Subversion Quotes - Page 2

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.

Edmund Burke

Country, War, Passion

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The answer to subversion of democracy is more democracy, more freedom, more justice.

Noam Chomsky

Justice, Democracy, Answers

Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Writing, Erosion, Language

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The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. ... They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.

Benito Mussolini

Gun, Numbers, Government

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In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

Gunnar Myrdal

Circles, Ideas, America

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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.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Doctrine

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Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.

Steve Almond

Powerful, Political, Lazy

"The Joke’s on You" by Steve Almond, The Baffler, No. 20, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 19, 2012.

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Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

Roland Barthes

Fashion, Past, Oppression

Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.112, Univ of California Press

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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.

I. F. Stone

War, Mean, Play

I. F. Stone (2009). “The Best of I.F. Stone”, p.27, PublicAffairs

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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.

Herbert Marcuse

Philosophy, Reality, Intellectual

"One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 134-135), 1964.

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It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile.

Earl Warren

Inspirational, Names, Ironic

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My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

Barbara Jordan

Passion, Decision, Constitution

Statement on the Articles of Impeachment, delivered 25 July 1974, House Judiciary Committee

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The generation of consumers who swallow this pessimistic sentiment can't see past the product to its debased morality. Instead, their excitement about The Dark Knight's dread (that teenage thrall with subversion) inspires their fealty to product.

Armond White

Teenage, Dark, Past

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As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in the name of defending us against subversion.

Murray Kempton

Names, Political, Enemy

Murray Kempton (1972). “America comes of middle age: columns, 1950-1962”

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Good girls like myself need subversion. Being solemn, I aspire to comedy. Being a novelist, I aspire to the musical. Being organized, I aspire to luminous chaos. Loving the power of grammar and the fine distinctions of language, I seek the part of the mind I didn't know was there, the part 'sheer,' 'no-manfathomed,' 'cliffs of fall.

Janet Burroway

Girl, Fall, Musical

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What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

Andrew Sullivan

Pain, Gay, Desire

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Simple yet succinct, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals exposes the idols of modernity and provides the biblical arsenal needed for their complete destruction. Trevin Wax provides medicine for the heart in this short, powerful study. Read it and be blessed.

Daniel L. Akin

Powerful, Blessed, Heart

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With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.

Richard Dawkins

Children, Effort, Brain

Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.129, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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...Americans...automatically equate dissension with disloyalty. They view any criticism of our existing social, economic, and political forms, as sedition and subversion. ...(" The growing reluctance of Americans to criticize, and their increasing tendency to condemn those who, in ever dwindling numbers, will still voice dissent") is disturbing, deplorable, and truly dangerous.

J. Paul Getty

Dark, Numbers, Views

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Politicians can forgive almost anything in the way of abuse; they can forgive subversion, revolution, being contradicted, exposed as liars, even ridiculed, but they can never forgive being ignored.

Auberon Waugh

Liars, Being Ignored, Abuse

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...Nixon's subversion [of the consititution] consisted of: One presidental lie; one invocation of presidental privilege, and zero criminal offences.

William J. Clinton

Zero, Lying, Criminals

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Only what touches us closely preoccupies us. We prepare in solitude to face it. (The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion)

Edmond Jabes

Book, Solitude, Littles

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Agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation tunnelers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip readers and disguise artists.

John le Carre

Artist, Assassins, Smugglers

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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.

David Byrne

Art, Ideas, Useless

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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.

Murray Rothbard

Soldier, Enemy, Contentment

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