Tom Petty Quotes

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

Dissidents can't be dissidents forever; we are dissidents because we don't want to be dissidents.

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

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I've pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid.

I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.

I never wanted the government to feel my pain. I wanted it to feel my boot in its butt.

I was always fighting the establishment, trying to run through brick walls.

I think it's important to rebel a little bit.

Some will say that I have an issue with authority, but I just like to question things.

I was never going to be one to just go away quietly and get on with things in the shadows.

I believe the defining moment was when certain persons, who shall remain nameless, objected to my fuchsia silk striped waistcoat. I loved that waistcoat. I put my foot down, right then and there; I do not mind telling you!" To punctuate his deeply offended feelings, he stamped one silver-and-pearl-decorated high heel firmly. "No one tells me what I can and cannot wear!" He snapped up a lace fan from where it lay on a hall table and fanned himself vigorously with it for emphasis.

You just rebel against everything. How are you going to survive? I don't know. I'm already tired.

Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.

I want to do something, right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own. That Rue was more than a piece in their Games. And so am I.

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

Stand up, speak out, and be bold. Screw political correctness. Never let them tell you to sit down and shut up.

Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.

It occurs to me that for a long time she has been doing her own version of resisting.

They say I'm difficult, so to put it simply....tell the world I never cared it was against me

Lives of great men all remind us, Greatness takes no easy way, All the heroes of tomorrow, Are the heretics of today. Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs, Heard the night cry "Down with traitors!" And the dawn shout "Up the rebs!"

Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.

People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.

Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.

Do not submit. It is extremely critical that repression be met full head-on and that it be resisted with every fiber in our being. There is just absolutely no compromise that can be made with it.

I didn't have this rebellious streak in me. To me, I'm a product of circumstance.