98. He broke me down past the flesh, past the muscle, past the bone, down to my soul and in a loud provocation, he asked, "What are you made of?"
After I gathered the broken bits and pieces of my life together, I shouted at the top of my lungs, "HOPE! Unbreakable, undeniable, irrevocable hope!
Jay Grewal
#99. Academic scientists aren't generally interested in books for the public. So when one comes out, the authors can't expect much praise from scientists. My goal both as a singer and an instructor is to educate through provocation and entertainment.
Greg Graffin
#100. Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves "thought experiments." You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.
Edward De Bono
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