Quotes About Subversion

#1. [All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight; and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.

Thomas Jefferson

#2. Futurism eventually got marred by its link to Fascism, but early on, it was totally avant-garde, and I wanted to dream a phantom link from the early futurists to the politically radical Italy of the 1970s, a time of fun, play, subversion - if also violence and mayhem.

Rachel Kushner

#3. Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.

Robert Bringhurst

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

Edmond Jabes

#5. Whatever the benefits of prolific and convenient air travel, we may curse it for its smooth subversion of our attempts to use journeys to make lasting changes in our lives.

Alain De Botton

#6. It is a distinctive American genius, this ability to transmute subversion into a marketable commodity.

George F. Will

#7. No good government can ever want more than two things for its support: 1st, Its own excellence; and, 2dly, a people sufficiently instructed, to be aware of that excellence. Every other pretended support, must ultimately tend to its subversion, by lessening its dependence upon these.

James Mill

#8. Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides.

Richard J. Evans

#9. [it is] a high class kind of subversion, very high class. We're not second story burglars. We go right in the front door.

Mike Gorman

#10. The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

Germaine Greer

#11. May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#12. The games enthralled the public and diverted their attentions from the Halo wars. And - unlike the arts - they could not be used as vehicles for subversion. For gamers like myself it was a near-utopian state of affairs. We were pampered and courted by the houses and made immensely rich.

Alastair Reynolds

#13. 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

#14. The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

Brian Ferneyhough

#15. We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion.

Richard Perle

#16. The ultimate sophistication of subversion is to take over the government, not by unlawful but by lawful means.

Brian Crozier

#17. An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.

Garrett Hardin

#18. To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

John Knox

#19. 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

#20. I just love the subversion of dialogue in sitcoms, stand-up is monologue and that is entertaining for a lot of people but personally I find it a bit trying, which is a weird thing to say as a stand-up! I love people aping normal conversation and twisting it so it becomes hilarious.

Doc Brown

#21. 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

#22. the subversion of free speech and free thought are the worst forms of subversion.

William Douglas

#23. I haven't yet written a book in a far-future utopia, where all bad things are eliminated, but it would be fun to do that one day and introduce some subversion.

Peter F. Hamilton

#24. Rights are susceptible to subversion, as even granite is susceptible to erosion.

David Mitchell

#25. All of my books are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.

Kelly Gardiner

#26. The whole basis of my work is analysing what I do and building some sort of intellectual framework. The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. They are the only subversion.

Vivienne Westwood

#27. The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.

Alexander Hamilton

#28. At six o'clok the young King's terrible sufferings finally ended. After his eyes had closed for the last time, the tempeste raged on. Later, superstitious folk claimed that Henry himself had sent it, and had risen from his grave in anger at the subversion of his will.

Alison Weir

#29. 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

#30. The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

Blaise Pascal

#31. All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

John Stuart Mill

#32. 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

#33. Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are - honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do.

Robert Jackson Bennett

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

William J. Clinton

#35. That was my Malawian epiphany. Only Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa. All the others, donors and volunteers and bankers, however idealistic, were simply agents of subversion.

Paul Theroux

#36. It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger.

Naomi Wolf

#37. Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

Harold Rosenberg

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.

Leonard Cohen

#41. Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

Bob Woodward

#42. 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

#43. Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.

Dario Fo

#44. You cn't be suspicious of a tree, accuse a bird or squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet

Hal Borland

#45. My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact?

Elizabeth Oakes Smith

#46. 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

#47. Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Barbara Jordan

#48. Busy people begrudge the days being short.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Stanley Kubrick

#49. Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

Salvador Dali

#50. [The Soviet State Security Service] is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries.

Allen W. Dulles

#51. 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

#52. If we were stopped and questioned, I always smiled at the officers, and they always smiled back. In my heart, I was seeing them dead. But on my face, I was an open invitation. If you are only a girl, this is how you destroy your enemies.

Irene Gut Opdyke

#53. I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.

Edward W. Said

#54. The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

Edward Abbey

#55. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.

Howard Zinn

#56. The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they are ideas at all.

Jacob M. Appel

#57. Someone once said writing and gardening are similar pursuits. Tell you what, I'd have one fucked up garden if that were the case.

Carla H. Krueger

#58. I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.

Ayn Rand

#59. Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.

Hunter S. Thompson

#60. Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness.

Sarah Ruhl

#61. The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

Abbie Hoffman

#62. As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did.

Shane Claiborne