Seth Godin Quotes

Men acquiesce in a thousand things, once righteously and boldly done, to which, if proposed to them in advance, they might find endless objections.

I hope I don't have to buck the system. But if it requires bucking, I will do it.

There are .. two choices: obedience to institutional authority or radical dissent from it.

From childhood, we're trained to be a certain way, to behave a certain way - so that the power base can control us, really. And punk and drag are completely outside of that.

Defiance through compliance.

In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.

I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.

Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.

The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.

I didn't rebel in the way a lot of people do.

My problem has always been with authority, and I'm sure if anybody understands that, it's people in uniform.

Basically the school system sets you up with what it wants to set you up with. They're really good at it. I think they're too good. Problem is, what they're doing is conditioning kids to merely accept the culture at hand. But the rebels won't accept it.

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.

I don't run behind authority.

I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.

So I'm not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.

You know, you can't make the people do what you want them to do.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

I don't push buttons to push buttons. Throwing the rebel card out there is really cheap.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

I, for one, hope that youth will again revolt and again demoralize the dead weight of conformity that now lies upon us.

Men are destroyed for being rebellious, and women destroy themselves by failing to be rebellious. Unless you can make that next jump to either getting along with people or resisting people, you are ultimately destroying yourself.

The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.

We are not rebels. Rebels defy authority and break laws at will.

When you make your peace with authority you become authority.