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Reactionaries Quotes

Browse 210 quotes about Reactionaries.

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Reactionaries Quotes

“But the reactionaries were not in retreat. Many of them had predicted violence, and such predictions are always a conscious or unconscious invitation to action. When people, especially in public office, talk about bloodshed as a concomitant of integration, they stir and arouse the hoodlums to acts of destruction, and often work under cover to bring them about. In Montgomery several public officials had predicted violence, and violence there had to be if they were to save face.”

ViolenceCivil RightsOfficialsIntegrationPoliticiansReactionariesBloodshedPublic FiguresMontgomery Bus Boycott
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“At best, the American superhero is a 'morally neutral' enforcer of the status quo, that is to say, a souped-up policeman fighting scaled-up petty crime; at worst, he is a self-appointed vigilante delivering vengeance without the cumbersome red tape of a judicial system. Being 'morally neutral' means being complicit, and fetishising vigilantism borders on libertarianism (in the American sense), especially when the vigilante in question is a billionaire son of Gotham. To put it bluntly, the American superhero props up a reactionary, pro-capitalist view of the world.”

LibertarianismReactionariesSuperheroesVigilantismVigilantes
Book:The Cuckoo Cage: New Origin Stories
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“New York is the city of privilege. Here is the seat of the Invisible Power represented by the allied forces of finance and industry. This Invisible Government is reactionary, sinister, unscrupulous, mercenary, and sordid. It is wanting in national ideals and devoid of conscience... This kind of government must be scourged and destroyed.”

KindGovernmentForceCitiesNew YorkIndustryConscienceIdealsPrivilegeJewInvisibleFinanceDestroyedSeatsSinisterReactionariesMercenary
Author:William Jennings Bryan
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“The 'stream' we call science always flows forward; sometimes reactionary beavers block its flow, but the stream is never defeated by this; it accumulates, gathers strength; its waters get over the barrage and continue on their course. The advancement of science is the advancement of God, for science is nothing but human intelligence, and human intelligence is the most valuable treasure God has bequeathed us.”

HumansSometimesScienceCoursesWaterFlowAccountsValuableTreasureBlockStreamsDefeatedGet OverAdvancementReactionariesHuman IntelligenceBeaversAdvancement Of Science
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.”

PeopleNeedsRunningPoliticalFightingTeachStreetsRevolutionArmsStructureInternationalRevolutionaryPigsOrganizeUp And DownResistingPolitical PowerReactionaries
Author:Fred Hampton
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“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant.”

HelpingWould BeTodayHouseExistenceSupportClearRecordsMovementWingsHistoricalIslamInspiredConservativeBritishDefenseTerroristViolentSeptemberRight WingSeptember 11ExtremistFundamentalistReactionariesSexistTerrorist AttacksUltrasSeptember 11 2001
Author:Andre Vltchek
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“We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an Ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late.”

MenWellsMayGovernmentNationsHoursMoralDestinyStruggleIssuesRightsHe ManEternalLateDetermineCivil RightsCommunismClockToo LateStatus QuoGuardianIdeologicalEphemeralReactionariesMoral Issues
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back.”

MenStillsSelfFactsMovingUsedNamesSimpleCasesAwarenessLimitsLet MeBoundsPatternsResistanceBoatHungExclusiveClosingMoldReactionariesDiscarded
Author:Bruce Lee
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“An American economist of two generations ago, H. J. Davenport, who was the best friend Thorstein Veblen ever had (Veblen actually lived for a time in Davenport's coal cellar) once said: "There is no reason why theoretical economics should be a monopoly of the reactionaries." All my life I have tried to take this warning to heart, and I dare call it to your favorable attention.”

ShouldHeartSaidTwoReasonAttentionGenerationsEconomicsDareReason WhyNo ReasonWarningCoalEconomistMonopolyTheoreticalReactionariesCellars
Book:The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul Samuelson, Volume 3
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“Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men.”

PeopleMenDoeMadeProcessChallengesPracticeEducationalBrandsLiberationRevolutionaryDreamerReactionariesDepositsPedagogy
Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition
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“The Tories had the legal right to demand extra meetings of the council but I could decide when they would be held and always called them for Friday afternoons, knowing that three or four of the richer Tories went to the country early and were not prepared to stay in the city beyond lunchtime. I realised that nothing in politics is new when I read in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars that Julius Caesar pulled the same trick when reactionaries in the senate were making his life difficult.”

CountryWould BeThreeDifficultCitiesKnowingFourDemandMeetingsPreparedTricksExtrasAfternoonSenateTwelveFridayCouncilRealisedReactionariesJuliusLunchtimeFriday Afternoon
Author:Ken Livingstone
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“Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, "taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power." History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration.”

RealAttitudeMovementTaughtLessonsAuthorityConservativeCampaignsResentmentAdorationEnviousReactionariesPopulistVicarious
Book:For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
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“Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large.”

MenKindRealStrongNumbersBrainQualityVariousIgnorantTendenciesAll KindsEducatedRangeSubstitutesMediocritySensibilityFinestSpecialistsReactionariesRespectability
Book:A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems
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“The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.”

WantLooksWholeRoomsClassFeetParticularLowsMalesVery GoodMannersGood ManShellsShockedBeamScottishReactionariesGood MannersBangingUpper ClassMale Chauvinist
Author:Jilly Cooper
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“When our party took over political power, the exploiting classes and reactionary forces went into action. The only rusty and antiquated tool that they use against us is preaching in the name of faith and religion against the progressive movement of our homeland... They ought to be uprooted as a cancerous tumor is from the body of a patient in a surgical operation.”

UseBodyActionPoliticalNamesForcePartyClassMovementOughtToolsPatientOperationsProgressivePreachingHomelandPolitical PowerReactionariesTumorsProgressive Movement
Author:Nur Muhammad Taraki
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“TV taste is an aftertaste. Whatever gets on the tube is always a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. That is, any new ideas or social changes have already been fought for in the real world of the streets, or in the bedroom or even the law courts long before they reach the screen. By the time you see it on prime time, it's usually all over and done with, whatever it was. Television by definition is not avant garde. It is often reactionary and always sentimental.”

WorldLongIdeasRealDoneLawSocialStreetsTelevisionTvsTasteCourtDefinitionsScreensConclusionPrimeReal WorldNew IdeasBedroomSentimentalSocial ChangeTubesReactionariesAvant GardePrime TimeLaw Courts
Book:Mind Over Media: Essays on Film and Television
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“The predominant teachings of this age are that there are no limits to man's capacity to govern others and that, therefore, no limitations ought to be imposed upon government. The older faith, born of long ages of suffering under man's dominion over man, was that the exercise of unlimited power by men with limited minds and self-regarding prejudices is soon oppressive, reactionary, and corrupt. The older faith taught that the very condition of progress was the limitation of power to the capacity and the virtue of rulers.”

MenMindLongSelfGovernmentAgeSufferingBornVirtueProgressTeachingConditionsTaughtOughtExerciseLimitsCapacityEconomicsPrejudiceLimitationRulersUnlimitedDominionReactionariesUnlimited Power
Author:Walter Lippmann
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“Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them!”

IfsMenFirstsKindIdeasHelpingSeemsFoundSocialProcessAttitudeMoralDivineWillingInvolvedDemandWorshipNotionDivinityCommentParticipationSubmissionScornImperativesCharitableReactionariesGod HelpOutragedAnti SocialEscapistsDivine Will
Author:Charles le Gai Eaton
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“Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.”

IfsMenBelieveSometimesReasonPhilosophyStarsChallengesBrainProgressDangerousTheoryBlindMereCornersReasoningCriticizeMistakenItemsCorrectionsLiablePrevailingReactionariesBlind FaithMisledGuiding Stars
Book:To make the deaf hear: ideology and programme of Bhagat Singh and his comrades
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“On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit. Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.”

MenShouldEnoughMightLawMoralReadyBasesDeterminedLikesFamiliarSuitsIceProphetSinnerRoughCreamIce CreamGrandeurEccentricSteakReactionariesCrank
Author:Louis Kronenberger
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“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt's and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”

IfsWayShouldDifferentProblemGovernmentLawCoursesViewsPrinciplesImpossibleBasesConstitutionMethodWork OutAriseAdministrationDifferent WaysReactionaries
Author:William Howard Taft
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