obstinacy

(ŏb'stə-nə-sē)
n., pl., -cies.

1. The state or quality of being stubborn or refractory.
2. The act or an instance of being stubborn or refractory.

View more Literature & Language videos

noun

1. The quality or state of being stubbornly unyielding: bullheadedness, doggedness, hardheadedness, mulishness, obstinateness, pertinaciousness, pertinacity, perverseness, perversity, pigheadedness, tenaciousness, tenacity, willfulness. See resist/yield.
2. The quality or condition of being unruly: disorderliness, fractiousness, indocility, intractability, intractableness, obstinateness, obstreperousness, recalcitrance, recalcitrancy, refractoriness, uncontrollability, uncontrollableness, ungovernableness, unmanageability, unruliness, untowardness, wildness. See control/uncontrol, order/disorder, peace/conflict, resist/yield.

Quotes:

"Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good." - Sir Thomas Browne

"They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance." - Edmund Burke

"Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we're so fond of it." - George Eliot

"Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind." - W. Somerset Maugham

"He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes." - Herman Melville

"Who is so deaf or so blind as he that willfully will neither hear nor see?" - English Proverb

See more famous quotes about Obstinacy

See words rhyming with "obstinacy."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Obstinacy.