Non serviam is Latin for "I will not serve". The phrase is generally attributed to Lucifer, who is said to have spoken these words to express rejection to serve his God in the heavenly kingdom.
Today "Non serviam" is also used or referred to as motto by a number of political, cultural, and religious groups to express their wish not to conform; it may be used to express a radical view against established common beliefs and organisational structures accepted by the majority.
In James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Father Arnall uses the phrase "Non serviam: I will not serve" to characterize Lucifer's sin, an allusion to Lucifer's assertion of non serviam to God in Milton's Paradise Lost, where the fallen angel Mammon states that it is "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven". The protagonist Stephen Dedalus later echoes Lucifer in his decision to follow the life of the artist, telling Cranly, "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church." Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a dialectic approach, both assenting and denying, saying that Steven’s much noted non serviam is qualified - “I will not serve that which I no longer believe…”, and that the non serviam will always be balanced by Stephen’s “I am a servant…” and Molly’s “yes”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam
