Origin
Biblical references to the fall of Lucifer or Satan do not quote these words.
However, in the Latin Vulgate, Jeremiah laments that the people of Israel speak "Non serviam" to express their rejection of God.
The words became a general expression of the basic manner of rejecting God, such that it would apply to the fall of Lucifer. The words have thus been attributed to Lucifer.
In modern times "Non serviam" developed also into a general phrase used by modernists to express radical, sometimes even revolutionary rejection of conformity, not necessarily limited to religious matters only and as expressed in modern literary adaptations of the motto.
Read more about this topic: Non Serviam
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)