105 Resistance Quotes

Are you in search of inspiration to persist through the challenges life throws your way? Whether you're facing personal struggles, societal pressures, or just need a pick-me-up to bolster your spirit, words have a remarkable power to motivate and encourage. In this blog post, we've curated a selection of the top 105 resistance quotes. These powerful reflections from thinkers, leaders, and change-makers across history will inspire you to stand strong, fight back, and continue your journey with unwavering resolve. Dive in and let these words of wisdom invigorate your soul and reinforce your determination.

1. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]” - Karl Marx

2. “The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.” - Susan Sontag

3. “An Widerständen zeigt sich das Genie des Generals, Glück verhüllt es.” - Horace

4. “If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” - Malcom X

5. “If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

6. “Remember that on any world the wind eventually wears away the stone, because the stone can only crumble; the wind can change.” - A.C. Crispin

7. “I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet” - Subcomandante Marcos

8. “The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.” - Seth Godin

9. “I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair.” - bell hooks

10. “It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist – the potential victim within that we must rescue – otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.” - bell hooks

11. “Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is... The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds. ” - Dan Millman

12. “Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.” - Woodrow Wilson

13. “People don't resist change. They resist being changed.” - Peter Senge

14. “Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.” - Michel Foucault

15. “Our experience of the governments of the world, our knowledge of the weapons at their disposal, and our awareness of our own limitations justify pessimism. But some mysterious factor deep in the human psyche has produced a countervailing conviction that educating, organizing, uniting, and acting will make a difference. ” - David Dellinger

16. “Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.” - Virginia Woolf

17. “Down, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

18. “Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.” - Leon Uris

19. “Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers. ” - Leon Uris

20. “Before he'd met Anna, he'd thought he'd known what love was, thought he'd understood about friendship, romance, all o fit, but he hadn't - not at all. Until he'd held Anna in his arms, until he'd let her see his soul, until he'd heard her cry gently when he made love to her for the first time, he'd known nothing.” - Gemma Malley

21. “We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

22. “We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both.” - Tiffany Madison

23. “There is a heady sense of manhood that comes from advancing from apathy to commitment, from timidity to courage, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last.” - David T. Dellinger

24. “Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.” - Michel Foucault

25. “Where there is power, there is resistance.” - Michel Foucault

26. “Wahrscheinlich kann man vom Nichtwollen seelisch nicht leben; eine Sache nicht tun wollen, das ist auf Dauer kein Lebensinhalt.” - Thomas Mann

27. “As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.)” - Christopher Hitchens

28. “Les vases du fleuve ensevelissaient ces vengeances obscures, sauvages et légitimes, héroïsmes inconnus, attaques muettes, plus périlleuses que les batailles au grand jour et sans le retentissement de la gloire.Car la haine de l'Étranger arme toujours quelques Intrépides prêts à mourir pour une Idée.” - Guy de Maupassant

29. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also...but of course if you were able to stand soberly after the first slap.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

30. “You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.” - Lauren Oliver

31. “Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too.” - Ulrike Meinhof

32. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” - Leonardo da Vinci

33. “After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.” - Terry Eagleton

34. “People tend to resist a change into something new and different.But after it's succeded, they easily say that the change is a must.” - Toba Beta

35. “I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.” - John Steinbeck

36. “You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.” - Henrik Ibsen

37. “Resistance is common to the unusual.” - Toba Beta

38. “We have been waiting for an hour when we see a squad of German soldiers line up on the roadbed alongside the train. Next comes a column of people in civilian clothes. Surely they are Jews. All of them are rather well dressed, with suitcases in their hands as if departing peacefully on vacation. They climb aboard the train while a sergeant major keeps them moving along, “Schnell, schnell.” There are men and women of all ages, even children. Among them I see one of my former students, Jeanine Crémieux. She got married in 1941 and had a baby last spring. She is holding the infant in her left arm and a suitcase in her right hand. The first step is very high above the rocky roadbed. She puts the suitcase on the step and holds on with one hand to the doorjamb, but she can’t quite hoist herself up. The sergeant major comes running, hollers, and kicks her in the rear. Losing her balance, she screams as her baby falls to the ground, a pathetic little white wailing heap. I will never know if it was hurt, because my friends pulled me back and grabbed my hand just as I was about to shoot.Today I know what hate is, real hate, and I swear to myself that these acts will be paid for.” - Lucie Aubrac

39. “They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.” - N. Scott Momaday

40. “If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear.” - Ghassan Kanafani

41. “I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.” - Margaret Atwood

42. “Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.” - Criss Jami

43. “A match as a penBlood on the floor as inkThe forgotten gauze cover as paperBut what should I write?I might just manage my addressThis ink is strange; it clotsI write you from a prisonin Greece” - Alexanderos Panagoulis

44. “The foreign states may become actively involved for positive purposes only if and when the internal resistance movement has already begun shaking the dictatorship, having thereby focused international attention on the brutal nature of the regime.” - Gene Sharp

45. “Resistance is a powerful motivator precisely because it enables us to fulfill our longing to achieve our goals while letting us boldly recognize and name the obstacles to those achievements.” - Derrick Bell

46. “If you were meant to cure cancer or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God.” - Stephen Pressfield

47. “If you're are paralyzed with fear it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.” - Steven Pressfield

48. “And let's just be honest, there is no such place called 'justice,' if by that we envision a finish line, or a point at which the battle is won and the need to continue the struggle over with. After all, even when you succeed in obtaining a measure of justice, you're always forced to mobilize to defend that which you've won. There is no looming vacation. But there is redemption in struggle.” - Tim Wise

49. “Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection, despite its ugliness. I take it for granted that to create a tree I condemn a seed to rot. If the first act of resistance comes too late it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless, the awakening of resistance. Life may grow from it as from a seed.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

50. “When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

51. “What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.” - Lierre Keith

52. “This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture -civilization- is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.” - Derrick Jensen

53. “The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn't just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an ecological serial killer, and it's long past time for us to recognize the pattern.” - Aric McBay

54. “For those of us who can't be active on the front lines - and this will be most of us - our job is to create a culture that will encourage and promote political resistance. The main tasks will be loyalty and material support.” - Lierre Keith

55. “So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.” - E.M. Forster

56. “I believe in the magic and authority of words.” - Rene Char

57. “Persistence wears down resistance.” - William J Federer

58. “I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.” - Diet Eman

59. “Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.” - Donald Miller

60. “Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.” - Naomi Klein

61. “Acceptance means events can make it through you without resistance” - Michael A. Singer

62. “I like to call a spade a spade in politics and in everything else. That's why the zionists and the americans...The top officials hate Saddam Hussein.The White House is lying once again. He's a liar.He's the world's number one liar.He said there were chemical weapons in Iraq, and that Iraq is connected with terrorism.Later he declared: 'We didn't find any of this in Iraq.'What I want to say is that he also declared that what Saddam Hussein says is not true...This is defamation of your president of thirty five years.” - Saddam Hussein

63. “The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.” - Mike Davis

64. “Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician.Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there.Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16.A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you.Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine.” - Suheir Hammad

65. “It is true that in general, energy which is aimed at positive factors usually obtains better results than energy invested in resistance!” - Iris Eshel

66. “We're not afraid of sanctions. We're not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of western immorality.” - Ruhollah Khomeini

67. “People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” - Assata Shakur

68. “[I]f subjects must never resist, it follows that every prince, without any effort, policy, or violence, is at once rendered absolute and uncontrollable;” - David Hume

69. “It's about more than us, now, can't you see? I love you, of course I do, but some things...some things just have to be done.” - Natasha Farrant

70. “But I was only a chaotic walker, nobody could stop me; even a totalitarian state was not able to control my daydreams, my poetic fascinations, the pattern of my walking.” - Adam Zagajewski

71. “What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.” - Irvine Welsh

72. “We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention. That certainly her life should not be an example to us. (The life of the plankton, she read in this book on the life of the earth, depends on the turbulence of the sea) We were told that she moved too hastily. Placed her life in the stream of ideas just born. For instance, had a child out of wedlock, we were told. For instance, refused to be married. For instance, walked the streets alone, where ladies never did, and we should have little regard for her, even despite the brilliance of her words. (She read that the plankton are slightly denser than water) For she had no respect for boundaries, we were told. And when her father threatened her mother, she placed her body between them. (That because of this greater heaviness, the plankton sink into deeper waters) And she went where she should not have gone, even into her sister's marriage. And because she imagined her sister to be suffering what her mother had suffered, she removed her sister from that marriage. (And that these deeper waters provide new sources of nourishment) That she moved from passion. From unconscious feeling, allowing deep and troubled emotions to control her soul. (But if the plankton sinks deeper, as it would in calm waters, she read) But we say that to her passion, she brought lucidity (it sinks out of the light, and it is only the turbulence of the sea, she read) and to her vision, she gave the substance of her life (which throws the plankton back to the light). For the way her words illuminated her life we say we have great regard. We say we have listened to her voice asking, "of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?" (And she understood that without light, the plankton cannot live and from the pages of this book she also read that the animal life of the oceans, and hence our life, depends on the plankton and thus the turbulence of the sea for survival.) By her words we are brought to our own lives, and are overwhelmed by our feelings which we had held beneath the surface for so long. And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.” - Susan Griffin

73. “Rise to the challenge of bringing your dreams to life! Do not be discouraged by resistance, be nourished by it. Success is the experience of rising to the level of your true greatness.” - Steve Maraboli

74. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield

75. “What rights are those that dare not resist for them?” - Alfred Lord Tennyson

76. “Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.” - Edward W. Said

77. “Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.” - Tiffany Madison

78. “Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors.” - Gene Sharp

79. “A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.” - Alanis Morissette

80. “Marxism teaches that exploitation and degradation somehow produce resistance and revolution. It's been hard to say why. What I've learned from women's experience with sexuality is that exploitation and degradation produce grateful complicity in exchange for survival. They produce self-loathing to the point of extinction of self, and it is respect for self that makes resistance conceivable.” - Catharine A. MacKinnon

81. “There wasn't in the beginning. It wasn't until your kind discovered what was happening that any resistance started. That seems to be the key—knowing what’s going to happen.” - Stephenie Meyer

82. “His rules were thus: One, resist when beneficial to the cause. Two, dignity before humiliation. Three, don’t show true emotions.” - Courtney Kirchoff

83. “Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow.” - Karl Marlantes

84. “It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield

85. “Lat at nigh have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were mean to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't pain, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.” - Steven Pressfield

86. “Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.” - Steven Pressfield

87. “To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.” - Steven Pressfield

88. “Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?” - Steven Pressfield

89. “In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield

90. “Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.” - Steven Pressfield

91. “Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.” - Steven Pressfield

92. “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.” - Steven Pressfield

93. “Resistance has no conscience.” - Steven Pressfield

94. “Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” - Steven Pressfield

95. “Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable.” - Steven Pressfield

96. “We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield

97. “Resistance's goal is not to would or disable. Resistance aims to kill.” - Steven Pressfield

98. “Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a high station morally, ethically, or spiritually.” - Steven Pressfield

99. “Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.” - Steven Pressfield

100. “The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance.This second, we can sit down and do our work.” - Steven Pressfield

101. “Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield

102. “Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.” - Steven Pressfield

103. “Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is that it means there's tremendous love there too.” - Steven Pressfield

104. “The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will fell when you finally do it.” - Steven Pressfield

105. “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield