In moments when challenges feel overwhelming, a powerful quote can provide the spark needed to keep pushing forward. Motivational resistance quotes inspire resilience, determination, and the strength to overcome obstacles. We've gathered a curated collection of the top 78 quotes that encourage perseverance and empower you to face adversity head-on. Whether you’re battling self-doubt or external resistance, these words of wisdom will help fuel your journey toward success.
1. “An Widerständen zeigt sich das Genie des Generals, Glück verhüllt es.” - Horace
2. “If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” - Malcom X
3. “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
4. “I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet” - Subcomandante Marcos
5. “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
6. “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
7. “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
8. “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
9. “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
10. “Sometimes it's appropriate to scream at them.” - Dr. Helen Caldicott
11. “Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.” - Virginia Woolf
12. “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
13. “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
14. “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
15. “There are many things to resist, but disease is not one of them.” - Herbert M Shelton
16. “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
17. “Where there is power, there is resistance.” - Michel Foucault
18. “Wahrscheinlich kann man vom Nichtwollen seelisch nicht leben; eine Sache nicht tun wollen, das ist auf Dauer kein Lebensinhalt.” - Thomas Mann
19. “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
20. “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]
21. “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
22. “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
23. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” - Leonardo da Vinci
24. “After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.” - Terry Eagleton
25. “The Mayor spoke proudly. 'Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brae man will have made them a little braver.' He smiled apologetically. 'You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.'Lanser said, "If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life.'And Winter broke in angrily, 'They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel.” - John Steinbeck
26. “You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.” - Henrik Ibsen
27. “Resistance is common to the unusual.” - Toba Beta
28. “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
29. “If the prisoner is beaten, it is an arrogant expression of fear.” - Ghassan Kanafani
30. “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
31. “Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.” - Criss Jami
32. “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
33. “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
34. “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
35. “When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
36. “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
37. “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
38. “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
39. “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
40. “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
41. “Persistence wears down resistance.” - William J Federer
42. “I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.” - Diet Eman
43. “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
44. “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
45. “Acceptance means events can make it through you without resistance” - Michael A. Singer
46. “The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.” - Mike Davis
47. “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
48. “It is true that in general, energy which is aimed at positive factors usually obtains better results than energy invested in resistance!” - Iris Eshel
49. “We're not afraid of sanctions. We're not afraid of military invasion. What frightens us is the invasion of western immorality.” - Ruhollah Khomeini
50. “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
51. “It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels.” - Carl Oglesby
52. “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
53. “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
54. “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
55. “This is your time and it feels normal to you, but really, there is no normal. There's only change and resistance to it and then more change.” - Meryl Streep
56. “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
57. “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
58. “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
59. “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
60. “Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they had been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities. Without that desperately needed legitimacy, the dictators cannot continue to rule indefinitely.” - Gene Sharp
61. “A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.” - Alanis Morissette
62. “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
63. “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
64. “Once we recognize our shadow's existence we must resist the enticing step of going with its flow.” - Karl Marlantes
65. “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
66. “Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.” - Steven Pressfield
67. “To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.” - Steven Pressfield
68. “Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.” - Steven Pressfield
69. “Resistance has no conscience.” - Steven Pressfield
70. “Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” - Steven Pressfield
71. “Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable.” - Steven Pressfield
72. “We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield
73. “We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield
74. “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
75. “Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield
76. “Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.” - Steven Pressfield
77. “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
78. “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.” - Steven Pressfield
