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Subversion Quotes

Browse 91 quotes about Subversion.

Subversion Quotes

“She was back. Even so, Will didn't move. He would wait her out, fake-relaxing in the uncomfortable chair with his head not against the wall, tapping his hands to Bureaucratic Barbara's brainwashing beat as an act of solidarity with every other man she'd tried to enervate with her bell and refusal to offer change. [inner dialog of Will Phillips]”

StrengthIdentityCourtSolidarityManhoodBureaucracyTransSubversionDissidentAdjuster
Book:Adjustments
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“I propose a conspiracy of orphans. We exchange winks. We reject hierarchies. All hierarchies. We take the shit of the world for granted and we exchange stories about how we nevertheless get by. We are impertinent. More than half the stars in the universe are orphan-stars belonging to no constellation. And they give off more light than all the constellation stars.”

IndividualitySolidarityOrphanSubversionInstitutionConstellationHierarchies
Book:Confabulations
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“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

InspirationalHumanityFreedomCompassionInequalityKinshipRadicalismSubversion
Book:Debs: His Life, Writings and Speeches
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“The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of power, seduction, opposition, or complicity. Such loving is creative and subversive. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of blame and judgement and engages experience at the level of origin, structure, and destiny.”

LoveCreativityDestinyPowerJudgementSubversion
Book:Anam Cara [Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition]: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
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“There are Tantrics who deliberately break taboos and social norms and then there are other Tantrics who, by means of their practices and the way that they practice, that to society in general, it may have the appearance of breaking social norms but in fact that is just the manifestation of the progress of their practice.”

InspirationSpiritualityFreedomMagicSelf EsteemIndependenceSexualityRevolutionaryEcstasyAutonomySpiritual JourneyTantraSpiritual TransformationArtists QuotesInitiationShamanismSubversionBhaktiShapeshifterSelf ExaminationAnimismOutcastsTaboosZeena SchreckTaboo BreakingWomen WarriorsDissidentLeft Hand PathTantric BuddhismJivanmuktiVamamarga
Author:Zeena Schreck
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“Watch a man--say, a politician--being interviewed on television, an you are observing a demonstration of what both he and his interrogators learned in school: all questions have answers, and it is a good thing to give an answer even if there is none to give, even if you don't understand the question, even if the question contains erroneous assumptions, even if you are ignorant of the facts required to answer. Have you ever heard a man being interviewed say, "I don't have the faintest idea," or "I don't know enough even to guess," or "I have been asked that question before, but all my answers to it seem to be wrong?" One does not "blame" men, especially if they are politicians, for providing instant answers to all questions. The public requires that they do, since the public has learned that instant answer giving is the most important sign of an educated man.”

PoliticsEducationKnowledgeTelevisionThoughtInterviewsPoliticiansCritical ThinkingSubversionRecall
Author:Neil Postman
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“I had artistic classical training, and when you learn the classics for so many years, you might gain audacity, power and confidence to subvert everything. I am like the originals buffoons. I love the rules because I can break them.”

ArtConfidenceArtistsRulesArtistrySubversiveConfidentConfidence QuotesAudacityArtists QuotesArtistic ExpressionArtists LifeSubversionConfidence And AttitudeBuffoonsBreaking RulesClassical EducationBuffonBreaking The RulesBuffooneryBuffoon
Author:Nuno Roque
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“special thanks to Martha Sharpe and everyone at Anansi; to Mandy Barber, for the use of her stunning visual art; to Karen Mac Cormack, for her advice during the early stages of this project; and to David Bromige (weaver of radhats), for his enthusiasm which encouraged me to develop this piece into a book-length poem.”

PunishmentSubversionBleeding HeartParasitePutridGram ParsonsCycle Of DefeatMetalhead
Book:The Tapeworm Foundry: And or the Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination
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“Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union, and show him a concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand, but not before that. That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”

PropagandaCritical ThinkingMainstream MediaSubversionHard TruthTrue FactsRedpillIdeological Subversion
Author:Yuri Bezmenov
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“One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. "I thank God," he said, that "there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them...God save us from both!”

EducationRevivalSubversionCritical PedagogyAnabaptist
Book:Illiterate America
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“There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation.”

InspirationSpiritualityFreedomMagicSelf EsteemFemaleIndependenceSexualityRevolutionaryEcstasyAutonomySpiritual JourneyTantraSpiritual TransformationInitiationShamanismSubversionBhaktiShapeshifterSelf ExaminationAnimismOutcastsTaboosZeena SchreckTaboo BreakingWomen WarriorsDissidentLeft Hand PathTantric BuddhismJivanmuktiVamamarga
Author:Zeena Schreck
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“Je précise que je crois profondément à bien peu de choses, deux ou trois. La justice sociale, l’éducation, la subversion [...]. Je crois profondément que l’avenir de l’Homme et de sa fiancée ne se joue pas à la Bourse, à l’Université, dans un Parlement, dans un journal, dans un laboratoire de recherche. Je crois profondément que l’avenir de l’humanité se joue, chaque jour, dans la classe d’un prof de philo qui donne un cours sur le libre-arbitre à de futurs plombiers, de futurs flics, coiffeuses, infirmiers, informaticiennes et vendeurs de chars usagés. » (Pierre Foglia, éditorial, La Presse, 16 mai 1996)”

JusticeSubversionPhilosophieAveniréDucation
Author:Pierre Foglia
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“Since 1945 there has been no Third World War. The development of nuclear weapons may prevent such a catastrophe. In the two World Wars words were one of a variety of weapons in the armory of the belligerent powers. In future, because of the advent of nuclear weapons, words may be the only arms which the super-powers can employ without risking annihilation.”

IntelligencePropagandaSubversionPsychological WarfarePsyopsGreat Power CompetitionStratcom
Book:The Art of Psychological Warfare, 1914-1945
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“There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.”

WayMeanIdeasWarPlayProgressRevolutionHealthyPolicePeacefulRecognitionReformInvitesStableSubversiveSubversionFree PlayThought Police
Book:The Best of I.F. Stone
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“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

NeedsPhilosophyRealityIntellectualConceptsConcernLaborCommittedSeparationAbstractBoresManualsUntruePrevailingEnslavementTranscendingPhilosophicSubversionManual Labor
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“The act of greatest subversion ... is the one of indifference. A man, or a group, finds it unbearable that someone can be simply uninterested in his, or its, convictions. ... There is a degree of complicity, or mutual respect, between the believer and the man who attacks his beliefs (the revolutionary), for the latter takes them seriously.”

MenBeliefGroupsHe ManDegreesConvictionBelieverRevolutionaryIndifferenceLatterMutualUnbearableMutual RespectComplicitySubversionUninterested
Book:Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky
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“In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom.”

MenWisdomBodyFormPoliticsIndividualCommonEconomyUniversalPropertyIllDoctrineEaseLiberalismProtestMidstCivilizedCommunistDefiniteIndividual FreedomSubversion
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“When a man loses superiority, he loses potency. That's what all this talk about castrating women is about. Castrating women are those who refuse to pretend men are better than they are and better than women are. The simple truth - that men are only equal - can undermine a culture more devastatingly than any bomb. Subversion is telling the truth.”

MenCultureLosesSimpleEqualRefuseBombsTelling The TruthSuperioritySimple TruthsPotencySubversion
Book:The Women's Room
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“Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more respectful than the other, yet the two words were with most men strictly synonymous.”

MenMindTwoIdeasSometimesSpiritDoubtAtheismConditionsIntellectualOppositesCriticalPositive AtheismFacultyOne WordRespectfulAbnormalCredulitySuspensionSubversionIrreverent
Book:History of the rise and influence of the spirit of rationalism in Europe
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“State censorship presents itself as a bulwark between society and forces of subversion or moral corruption. To dismiss this account of its own motives by the state as insincere would be a mistake: it is a feature of the paranoid logic of the censoring mentality that virtue ... must be innocent, and therefore, unless protected, vulnerable to the wiles of vice.”

StatesWould BeForceMistakeMoralVirtueLogicAccountsVicesCorruptionInnocentVulnerableFeaturesMotiveCensorshipMentalityProtectedParanoidSubversionCensoringInsincereMoral Corruption
Author:J. M. Coetzee
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“The technologies for the alternative energy sources exists today. The economics are compelling. The public health is compelling. Why would we maintain a focus on a 17th-century technology, when there are 21st-century alternatives that are both necessary and available? And the answer is the subversion of democracy.”

TodayEnergyAnswersTechnologyDemocracyFocusCenturySourceEconomicsAvailableAlternativesCompelling21st CenturyPublic HealthEnergy SourcesSubversion17th CenturyAlternative Energy
Author:Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
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“Audiences will see what they want to see. Some will come out, hopefully enjoying two hours of action. Some people will find themselves gravitating towards the emotional dilemma that the characters find themselves in. Other people will see that there is some layer of subversions to the storytelling aspect of poking a finger of judgment at certain governments to the idea of foreign invasion, others maybe false pretenses.”

PeopleWantTwoIdeasCharacterGovernmentActionCertainEnjoyHoursAudienceEmotionalJudgmentAspectFingersStorytellingHopefullyLayersInvasionDilemmaPretenseSubversion
Author:Colin Farrell
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“Every public space is like a billboard, with messages from the collective subconscious of the nation. There one can read passivity, rage indifference, fear, double standards, subversion, bad economy, a twisted definition of 'public' itself, the whole Weltanschauung - an entire range of emotions and attitudes is exposed.”

WholeNationsSpaceEmotionAttitudeEconomyMessagesStandardsDefinitionsRageRangeIndifferenceCollectivesExposedSubconsciousTwistedPassivityDouble StandardBillboardsSubversionRange Of Emotions
Author:Slavenka Drakulic
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“[W]hich category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely? [T]hose against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State's lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.”

PersonsDoeStatesEnemyEconomicCrimeDangerExampleCitizensTaxesPropertySoldierIncomePursueContentmentCategoriesConspiracyRulersInvasionRegisterIncome TaxTreasonAssassinationSubversiveEvasionSubversionLexiconDesertion
Author:Murray Rothbard
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“I am convinced that there is little force left in the Marxist stimulus to revolution. Its impetus is petering out as the practical failures of the doctrine become more obvious...What is left is a technique of subversion and a collection of catch-phrases. The former is still dangerous. Like terrorism, it is a menace that needs to be fought whenever it occurs.”

NeedsLittlesStillsLeftForceDangerousRevolutionObviousTerrorismConvincedTechniquePracticalsDoctrineFormerPhrasesCollectionsStimulusMenaceMarxistImpetusSubversion
Author:Margaret Thatcher
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“...if photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless.”

IfsWorldLooksArtMadeIdeasPaintingArt IsMachinesTraditionalPainterUselessInstantCaptureGesturesExecutionSkillfulSubversionRedefining
Author:David Byrne
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“Kerouac's books portray a hero and narrator free and easy, confident, sure of his rebellion against the American system. In reality, Jack was torn between Catholicism, Buddhism, and his own demon-driven pursuit of kicks, between spirit and flesh, between mom's house and the Beat coffeehouse, patriotism and subversion, men and women, society and solitude, carousing and meditation, sacred and profane, secular and divine. It's a miracle he survived as long as he did.”

MenLongBookRealitySpiritHouseEasyMeditationDivineBuddhismMomHeroSolitudeBeatsMen And WomenMiracleSacredDrivenFleshPursuitKicksDemonRebellionCatholicismSecularSurvivedTornProfaneNarratorsSubversion
Author:Gerald Nicosia
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