Antagonize Quotes

DON'T EVER ANTAGONIZE THE HORN. ~ Thomas Pynchon

In attempting to understand 9/11, the first question asked by the world's elites - as exemplified by leading media and academics - was, 'What did America do to provoke such hatred?' Ten years later, the same people are still asking the same question. And it is as morally repulsive now as it was then. It was always on par with 'What did the Jews do to antagonize the Germans? Or 'What did blacks do to enrage lynch mobs?' ~ Dennis Prager

Do not antagonize your son! He is of an age to choose for himself. Because his choice is not your choice, do not assume that you must be right. If it is a misfortune - then accept misfortune. Be at hand to aid him when he needs aid. But do not turn him against you. ~ Agatha Christie

So, how was work? You clearly missed me."

I put my hands on my face in embarrassment and he just laughs a bit to himself.

"It was boring." It's the truth.

"No one to antagonize, huh?"

"I tried abusing some of the gentle folk in payroll but they got all teary."

"The trick is to find that one person who can give it back as good as they can take it." He takes out a pan and begins to fry the vegetables in a single, stingy drop of oil.

"Sonja Rutherford, probably. That scary lady in the mailroom that looks like an albino Morticia Addams."

"Don't line my replacement up too quick. You'll hurt my feelings. ~ Sally Thorne

If you want to remain at liberty, I suggest you not antagonize your defenders. ~ Tess Gerritsen

It's a little dense, don't you think, to antagonize the strongest vampire in the house?'
Emmett threw his head back and snorted. 'PLEASE!'
[ ... ]
I took a deep breath. 'Emmett, how do you feel about a little bet?'
He was on his feet at once. 'Awesome. Bring it. ~ Stephenie Meyer

(People) either overestimate Satan's influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don't assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he's stirring up beneath the surface of our lives ... Satan is not God. And he is not God's counterpart or peer ... Satan is nothing but a copycat trying desperately to convince you he's more powerful than he actually is ... So even though he's given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don't need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him ... But we can't expect to experience this power unless we're serious about joining the battle in prayer. ~ Priscilla Shirer

I never meant to antagonize anyone. ~ Mohammed Morsi

You cannot antagonize and be a positive influence, and you will antagonize when you discipline through emotion. ~ John Wooden

Addressing global resentment cannot be put off. If we do not learn to use our predominant power with great restraint, we will antagonize the world. ~ Lee H. Hamilton

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good."
In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves - this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it. ~ Susan Bell

Your pretty college boy isn't so pretty anymore."
"He isn't my pretty college boy."
Our gazes locked.
"But I still think he's pretty pretty," I said, just to antagonize him.
See you in bed with him like I saw in the Silvers, I'll kill him.
I blinked. I did not just see that in Barrons' eyes. ~ Karen Marie Moning

How did you get into the castle, Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith?"
Sand shrugged. "A saint kidnapped me from his shrine and put me into a fireplace here. So I guess the answer is, a miracle of Saint Melor. Or so I think. He has not told me."
"If you are trying to antagonize him, you are doing a good job," Perrotte whispered.
Sand scuffed his shoe at her. "I'm just telling the truth!"
"You're very good at telling it in the most maddening way possible."
"Thank you? ~ Merrie Haskell

I want your word ... an oath."
"Well, drat." Sighing, he holds a palm over his chest as if pledging allegiance. "I vow on my life-magic not to send away or harm your precious boyfriend as long as he's loyal to you and your worthy cause. Although I reserve the right to antagonize him at every given opportunity. Oh, and I will happily explain all your questions." He bows then - every bit the gentleman. ~ A.G. Howard

All right," said Kaz. "Let's talk in the solarium. I'd prefer not to sweat through my suit." When the rest of them made to follow, Kaz halted and glanced over his shoulder. "Just me and the privateer."
Zoya tossed her glorious black mane and said, "We are the Triumvirate. We do not take orders from Kerch street rats with dubious haircuts."
"I can phrase it as a question if it will make your feathers lie flat," Kaz said.
"You insolent - "
"Zoya," said Sturmhond smoothly. "Let's not antagonize our new friends before they've even had a chance to cheat us. Lead on, Mister Brekker. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Never miss an opportunity to antagonize your allies while they're trying to save your ass. That's my motto. ~ W.B. McKay

It would be inadmissible if I would vent my opinion publicly. Not only could I harm the artist concerned seriously because people have so much respect for me and believe in me because of my musical accomplishments. And I could also antagonize people against me, because everyone has his own taste. We all make music, people can choose from that what they like. Every musician likes his own music the best, man. I don't want to attack that. I don't mind criticism, I can handle it, but most people can't. ~ Fela Kuti

You've got to honor your relationship with your audience - that they sit down because they want to be entertained. And that doesn't mean you can't provoke them and antagonize them and challenge them in the course of the entertainment as long as you keep the entertainment part of the equation alive. ~ David E. Kelley

When you resist a difficulty you antagonize it, and it bites back. ~ Emmet Fox

[There is] a widespread approach to ideas which Objectivism repudiates altogether: agnosticism. I mean this term in a sense which applies to the question of God, but to many other issues also, such as extra-sensory perception or the claim that the stars influence man's destiny. In regard to all such claims, the agnostic is the type who says, "I can't prove these claims are true, but you can't prove they are false, so the only proper conclusion is: I don't know; no one knows; no one can know one way or the other."

The agnostic viewpoint poses as fair, impartial, and balanced. See how many fallacies you can find in it. Here are a few obvious ones: First, the agnostic allows the arbitrary into the realm of human cognition. He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate - and then he regretfully says, "I don't know," instead of dismissing the arbitrary out of hand. Second, the onus-of-proof issue: the agnostic demands proof of a negative in a context where there is no evidence for the positive. "It's up to you," he says, "to prove that the fourth moon of Jupiter did not cause your sex life and that it was not a result of your previous incarnation as the Pharaoh of Egypt." Third, the agnostic says, "Maybe these things will one day be proved." In other words, he asserts possibilities or hypotheses with no jot of evidential basis.

The agnostic miscalculates. He thinks he is avoiding any position that will antagonize anybody. In fact, ~ Leonard Peikoff

Do not antagonize the cops, I told myself. Repeat if necessary: Do not antagonize the cops. ~ Gillian Flynn

For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend. ~ Garry Trudeau

Postmodernism thus is not relativism or skepticism, as its uncomprehending critics almost daily charge, but minutely close attention to detail, a sense for the complexity and multiplicity of things, for close readings, for detailed histories, for sensitivity to differences. The postmodernists think the devil is in the details, but they also have reason to hope that none of this will antagonize God. ~ John D. Caputo

I think kids like chaos, in an interesting way. I think kids like to push buttons in adults. They like to antagonize and cause trouble. I think it's the kid-like spirit that kids respond to. ~ Jason Lee

I've called in the oracles and they were communing with the Fates. But you know how they are. I'm sure it'll come back as 'When the sky is green,m and the earth turns black, the Daimons will give you lots of flack. To kill the great awful one you seek, you'll have to find something unique.' Or some bullshit like that. I really hate Oracles. If I wanted to play mind games, I'd buy a Rubik's Cube. (Acheron)
I don't know, Ash, you're pretty good at that. Sure you don't want to take up an Oracle position? (Kyrian)
Picture this, General, my middle finger is extended all the way up, and aimed right at you. Now let me work. I have Daimons to track, Dark-Hunters to antagonize, and women to seduce. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

But the truth is it's hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I've written. It's always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it'd be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I've published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this "look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate you" syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by "antagonize" or "aggravate" has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we're lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It's an anesthesia of "form." The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I'm not sure I could give you a steeple-fingere ~ David Foster Wallace

Darling, you have a brother fond of holding a gun on me, a sister who can shoot anything that moves, two other brothers who've repeatedly threatened to thrash me, and a grandmother who buys off constables. Do you really think I'm fool enough to antagonize them by committing adultery? ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Patch is the last person you want to antagonize. He doesn't hold grudges because the people who cross him tend to disappear quickly. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

About the only things that are unique to Earth are our biota and our culture. If aliens ever come here, they'd most likely be either biologists or music fans. Neither one has much reason to antagonize our armed forces. ~ Seth Shostak

Mmm," said Ares, without turning his head. "This war on terror isn't producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don't think they've got enough fire power yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan."
...
"There's always Russia," said Ares, "but they've been harder to provoke since the end of the Cold War. Why are mortals so hung up on peace?" He shuffled through his papers. "Or maybe it's time to broaden out some of the African civil wars? ~ Marie Phillips

Take the [1980] Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate. Carter kept trying to imply that somehow Ronald Reagan was going to push the button, or was irresponsible with nuclear war. You might have been able to make the case that Carter was responsible. But it's very tough when you see a person with Reagan's nice-guy persona up there to believe this guy somehow wants nuclear war, that he somehow wants to antagonize the Russians into an attack. It's just not credible; it doesn't cut with what all your other senses are telling you. ~ Roger Ailes