Top 75 Provoke Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Provoke Quotes from famous people such as Kenneth Cole, Lars von Trier, Violet Chachki, Leonardo Bonucci, Slowthai, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

To the degree you could provoke people and engage them

To the degree you could provoke people and engage them in a unique way, your message is more likely to resonate longer. I figured out the less-than-140-character concept long before Twitter came along.
Kenneth Cole
If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.
Lars von Trier
I use glamour as a tool, almost like armor to confidently take up space, to provoke questions and conversations about society and gender norms.
Violet Chachki
We are professionals, we have to set the example and not provoke anyone.
Leonardo Bonucci
If I have a voice to shine light on things or draw attention or provoke, as an artist people look to – I should do that.
Slowthai
The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces.
Richard Dawkins
Marchionne has a clear vision of what F1 should represent for Ferrari, which is a purist sport that isn’t a shopping channel. I would strongly encourage the sport’s stakeholders not to provoke him.
Toto Wolff
The liberal-run institution of journalism does not allow probing of real problems facing black people. That is prohibited. It might lead to actual solutions. It might provoke black people to wake up every day looking for solutions rather than excuses and meaningless verbal offenses.
Jason Whitlock
Abnormal stresses and strains tend to accentuate man’s animal instincts and provoke irrational and socially disruptive behavior among the less stable individuals in the maddening crowd.
Norman Borlaug
Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it’s not merely about being oppositional, because that’s too negative.
Susie Orbach
I want to provoke people with thoughts, not by taking my clothes off. It’s time to move on from Stripperville.
Marina and the Diamonds
Each of us must decide whether it is more important to be proved right or to provoke righteousness.
Bernice King
The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don’t tell me jokes – I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.
Robin Williams
I want all my books to provoke some kind of response in the reader, to make them think something or feel something or both, and for that to become a part of them and work into their own lives.
Linda Sue Park
Chinese food tries to engage the mind, not just the palate. To provoke the intellect.
Nicole Mones
I became an actress to provoke people and move people and to tell the stories.
Alyssa Sutherland
Not just art for art’s sake, but I want to have films out there that will provoke authentic, holistic conversations about the human condition. And not provide the easy answers, but put it out there.
Isaiah Washington
‘Funny Games’ was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are, or respond to them as provocation, then that’s quite different. ‘Funny Games’ is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience.
Michael Haneke
I use humour a lot because humour is a great equaliser. Everyone laughs at the same things if you set them up properly, and that makes everybody equal. At the end of the day, I see my job as being there to entertain as well as inform and provoke.
Gurinder Chadha
When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.
Erica Jong
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 am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Charles Babbage
The bottom line is that sometimes the little things I do on the pitch provoke exaggerated reactions.
Diego Costa
Let’s find those people whose names do not cause controversy in our present and in our future. Let’s name the monuments and streets for those people whose names do not provoke conflict.
Volodymyr Zelensky
And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others.
Thomas More
During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me.
Scott Stossel
A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
Elie Wiesel
Sometimes I walk into a situation and know someone is going to provoke me, and I just simply refuse to be provoked.
Kofi Annan
Being in the wardrobe department meant me and a few other girls dressed the dancers during the show when they had quick changes. Thirty seconds to totally dress a sweaty dancer can be insane and provoke mucho anxiety. Doing this night after night was pretty cray, but I loved every minute of it.
Lourdes Leon
To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.
Ernst Fischer
I think cinema should provoke thoughts, sure, but using it as I soapbox I think is the wrong place. I never want to be part of something like that, where there’s an agenda there that’s not about telling a story, where its someone getting on a soapbox and preaching their own beliefs onto somebody.
Jeremy Renner
I believe in any country, matters that relate to its territory would, of course, provoke strong sentiments amongst the people of that country.
Naoto Kan
I like to provoke. I'm very French.

I like to provoke. I’m very French.
Carine Roitfeld
When you are on the street, if someone walks towards you it’s better to look down. But we were always looking at people in the eye to try to provoke something.
Marko Arnautovic
If one accepts Hezbollah’s self-description as a resistance movement, in which case one must, in light of the fact that Hezbollah never ceases to provoke, view Israel’s mere existence as a continuing act of aggression, then Hezbollah has indeed shown that it can initiate conflict, resist, and survive.
Mark Helprin
Why are these things happening in Portland? In part, it’s because we are a progressive community. Groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys… they come from the outside. They come here because they know that their message is not necessarily welcomed here. They’re trying to provoke a reaction.
Ted Wheeler
In all of my work I’m trying to create a dialogue, in which I want to provoke the recipients, stimulate them to use their own imaginations. I don’t just say things recipients want to hear, flatter their egos or comfort them by agreeing with them. I have to provoke them, to take them as seriously as I take myself.
Michael Haneke
Of all the logical impasses, unknowings, paradoxes, and terrors that provoke laughter, death by its finality and unsolvable mystery is paramount.
Andrew Hudgins
I think a lot before tweeting. I show it like I don’t, but I do. Sometimes I don’t mean it, sometimes I mean it, and sometimes I like to provoke a reaction from people. I enjoy reactions from them.
Ram Gopal Varma
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
And so we have to be careful with looking at additional stimulus that we don’t provoke an increase in the bond rate and then offset a lot of the stimulus we’ve already got.
Franklin Raines
And it says something about our level of disassociation, that we can provoke these wars abroad but we’re not allowed to see people get killed as a result.
Alex Cox
Herr Schroder has conducted two electoral campaigns, and he is doing it again now, by not telling people what is really necessary. He keeps avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable issues, those that imply changes and therefore provoke discussions.
Angela Merkel
If I wanted to make a quick buck, there’s far easier ways of doing it. What I want is to provoke people. If you want a hit song, all you need to do is rewrite an old song. It might have been proven to work, but you won’t be remembered the same way.
Avicii
If the North Korean Communists provoke another war, we must immediately deter it and give them a decisive counterattack at the initial place of aggression.
Park Chung-hee
I think to many people the term ‘activist film’ implies a film with a single point of view – something designed to provoke outrage and urge action on a particular issue – sort of the film equivalent of a rally. ‘If a Tree Falls’ is not that kind of film.
Marshall Curry
The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.
Octave Mirbeau
Just strictly from a business standpoint, kids are a liability to landlords, and they actually provoke evictions.
Matthew Desmond
RelayRides and WhipCar, AirBnB, Roomorama and One Fine Stay are all stellar examples of how new, access-based offers entice and provoke insurance companies and banks to re-think risk, value, customers and deal terms.
Lisa Gansky
I don’t just want to sing about simplistic things all the time. It’s good to have a mix of songs that have a real depth, and that provoke and challenge people, and then songs that are fun and people can enjoy.
Marina and the Diamonds
I think that’s what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it – in a world in which everything else is out of control.
T. C. Boyle