Provoke Thought Quotes & Sayings

His friends liked to hunt. Sometimes I went along."
"And here I thought you only fired at people," Celia called over from the other side of him.
"I rarely need to shoot in the course of performing my duties. But I do have to use my pistol occasionally." He slanted a glance at her. "Unlike you, my lady, I don't carry mine for show."
Her cheeks pinked, but she merely sniffed and halted to reload again. So did he.
He probably should stop tormenting her about her damned pocket pistol, but it still shook him. Powder or no powder, such a weapon could easily provoke a man to attack her.
Still, Jackson admitted that it probably wouldn't have that effect on this lot. They didn't seem the bullying sort, just the coax-a-woman-into-their-bed sort. — Sabrina Jeffries

My hope is to shed light, provoke thought, entertain, and move through dance. — Dwight Rhoden

The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought about that because I take the old-fashioned approach of equating tradition with value (which may be a failing). But whatever the case, positive tradition can also provoke opposition if it's too powerful, too overwhelming, too demanding. That would basically be about the human side of wanting to hold your own. — Gerhard Richter

One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other. — Victor Hugo

In function, Jesus's aphorisms are very much like his parables - provocative and invitational forms of speech. They provoke thought, lead people to reconsider their taken-for-granted assumptions, and invite them to see life differently. — Marcus J. Borg

Sometimes, self-pity was so ingrained in people that nothing could persuade them to take joy out of living. — Mary Balogh

One of the most astounding dynamics in human relationships is how the unconscious intuition of our brain's right hemisphere is able to act as radar to find us just the right person to provoke and recreate our childhood attachment relationship ... I've given much thought to the question of why we are designed to be drawn -like a moth to a flame- to the very person who is most likely to resurrect all our childhood anguish. It seems like a cruel hoax to play on two wounded souls. — Charlette Mikulka

Cross over children. All are welcome. All welcome. Go into the Light. There is peace and serenity in the Light. — Zelda Rubinstein

I've no idea what I shall do when I am grown! I don't suppose there is much call for Knights or Bishops or Heroines in Omaha or even Chicago. And I'm sure other girls are much better at it than I. — Catherynne M Valente

Socrates worked towards making people question themselves. He like to provoke self-interrogation but wasn't particularly interested in the answers that emerged; he just like to set off the thought process. — Eric Cantona

Jack Bogle's passionate cry of Enough! contains a thought-provoking litany of life lessons regarding our individual roles in commerce and society. Employing a seamless mix of personal anecdotes, hard evidence and all-too-often-underrated subjective admonitions, Bogle challenges each of us to aspire to become better members of our families, our professions and our communities. Rarely do so few pages provoke so much thought. Read this book. — David F. Swensen

Every copywriter knows what it is to struggle with a copy for hours, for days - fixing it, polishing it, rearranging it. We have all been quilty of leaving the headline until the last and the spending half and hour on it - or perhaps only ten minutes. — John Caples

Every director is completely different. — Miranda Otto

She should probably stop calling him "the Djinn." He did, after all, have a name. He was Khalil somebody. According to one of his companions, he was Khalil Somebody Important.
Grace wasn't sure, but she thought his name might be Khalil Bane of Her Existence, but she didn't want to call him that to his ... well, his face, when he chose to wear a face ... because she didn't want to provoke him any more than she already had, and she was really, really just hoping he might get bored and go away now that all the excitement had died down.
All the excitement was dying down now, wasn't it? — Thea Harrison

There was little Hiroko Tanaka hadn't learnt about the shameful resilience of the human heart. — Kamila Shamsie

I like poems that affect me emotionally and also provoke me to further, deeper thought. I enjoy challenge, but not, I think, for its own sake. — James Arthur

You didn't do anything to her, did you?"
"Nothing that would provoke her to flee." Except ruin her for any other man. And offer her a marriage of the sort she found appalling. And desire her with an intensity that made his throat close up at the thought of her gone. — Sabrina Jeffries

You seem to be under the impression that I work for you and you can give me orders. Let me fix that. I hung up. — Ilona Andrews

It's challenging to take on something else that is not you and make it very real and have others be able to associate with it. It's wonderful to provoke thought. — Dash Mihok

The purpose of a lecture should not be to impart information. There are books, libraries, nowadays the internet, for that. A lecture should inspire and provoke thought. — Richard Dawkins

Violence only makes a situation worse. It cannot help but provoke a violent response. Strictly speaking, satyagraha is not "nonviolence." It is a means, a method. The word we translate as "nonviolence" is a Sanskrit word central in Buddhism as well: ahimsa, the complete absence of violence in word and even thought as well as action. This sounds negative, just as "nonviolence" sounds passive. But like the English word "flawless," ahimsa denotes perfection. Ahimsa is unconditional love; satyagraha is love in action. Gandhi's message — Eknath Easwaran

The ecological complexities of existence overwhelm the human mind, even though some of that richness is an integral part of man's own nature. It is only by isolating some little part of that existence for a short time that it can be momentarily grasped: we learn only from samples. By separating primary from secondary qualities, by making mathematical description the test of truth, by utilizing only a part of the human self to explore only a part of its environment, the new science successfully turned the most significant attributes of life into purely secondary phenomena, ticketed for replacement by the machine. Thus living organisms, in their most typical functions and purposes, became superfluous. — Lewis Mumford

People might feel sorry for a man who's fallen on hard times, but when an entire nation is poor, the rest of the world assumes that all its people must be brainless, lazy, dirty, clumsy fools. Instead of pity, the people provoke laughter. It's all a joke: their culture, their customs, their practices. In time the rest of the world may, some of them, begin to feel ashamed for having thought this way, and when they look around and see immigrants from that poor country mopping their floors and doing all the other lowest paying jobs, naturally they worry about what might happen if these workers one day rose up against them. So, to keep things sweet, they start taking an interest in the immigrants' culture and sometimes even pretend they think of them as equals. — Orhan Pamuk

Before I read the 'Bloody Sunday' script, I have to admit I hadn't thought about it that much. There was probably even part of me which assumed there was no smoke without fire. That the Catholics who were shot must have done something to provoke such a response from the army. I was extremely ignorant of the whole situation. — James Nesbitt

Why not provoke some thought and get people talking about things? I like characters that are flawed because we all are. When people break up in a script, you think, Oh, right, there must be tears shed here. But maybe the fact of the matter is that they're both laughing. — Michael Fassbender

The bible knows nothing of solitary religion. — John Wesley

Like comedy, horror has an ability to provoke thought and further the conversation on real social issues in a very powerful way. — Jordan Peele

There is the inner life of thought which is our world of final reality. The world of memory, emotion, feeling, imagination, intelligence and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time consciously or unconsciously like the heartbeat.
There is also the thinking process by which we break into that inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it.
And that process of raid, or persuasion, or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn, and if we don't somehow learn it, then our minds line us like the fish in the pond of a man who can't fish. — Ted Hughes

I provoke thought, because that is what needs provoking. Humanity seems to hate thinking more than any other activity, and yet that is the activity most needed. I do what I can to force thought along, and I am hated and worse - ignored - for it. That's ultimately acceptable to me, because the work needs to be performed; I can perform it; and I wish to perform it. Let others appreciate it or not as they may; it pleases me to do what I do, so I do it. — Robert Peate

Outside there a lot of powerful stuff, starting from mind movies up to movies like drama, real life, horror, mysteries and many other. Music which makes your day interesting, quotes which change your thought, books which provoke and many other stuff... (So now you know what's everything about, Good Luck with the other Stuff!) — Deyth Banger

My dad and I are best friends. He's pretty much responsible for the way I turned out. He would provide a little artistic inspiration here and there in the form of a guitar, stuff like that. — Trent Reznor

My aim was not to fool. My aim was to provoke thought and stir emotion. — Casey Affleck

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths. — Criss Jami

we were appealing to another power in us which comes from our innate consciousness, the source of the sense of harmony. If it is effective, this power will be the reason for genius, for creative thought, creative in the sense that it works ahead of the known, the classified. Isn't it this consciousness of a new way, dictated to today's decadent world, which impels artists to destroy the idols of yesterday in order to attempt irrational expressions? They seek a concordance of the elements of "sensations," ignoring the rational combinations which only satisfy the inertia of acquired habit. Atmospheres, images, and forms are created to evoke a feeling, an emotion, to provoke a vital reaction. Art is the herald of the mentality of a period, the harbinger of its innermost tendency. — R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz