Provoking Quotes

443 quotes by 317 authors

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I… — Charles Babbage
Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength. — Theodor Adorno
There are people out there who want to provoke me and bring back the old Mary but I'm not giving them the satisfaction. — Mary J. Blige
Television provokes strong opinions, and sometimes we try a bit too hard to appeal to everyone. — Jo Brand
To me, business isn't about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It's about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials. — Richard Branson
If delight may provoke men's labour, what greater delights is there then to behold the earth as apparelled with plants, as with a robe of… — John Gerard
If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to… — Sun Tzu
Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing. — Georges Sorel
My garden does not whet the appetite; it satisfies it. It does not provoke thirst through heedless indulgence, but slakes it by proffering its natural… — Epicurus
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… — Tom Peters
Spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing. — Friedrich Nietzsche
A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize. — Mark Twain
Those that achieve anything that looks beyond the vision and thinking of their peers provoke jealousy and hatred disguised as the ordinary. — Friedrich Nietzsche
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… — William Shakespeare
Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body. — Wassily Kandinsky
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge. — Francis Bacon
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… — Victor Hugo
For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times… — Marcel Proust
When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. — Marshall B. Rosenberg
Drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things . . . nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the… — William Shakespeare

Who Wrote These Provoking Quotes

317 authors contributed a total of 443 Provoking Quotes, led by these top contributors: