Subversive Quotes - Page 6

• There is still such a thing as subversive. Subversive makes hip people nervous. It's something new that scares you in a good way. I mean, subversive to me is a compliment. Subversive is something that influences people to do something against society that they haven't thought of before.

  John Waters

  Mean, People, Scare

  Source: edition.cnn.com

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• I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.

  Anna Deavere Smith

  Teacher, Children, People

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• Theater will never, and never has, gotten audiences like film. But theater goes to work on society in a different and more subversive way.

  Athol Fugard

  Different, Way, Film

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• Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.

  Mark Vonnegut

  Reading, Writing, Way

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• Fiction has subversive potential. People let it into their minds, like the Trojan Horse. They don't know what's inside. You hook them with the story, and God can work below the level of their consciousness. Fiction can be propaganda for evil or convey a theme that impacts people for good.

  Randy Alcorn

  Horse, Impact, Evil

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• Granted, there are times when, for business reasons, you do something that's more mainstream. But even then, I try to find something that has a dark or subversive aspect.

  Ryan Phillippe

  Dark, Trying, Granted

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• The true religion, it is said, is service to mankind; but this service seems to take the form of securing for him an unconditional victory over nature. Now this attitude is impious, for, as has been noted, it violates the belief that creation or nature is fundamentally good, that the ultimate reason for its laws is a mystery, and that acts of defiance such as are daily celebrated by the newspapers are subversive of cosmos.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Attitude, Law, Victory

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• The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. Government, as the Father of Our Country put it so well, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. People who understand history, especially the history of government, do well to fear it. For a people to express openly their fear of those of us who are afraid of tyranny is alarming. Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people.

  Jeff Cooper

  Country, Father, Philosophy

  "Jeff Cooper's Commentaries", Vol. 4, No. 16, December 1996.

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• Most of the great works of juvenile literature are subversive in one way or another: they express ideas and emotions not generally approved of or even recognized at the time; they make fun of honored figures and piously held beliefs; and they view social pretenses with clear-eyed directness, remarking - as in Andersen's famous tale - that the emperor has no clothes.

  Alison Lurie

  Fun, Views, Ideas

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• It's hard to describe to people how terrible it was when you could only watch cartoons at a certain time in your life. But no, I would watch all of them - the Warner Bros. cartoons and the Bugs Bunnys and then the Tex Avery stuff. Looking back on it, they were so incredibly subversive for their time. You'd think, "Oh, they're just making jokes and this or that." But when you watch them as an adult, you think, "Oh no, they were talking about some pretty deep stuff."

  Jon Hamm

  Thinking, Talking, People

  "MINIONS: Allison Janney and Jon Hamm Talk Animation, Their Characters, and More". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. July 9, 2015.

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• Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and post-modernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those "easy speeches that comfort cruel men.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  Lying, Hero, Men

  Timothy Garton Ash (2012). “Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name”, p.10, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.

  Eric Idle

  Smart, Boys, Groups

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Non-operational ideas are non-behavioral and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Ideas, Movement, Limits

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.17, Routledge

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• Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Writing, United States, Matter

  Christopher Hitchens (1994). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.220, Verso

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• I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be.

  Will Oldham

  Pirate, Cases, Exciting

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• Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

  Anne Lamott

  Truth, Moral, Revolutionary

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• in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success.

  Alison Lurie

  Art, Real, What Matters

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• I'm interested in the female dom/male sub dynamic, and how superficially it can seem like a total reverse of gender roles and maybe even subversive or something.

  Marie Calloway

  Males, Female, Roles

  The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. March 19, 2013.

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• tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. It would be subversive of every human interest that the cry of one-half the human family be stifled. ... The world has had to limp along with the wobbling gait and one-sided hesitancy of a man with one eye. Suddenly the bandage is removed from the other eye and the whole body is filled with light. It sees a circle where before it saw a segment. The darkened eye restored, every member rejoices with it.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Women, Eye, Circles

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• My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.

  Mark Leyner

  Husband, Father, Son

  "Mark Leyner on 'War, Inc.'". Interview with Aaron Hillis, www.ifc.com. May 22, 2008.

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• Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.' Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say in public that it can cost you your life. The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.

  Jostein Gaarder

  People, Giving, Cost

  Jostein Gaarder (2010). “Sophie's World”, p.66, Hachette UK

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• I like the horror community because they're subversive. They question things. If something is held back from them, especially if they've heard that its good, they seek it out.

  Michael Dougherty

  Community, Horror, Heard

  Source: collider.com

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• My house was bugged. They couldn't find any information on me being a subversive because I happen to love America; I just don't like some of the things the government is doing.

  Eartha Kitt

  Government, America, House

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• A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

  Dave Barry

  Witty, Memories, Kids

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• When I conducted a beer-rating session last year, I wrote that most American beers taste as if they were brewed through a horse. That offended many people in the American beer industry, as well as patriots who thought I was being subversive in praising foreign beers. I have just read a little-known study of American beers. So I must apologize to the horse. At least with a horse, we'd know what we're getting.

  Mike Royko

  Horse, Beer, Years

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