Reactionaries Quotes - Page 5

• Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress.

  A. Philip Randolph

  Enemy, Looks, Wages

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• It's very clear you have to engage the public and say: You have to vote no on 74, no on 75, no on 76, no on 77. Those are the issues that Arnold pushing. And those are reactionary, Republican initiatives.

  Warren Beatty

  Issues, Engagement, Pushing

  Interview with Carla Marinucci, www.sfgate.com. October 9, 2005.

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• The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.

  Mao Zedong

  Party, Struggle, Self Reliance

  Zedong Mao (1954). “Selected Works”

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• On what basis should our policy rest? It should rest on our own strength, and that means regeneration through one's own efforts. We are not alone; all the countries and people in the world opposed to imperialism are our friends. Nevertheless, we stress regeneration through our own efforts. Relying on the forces we ourselves organize, we can defeat all Chinese and foreign reactionaries.

  Mao Zedong

  Country, Stress, Struggle

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.101, Lulu.com

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• When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, War, Thinking

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.14, Penguin

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• No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Equality, Rights, Ideas

  "Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses". Book by Calvin Coolidge, 1926.

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• A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Political, Doctrine, World

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2003). “A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the 20th Century”, p.162, Routledge

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• How can we appraise a proposal if the terms hurled at our ears can mean anything or nothing, and change their significance with the inflection of the voice? Welfare state, national socialism, radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and a regiment of others ... these terms in today's usage, are generally compounds of confusion and prejudice. If our attitudes are muddled, our language is often to blame. A good tonic for clearer thinking is a dose of precise, legal definition.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Attitude, Mean, Thinking

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• All religions, at one point or another in their evolution tried to proclaim their single, inerrant consistency. All religions even the most liberal, were tempted by the reactionary impulse to freeze faith in place. Because as Jesus teaches, it's easy to be threatened by the reality of the complicated, messy, syncretic, God-bearing truth that becomes incarnate among us and makes things new. We'd rather have a dead religion than a living God

  Sarah Miles

  Jesus, Reality, Consistency

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• In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Circles

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

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• The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance.

  Mao Zedong

  Country, Lying, Struggle

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.16, Lulu.com

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• An artist must be a reactionary

  Evelyn Waugh

  Artist

  Evelyn Waugh (2012). “Decline and Fall”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• Revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society, and without them it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power.

  Mao Zedong

  Peace, War, Winning

  "On Contradiction" by Mao Zedong, 1937.

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• Maybe [the Republicans] 'll find ways around it, but the financial system of the world depends very heavily on the credibility of the US Treasury Department. US Treasury securities are what's called "good as gold"; they're the basis of international finance, and if the government can't uphold them, if they become valueless, the effect on the international financial system could be quite severe. But in order to destroy a limited health-care law, the right-wing Republicans, the reactionary Republicans, are willing to do that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Order, Law

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Directing is a reactionary job more than a creation job. The job is to react whether it's moment one, the first time you read the script or see an article or read a book or notice something happen on the street and have an idea for a movie, and it just continues from there on in. You're just reacting to dialogue, a performance, an audition, a headache, a piece of furniture, a piece of clothing.

  Jason Reitman

  Jobs, Book, Ideas

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.

  Christina Stead

  Clouds, Black, Golden

  Christina Stead (2012). “I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• Liberals and leftists are not wrong in describing romanticism as reactionary, because it did indeed become that after 1810. The problem is that they make that description true of the movement as a whole, as if romanticism were essentially reactionary.

  Frederick C. Beiser

  Movement, Problem, Description

  "Diotima’s child". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. September 21, 2012.

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• America was not interventionist enough, which, of course, did mean a bit of a breach with old comrades on the left. I felt the international left in the countries concerned took the same position as I did. So, in my view, it's the left that's become reactionary and isolationist and parochial.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, Mean, Views

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliché, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.

  Xavier Dolan

  Eye, Fighting, Men

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The perception in the Arab world now is that we are having secularists against Islamists, and that's it. So the secularists are progressive; the Islamists are reactionary, conservative. This perception is wrong.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Perception, World, Conservative

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• It is obvious when an actor has put work into prep and research and understanding their character, and they're making choices, because that's what happens when you take the time - or have the time - to really think about the material, but that only accounts for about 60% of what happens on the day. When you're in the moment, you throw it all away. Well, you don't throw it all away, but it's in you now, and everything is reactionary in that moment and you have to be honest and present and listening.

  Logan Lerman

  Character, Thinking, Choices

  "‘Indignation’ Stars Logan Lerman And Sarah Gadon On Philip Roth, Sylvia Plath And The Perils Of Oral Sex". Interview with David Ehrlich, www.indiewire.com. July 29, 2016.

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• I think our conception of literature should accommodate not only apolitical writers but also those whose political opinions we find unpalatable. Fiction after all comes from a different, less rationally manipulable side of the brain. I am personally very attached to reactionary figures like Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, and Céline.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Thinking, Political Opinions, Brain

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The Republicans have picked that as the one thing that they want to hang on to to try to gain some political stand, so they have to destroy what they call Obamacare. This is now not all the Republicans, it's a wing of the Republican Party, which is called conservative but in fact is just deeply reactionary.

  Noam Chomsky

  Party, Wings, Obamacare

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Many conservatives see higher education as a threat to their reactionary and corporate oriented interests and would like to defund higher education, privatize it, eliminate tenure, and define the working conditions of faculty to something resembling the labor practices of Walmart workers.

  Henry Giroux

  Practice, Working Conditions, Walmart

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds of contemplation that provide a valuable balance to the knee-jerk reactionary behavior of most of our newspapers and political leaders. Poets are great doubters.

  Sam Hamill

  Perfect, Leader, Political

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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