Reactionaries Quotes - Page 7

• Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Revolution, Plans

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• I have no motif, only motivation. I believe that motivation is the real thing, the natural thing, and that the motif is old-fashioned, even reactionary (as stupid as the question about the meaning of life)

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Motivation, Stupid

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Sep 11, 2014

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• Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and the pretense that life is what we want it to be may conceivably bring about the desired condition. Hence religious parables, socialist realism, Nazi propaganda. And if this story likewise crawls with reactionary supernaturalism, that might be because its author longs to see letters scuttling across ceilings, cautiously beginning to reify themselves into angels. For if they could only do that, then why not us?

  William T. Vollmann

  Religious, Angel, Letters

  William T Vollmann (2005). “Europe Central”, p.36, Penguin

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• A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted-in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs, who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and hands at the behest of his head.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Men, Feet, Perfectly Good

  Radio address, 26 Oct. 1939

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• The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.

  Mao Zedong

  Independent, Men, Law

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.19, Lulu.com

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• The People's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to go per cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance.

  Mao Zedong

  Class, Two, People

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• I think tolerance is something everybody needs to be reminded of, especially in a reactionary political world. Well, actually, I should say, a reactionary political climate.

  Bruce Davison

  Thinking, Political, Tolerance

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• Everything TSA does is reactionary - first they ban the box cutters, then of course you have to take your shoes off, then you have to take the liquids out, now we have to be patted down in our private areas because of the diaper bomber.

  John Mica

  Tsa, Shoes, Diapers

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• What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments.

  Gilles Deleuze

  Believe, Writing, Journey

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• Already the pitch has been reached in Great Britain where it is considered bigoted or reactionary to do other than praise the Jews for their industry and ability. Few papers will risk any attack on the Jews, however well-founded, for fear of appearing even distantly anti-Semitic.

  Sidney Robertson Cowell

  Risk, Paper, Praise

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• I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white hetero- sexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary- vested-interest-power. But then, I have great difficulty examining what men in general could possibly do about all this. In addition to doing the shitwork that women have been doing for generations, possibly not exist? No, I really don't mean that. Yes, I really do.

  Robin Morgan

  Mean, Men, White

  Robin Morgan (1970). “Sisterhood is powerful: an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement”, Vintage

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• Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those - regardless of their political party - who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Dream, Party, Men

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• But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.

  Huey Newton

  Suicide, Self, Dignity

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• The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.

  Russell Kirk

  Environmental Quality, Class, Issues

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• An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor [group think] of the age and not go flopping along. By doing this he helps us to question and reassess our past, present and future situations, our assumptions and our options.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Past, Thinking

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• Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.

  Roland Barthes

  Doe, Speech, Language

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• We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War.

  Andrei Grechko

  War, Race, Trying

  "The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy". Book by Leon Gouré, p. 53, 1974.

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• No influence so quickly converts a radical into a reactionary as does his election to power.

  Elisabeth Marbury

  Power, Doe, Election

  Elisabeth Marbury (1924). “My Crystal Ball: Reminiscences”, New York : Boni and Liveright

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• An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Age, Standing Out

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• The middle man governs, however extreme may seem to be the men who sit on the Front Bench, in their reactionary or revolutionary opinions.

  Beatrice Webb

  Men, Benches, May

  Beatrice Webb (1956). “Diaries, 1924-1932”

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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.

  Walter Lippmann

  Teaching, Exercise, Men

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• Well, there's a lot to react against![in response to the accusation that she was a reactionary]

  Margaret Thatcher

  Accusation, Wells, Response

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• In our society mothers take the place elsewhere occupied by the Fates, the System, Negroes, Communism or Reactionary Imperialist Plots; mothers go on getting blamed until they're eighty, but shouldn't take it personally.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Mother, Fate, Plot

  Observations ch. 10 (1970)

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• We are ripples of consciousness of the vast ocean of consciousness. If we get agitated and become part of the reactionary and vitriolic behavior sometimes around us, we will only add to the disturbance.

  Deepak Chopra

  Ocean, Add, Sometimes

  "Deepak Chopra: Spiritual healing during times of crisis". CNN.com chat room, www.cnn.com. September 20, 2001.

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• A horror novel should reveal to you that you are falling apart. That there are ways your imagination can be made different. Can threaten what you think is. You should be holding onto that tree or rock screaming. Or laughing. Not at absurdity, either: absurdism is just a bourgeois and reactionary nostalgia for good, stable meaning.

  Tony Burgess

  Fall, Thinking, Rocks

  "The book should be something you protect yourself from by returning to your life". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. August 31, 2015.

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