Reactionaries Quotes - Page 2

• Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Strong, Powerful, Hard Work

  Calvin Coolidge (1924). “Calvin Coolidge, His Ideals of Citizenship as Revealed Through His Speeches and Writings”

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• All reactionaries are paper tigers.

  Mao Zedong

  Paper, Tigers

  Interview by Anne Louise Strong, Aug. 1946

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• By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Political, Doe, Radicalism

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson: Extracts from the Public Speeches of the Leader and Interpreter of American Democracy, with Masterpieces of Eloquence”, Best Books

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• Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I'm going to continue fighting for the end user.

  Gary Vaynerchuk

  Real, Fighting, Tools

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• Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Wings

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• The enemy will not perish of himself. Neither will the Chinese reactionaries nor the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism in China step down from the stage of history of their own accord.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Chinese

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.12, Lulu.com

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• The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Attitude, Issues, Political

  Theodore Roosevelt (1926). “The Works of Theodore Roosevelt”

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• Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, World, Want

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.167, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.

  Lynne Truss

  Mean, People, Political

  "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door". Book by Lynne Truss, 2005.

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• All adventure is now reactionary.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Travel, Adventure, Funny Travel

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• These are times when what used to be called liberal is now called radical; what used to be called radical is now called insane; what used to be called reactionary is now called moderate; and what used to be called insane is now called solid, neo-conservative thinking.

  Katrina vanden Heuvel

  Thinking, Insane, Conservative

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• Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Men, Walking Away, Faces

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• Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Football, Heart, Emotional

  Chuck Klosterman (2010). “Football: An Essay from Eating the Dinosaur”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.

  Adolf Hitler

  Eye, Men, Common Sense

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Fall, Dust

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.12, Lulu.com

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• Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

  George Orwell

  Ideas, World, Impossible

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• Surrealism can only deliver a reactionary judgment; can make out of history only an accumulation of oddities, a joke, a death trip.

  Susan Sontag

  Oddities, Judgment, Accumulation

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.68, Macmillan

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• The reactionary suicide is ‘wise,’ and the revolutionary suicide is a ‘fool,’ a fool for the revolution in the way Paul meant when he spoke of being a ‘fool for Christ,’ That foolishness can move mountains of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead and the unborn.

  Huey Newton

  Wise, Suicide, Moving

  Huey P. Newton (2009). “Revolutionary Suicide: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.276, Penguin

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• If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas... One cannot escape from one's own epoch, however revolutionary one may be.

  Georges Braque

  Order, Ideas, May

  "Letters of the Great Artists - From Blake to Pollock". Book by Richard Friedenthal, 1963.

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• Earnestness is good; it means business. But fanaticism overdoes, and is consequently reactionary.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mean, Earnestness, Fanaticism

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1892). “Brilliants: selected from the works of C.H. Spurgeon”

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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.

  Andre Vltchek

  Wings, House, Support

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• The only reactionaries are those who find themselves at home in the present.

  Miguel de Unamuno

  Home, Conservatism

  Miguel de Unamuno (2012). “Tragic Sense of Life”, p.321, Courier Corporation

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• To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Class, Uprising, Criticism

  RICHARD HOFSTADTER (1962). “The American Political Tradition And the Men Who Made It”

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• A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

  Woodrow Wilson

  Hands, People, Progress

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1976). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• I'm not a reactionary.

  Renee Fleming

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