Provokes Quotes & Sayings

Horror, for me, is not defined by the thing that provokes one's fear, but the human being who has contact with it. — Andrew Pyper

Never do what the devil provokes you to do — Sunday Adelaja

It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war. We ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual decrease in human participation in technical operations. — Jacques Ellul

When man turns his back on the Creator's plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order. If man is not at peace with God, then earth itself cannot be at peace. — Pope John Paul II

That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, ... it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker. — Yann Martel

Eating highly seasoned food is unhealthful, because it stimulates too much, provokes the appetite too much, and often is indigestible. — Catharine Beecher

The peculiar problem of constant connectivity: any silence of more than a few hours provokes apocalyptic thoughts. — Dave Eggers

The Jew is not satisfied with de-Christianizing, he Judiazizes, he destroys the Catholic or Protestant faith, he provokes indifference but he imposes his idea of the world of morals and of life upon those whose faith he ruins. He works at his age old task, the annilation of the religion of Christ. — Bernard Lazare

This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Live in the kingdom of God in such a way that it provokes questions for which the gospel is the answer. — Lesslie Newbigin

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

We all know what we have to do what the inkling provokes us. We have to do the right thing. We have to make that extra push out of bed, or off the sofa. We must just do it. — Mark Andrew Poe

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers. — Leonard Bernstein

When something is dramatized, it provokes a much more emotive response than just hearing a story on the news. — Joanne Froggatt

For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,
he has come under the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nervousness always provokes mistakes, and mistakes lead to easy convictions. — S.R. Ford

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

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, 'Do this, do that,' but it's my demon who provokes me. — Ray Bradbury

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it. — Keith Haring

I'm much more about the emotion that a photograph provokes out of you and less about how technically brilliant it is. — Nigel Barker

Her virtues, graced with external gifts, Do breed love's settled passions in my heart; And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide, So am I driven by breath of her renown Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive Where I may have fruition of her love. — William Shakespeare

If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you. - — Epictetus

I think a game hits a high point when it provokes reactions the designer doesn't expect. — Brenda Brathwaite

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. — Andy Goldsworthy

The fool that willingly provokes a woman, has made himself another evil angel and a new hell to which all other torments are but mere pastime... — Francis Beaumont

Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies forcibly dragged Catholics into Protestant churches. Priests in the American West sometimes chained Indians to church pews to enforce church attendance. After many such episodes in Christendom it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Much of the current hostility against Christians evokes the memory of such examples. The blending of church and state may work for a time but it inevitably provokes a backlash, such as that seen in secular Europe today. — Philip Yancey

The American humorist sat on his couch suffering thoughts of her, trying to figure out how to win back her affections, wondering what had happened between them or just tumbling head-over-heels down into romantic oblivion where the image of a remembered kiss provokes bottomless despair and makes death seem like the right idea.
He experienced the basics of love ended. — Richard Brautigan

IN CINEMA IT IS NECESSARY NOT TO EXPLAIN, BUT TO ACT UPON THE VIEWER'S FEELINGS, AND THE EMOTION WHICH IS AWOKEN IS WHAT PROVOKES THOUGHT. — Andrei Tarkovsky

The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its use because of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because he is not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke. — Andrea Dworkin

Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. — Keith Haring

Why could Tolkien not be more like Sir Thomas Malory, asked [Edwin] Muir, in the third Observer review of those cited above, and give us heroes and heroines like Lancelot and Guinevere, who ' knew temptation, were sometimes unfaithful to their vows,' were engagingly marked by adulterous passion? But T.H. White had already considered that paradigm, was indeed rewriting it at the same time as Tolkien in The Once and Future King; and he had seen the core of Malory's work not in romantic vice but in the human urge to murder. In White the poisonous adder that provokes the last disastrous battle is no adder but a harmless grass-snake, and the flash of the sword which brings on the two armies is not natural self-defense but natural blood-lust, creating a continuum from cruelty to animals to world wars and holocausts. Malory has to be rewritten to encompass a new view of evil. — Tom Shippey

What provokes particular outrage and ridicule is the idea that children might feel good about themselves in the absence of impressive accomplishments, even though, as I'll show, studies find that unconditional self-esteem is a key component of psychological health. — Alfie Kohn

Manners matter, asserts the professor. What provokes rebellion, he asserts, is not as often a theory out allowing for arbitrary power but be excessive, brusque use of it by a particular individual. — Robert J. Allison

Human emotion is not a linear experience. That which provokes emotion in one may provoke little, if anything, in another. — A. Zavarelli

The music provokes a sharp longing the music soothes. — David Mitchell

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

The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it. — Nathan Myhrvold

Reflective learning provokes critical thinking, enabling us to pose relevant questions, revealing the profound oceans of ignorance that surround even the most learned scholars in our fields of modern knowledge, invoking us to be active participants in the crusade for equality, representation, and social justice. — Martin Guevara Urbina

An extraordinary and controversial interpretation of Shakespeare's origins, which certainly provokes much thought. A radical analysis of Shakespeare's text, leading to a conclusion which is bound to amaze the reader and the scholar. Who was Shakespeare? — Steven Berkoff

The worst enemy of humanity is U.S. capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that the national states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated. — Evo Morales

Suggestion is generally better than Definition. There is a seeming dogmatism about Definition that is often repellent, while Suggestion, on the contrary, disarms suspicion and summons to co-operation and experiment. Definition provokes discussion. Suggestion provokes to love and good works. Defining is limiting. Suggestion is enlarging. Defining calls a halt; Suggestion calls for an advance. Defining involves the peril of contentment: "I am here, I rest." "Thus far," says Definition, and draws a map. "Westward," cries Suggestion, and builds a boat. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

A true understanding of grace - of God's unmerited favor - always provokes a life of gratitude and obedience. — Anonymous

What I've found about 'Cinderella' is that what it provokes in an audience is really extraordinary. It appears to be a deceptively simple tale, but I've heard nothing but people drawing all different things out of it. — Kenneth Branagh

Reading something for the first time and getting this feeling like the material provokes you on some level, and doing the movie is really just sort of defining and figuring out why exactly you felt certain things when you read it. — Kristen Stewart

A good sermon is going to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. It inspires you. It provokes you. It should make your soul soar. — Rob Bell

His gentleman's hesitation in the car earlier is gone, replaced with a confidence that provokes. — K.A. Tucker

It is amazing how much our lack of trust provokes God if we request of him a boon that we do not expect — John Calvin

Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment, — Pema Chodron

So is jealousy natural? It depends. Fear is certainly natural, and like any other kind of insecurity, jealousy is an expression of fear. But whether or not someone else's sex life provokes fear depends on how sex is defined in a given society, relationship, and individual's personality. — Christopher Ryan

I want to make photographs whose very ambiguity provokes thought, rather than cuts it off prematurely. I want to make pictures that work on a more mysterious level, that approach the truth by a more circuitous route. — John Pfahl

The flow of the anointing oil provokes intense worship — Thea Harris

I heard the stories and registered them perhaps the way we all, from within our detailed lives, perceive facts--that is, we do not perceive them at all until they have been repeated countless times and, even then, understand them only partially. So much information is lost that every small loss provokes inexplicable grief. Power must know this. Power must know how fatigued human nature is, and how unready we are to listen, and how willing we are to settle for lies. Power must know that, ultimately, we would rather not know. — Hisham Matar

Above all there's a lack of personal discipline, manners, decorum, natural discretion. If everyone causes their own individual catastrophes, how can there fail to be more general catastrophes? After all, the passengers on a bus or streetcar make up a community of a kind. But they don't see it that way, not even in a moment of danger. As they see it they are bound always to be the other's enemy: for political, social, all sorts of reasons. Where so much hate has been bottled up, it is vented on inanimate things, and provokes the celebrated perversity of inanimate things. Sending experts into other countries won't help much, so long as each individual refuses to work out his own personal traffic plan. There is a wisdom in the accident of language by which there is a single word, "traffic," for movement in the streets, and for people's dealings with one another. — Joseph Roth

Holiness provokes hatred. The greater the holiness, the greater the human hostility toward it. It seems insane. No man was ever more loving than Jesus Christ. Yet even His love made people angry. His love was a perfect love, a transcendent and holy love, but HIs very love brought trauma to people. This kind of love is so majestic we can't stand it. — R.C. Sproul

Nothing provokes more cynicism than a great love that was not shared, but nothing produces more modesty either; I was utterly surprised to feel loved. The truth is: a passion that fully preoccupies a man draws women to him when he least wants them. Even if he is sentimental and tender by nature, when he is obsessed with another he becomes indifferent and almost brutal. Because he is unhappy, he sometimes allows himself to be temped by the offer of affection. As soon as he has tasted this affection, he tires of it and does not disguise the fact. Without wishing to and without even realizing it, he plays the most appalling game. He becomes dangerous and conquers because he himself has been vanquished. This was the case with me. I had never been more convinced of my own inability to attract women, I had never felt less desire to attract them, and I had never received so much clear proof of devotion and love. — Andre Maurois

Nothing is better proof of how far humanity has regressed than the impossibility of finding a single nation, a single tribe, among whom birth still provokes mourning and lamentations. — Emil Cioran

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge. — Francis Bacon

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country
indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky
provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut ...
... Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that. — Annie Proulx

Paradoxically, the simpler poetry is, the more difficult it becomes for a critic to discuss intelligently. Trained to explicate, the critic often loses the ability to evaluate literature outside the critical act. A work is good only in proportion to the richness and complexity of interpretations it provokes. — Dana Gioia

I have argued that philosophy doesn't begin in wonder or in the fact that things are, it begins in a realization that things are not what they might be. It begins with a sense of a lack, of something missing, and that provokes a series of questions. — Simon Critchley

Donald Saari uses a combination of stories and questions to challenge students to think critically about calculus. "When I finish this process," he explained, "I want the students to feel like they have invented calculus and that only some accident of birth kept them from beating Newton to the punch." In essence, he provokes them into inventing ways to find the area under the curve, breaking the process into the smallest concepts (not steps) and raising the questions that will Socratically pull them through the most difficult moments. Unlike so many in his discipline, he does not simply perform calculus in front of the students; rather, he raises the questions that will help them reason through the process, to see the nature of the questions and to think about how to answer them. "I want my students to construct their own understanding," he explains, "so they can tell a story about how to solve the problem. — Ken Bain

Do not lie to yourself: not every penny you invest in marketing and promotion is an actual investment. What's the difference? It is easy - if you spend your precious money in a marketing campaign and this provokes increased profit, then that is well invested money. — F. Marco-Serrano

When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Horizontal expansion loses the depth, though excessive depth that only provokes darkness is futile. Therefore a balance between depth and vastness is essential in learning — Priyavrat Thareja

Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone. — Jo Brand

I really like to travel when I write. Something about seeing new things and being in new cultures and environments provokes new thoughts in your head. — Josh Radnor

Listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy
let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like ... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it ...
ye-es ... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going. — Jonathan Stroud

If the good so loved and desired do appear possible and feasible in the attaining, then it exciteth the passion of hope, which is a compound of desire and expectation : when we look upon it as requiring our endeavour to attain it, and as it is to be had in a prescribed way, then it provokes the passion of courage or boldness, and concludes in resolution. Lastly, If this good be apprehended as preset, then ti provoketh to delight or joy. If the thing itself be present, the jy is greatest. If but the idea of it, either through the remainder or memory of the good that is past, or through the fore-apprehension of that which we expect, yet even this also exciteth our joy. And this joy is the perfection of all the rest of the affections, when it is raised on the full fruition of the good itself(575). — Richard Baxter

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company. — Samuel Johnson

The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes. — Tom Peters

But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work. — Sam Abell

What provokes me worst of all are our fateful bourgeois distinctions of rank. Of course I know as well as anyone that differences of class are necessary, and that they work greatly to my own advantage: but I wish they would not place obstacles in my way when I might enjoy a little pleasure ... — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Numb, I took the perfectly browned puff. Okay. Let me see if I have this right. Al provokes me into defending myself. I nearly kill him. Then Newt tries to kill me, thinking I'm Ku'Sox. Al stops her, saving my life. And now we're all going to have s'mores together? — Kim Harrison

The intellectual project of decolonizing has to set out ways to proceed through a colonizing world. It needs a radical compassion that reaches out, that seeks collaboration, and that is open to possibilities that can only be imagined as other things fall into place. Decolonizing Methodologies is not a method for revolution in a political sense but provokes some revolutionary thinking about the roles that knowledge, knowledge production, knowledge hierarchies and knowledge institutions play in decolonization and social transformation. — Zed Books

For men do easily part with their prince upon hopes of bettering their condition, and that hope provokes them to rebel; but most commonly they are mistaken, and experience tells them their condition is much worse. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I hope this story provokes you as much as it provoked me to write it. — Bill Myers

The jackdaw, stript of her stolen colours, provokes our laughter. — Horace

Great art is anything that provokes a deep emotinal reaction at the time that you hear it and then you can't get it out of your head. And then you go back and you experince something completely different to the thing that you experinced the first time. And wheather its a painting, a piece of music or a book. In a book, its that moment, when you put it down and you go:"I'm not quite the same person, that I was before I read that book" or "I'm not the same person I was before I saw this painting." That is great art. — Neil Gaiman

I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority. — Sherrie Levine

We've all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don't understand it at all. They assume I'm a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that's just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it. — James Meuer

My challenge as a satirical artist is how to present ideas to people to enable them to question and reexamine their beliefs. My hope is, that my work provokes people to look at things in a new way. — Joey Skaggs

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. — Walt Whitman

No one is self-sufficient.
And it's not a one-way thing-
-the generosity of spirit from one side provokes a response in kind from the other side. — Desmond Tutu

There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor's yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong. — Edward R. Murrow

So if hunger provokes wailing and wailing brings the breast; if the breast permits sucking and milk suggests its swallow; if swallowing issues in sleep and stomachy comfort, then need, ache, message, object, act, and satisfaction are soon associated like charms on a chain; shortly our wants begin to envision the things which well reduce them, and the organism is finally said to wish. — William H Gass

Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can
immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms
and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers. — George Packer

At its best, fiction cultivates fantasy and compassion; at its worst, memoir provokes schadenfreude and prurience. The ugly truth, I fear, is that many people are drawn to sensational memoirs for the same reason they watch 'The Apprentice': they like to witness actual suffering, before-your-very-eyes humiliation. — Julia Glass

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, — William Shakespeare

I am sometimes accused of being a dictator because I provoked the extraordinary elections by nominating the interim government. Can you imagine any dictator who provokes free elections in his own country? — Milos Zeman

Babies and the old are permitted self-absorption. In between, it provokes resentment. — Mason Cooley

Vodka goes well with a wintery perspective. Nothing else provokes such presentiments of falling snow except, for some, the communist seizure of the state. — Michele Bernstein

He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being. — Vladimir Nabokov

Truth provokes those whom it does not convert. — Thomas Wilson

Christ sometimes provokes a question so that He can be the answer. — Beth Moore

Nothing provokes speculation more than the sight of a woman enjoying herself. - — Louisa May Alcott

(The presence of evil) in his life provokes him into either overcoming it or yielding to it. If the first, it has led him to work for his own improvement; if the second it has led him to acknowledge his own weakness. Sooner or later, the unpleasant consequences of such weakness will lead him to grapple with it, and develop his power of will ... Immediately and directly, it may either strengthen him or weaken him. Ultimately, it can only strengthen him. — Paul Brunton

Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery. In itself weariness has something sickening about it. Here, I must conclude that it is good. For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it. — Albert Camus

There are two types of shot. The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case, although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on the target and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything has become mere routine. The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a distance provokes - paradoxically enough - a return to and an encounter with oneself. — Paulo Coelho

Is it a reproach on the form of our discipleship that the exhibition of actual suffering for Jesus on the part of those who walk in His steps always provokes astonishment as at the sight of something very unusual? — Charles M. Sheldon

Temptation provokes me to look upward to God. — John Bunyan