Subversive Quotes - Page 3

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

Pablo Picasso

Art, Freedom, Fire

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My mantra was to educate people - to actually give them the know-how they could use - and to do it in a very subversive kind of way. I would entertain them, and I was going to teach them whether they knew it or not.

Alton Brown

People, Giving, Way

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To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

Jean Francois Revel

Democracy, Principles, Definitions

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To look without fear is a good subversive tool, undermining taboos.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Tools, Looks, Taboo

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Most of you didn't think that helping people share books would be a subversive act...Yet the fact is that you have chosen a profession that has become radical.

Naomi Klein

Book, Thinking, People

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I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.

Rene Magritte

Girl, Running, Laughter

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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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Fashion is the opposite of the real, its worst enemy. Fashion photography is subversive; it makes you believe everything is true, whereas this could not be more false. It is the opposite of a mirror, a deformation.

Patrick Demarchelier

Photography, Fashion, Real

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I think it's much more radical to see and show things as they look instead of making them somehow subversive through alienation.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Thinking, Looks, Radical

"Who Do You Love?". Interview with Donelle Woolford, www.tthheeffoorrreeesstt.com. 2012.

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What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver.

Todd Solondz

Believe, Unique, Mtv

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There's a great fear of the imagination. It's a dangerous thing. It's out of control, it's subversive.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Imagination, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

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...I am afraid that education is conceived more in terms of indoctrination by most school officials than in terms of enlightenment. My own belief is that education must be subversive if it is to be meaningful. By this I mean that it must challenge all the things we take for granted, examine all accepted assumptions, tamper with every sacred cow, and instill a desire to question and doubt. Without this the mere instruction to memorise data is empty. The attempt to enforce conventional mediocrity on the young is criminal.

Bertrand Russell

Meaningful, School, Data

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The poor have often been subversive just because they don't always believe their own depiction as brutes and loafers and leeches, and new economy is making lots more poor or recognize their fellowship with the insecurity of the poor, the portion of the population for whom the system does not work.

Rebecca Solnit

Believe, Insecurity, Leeches

Source: therumpus.net

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When I was growing up, it was still during Apartheid, so the country was very shielded from the outside artistic world. Anything that was too subversive was basically banned. All the music that we got from outside of South Africa was the poppiest, least subversive music that you could get.

St. Lucia

Country, Growing Up, World

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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During the darkest periods in recent history, of course, the most subversive things you could do is think, read if you can get the material and remind yourself that love exists.

Hector Elizondo

Thinking, Periods, Materials

"Valentine's Day - Hector Elizondo interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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I do think we need to allow for there to be room for subversive and ironic speech. We need to be able to put out plays in which we make fun of ourselves or in which we interrogate the words that injure us. And maybe give them another meaning.

Judith Butler

Fun, Thinking, Play

Source: ilga.org

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The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.

Jeff VanderMeer

Short Love, Reading, Fiction

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Some comedians are silly or goofy or straight joke writers who avoid anything subversive or political. Others are drawn to it. The beauty of standup is there is room for everyone, and years of performing in front of crowds will dictate what you can or can't do.

Ted Alexandro

Silly, Years, Political

"Laughing at something is a form of accepting it, or at least making peace with it". Interview with Chris Cobb, logger.believermag.com. September 19, 2014.

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There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages.

Tom Morello

Powerful, Kids, Thinking

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Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

P. D. James

Children, Brave, Secret

P. D. James (2007). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.20, Vintage

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The vanity of shining in conversation is usually subversive of its own desires.

Lydia Sigourney

Vanity, Talking, Shining

Lydia Howard Sigourney (1841). “Letters to young ladies”, p.175

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The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.

Mona Eltahawy

Matter, Can Do, Ifs

Mona Eltahawy (2015). “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution”, p.139, Macmillan

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Our Christian faith is actually very subversive of the conventional notion of success - the notion that what invests a person with worth is something extrinsic.

Desmond Tutu

Christian, Notion, Persons

Source: www.egonzehnder.com

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Hairspray is the only movie I made that's subversive, because they're doing it in every high school in America. A man's playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other.

John Waters

Song, School, Men

Source: www.timeout.com

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Sometimes with certain writing, you feel like you've got to be literal, hit it hard on the nose, just to get the point across. Good writing is more subversive I think - or good scenes. They are about one thing on the page but you can make it about something completely different.

Chace Crawford

Writing, Thinking, Pages

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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