Defy your own group. Rebel against yourself.

The line urges a kind of nonconformity that goes beyond resisting outside pressure. “Defy your own group” targets the comfort and coercion of belonging—political, social, professional, or generational—where shared assumptions can harden into reflexes. The sharper turn, “Rebel against yourself,” frames the hardest dissent as internal: challenging one’s habits, self-image, and the narratives that make conformity feel like integrity. Read together, the quote advocates intellectual independence and moral self-scrutiny—an insistence on revising one’s views when evidence or conscience demands it, even at the cost of social friction or personal discomfort.