...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
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free. — Bertrand Russell
On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question. — Walter Brueggemann
True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. — Saul Alinsky
We have to be militants for kindness, subversive for sweetness and radicals for tenderness. — Cornel West
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. — William O. Douglas
It's kind of rebellious to be yourself. — Kate Moss
Every rebellion against suffering is fed by the subversive power of remembered suffering. — Johann Baptist Metz
If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you're on the right track. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don't let them take you ALIVE. — Sid Vicious
If you don't risk anything you risk everything — Mark Zuckerberg
In life, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything. — John Spence
Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary. — Claude Debussy
Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible. — Dario Fo
The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters. — Mona Eltahawy
Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity. — Marianne Moore
The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family. — Paul Johnson
The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion. — Germaine Greer
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
What Is Subversive Quotes
Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony — Judith Butler
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth. — Raoul Vaneigem
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
The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent. — Christopher Isherwood
Art is inherently subversive. It’s destabilizing. It undermines what you already know and what you already think. It is the opposite of propaganda. — Deborah Eisenberg
The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive. — Henry Miller
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
What is subversive today, will almost certainly be patriotic tomorrow. — Lucius Beebe
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. In what we call art, it's one of the most desirable characteristics of a piece of work. — Leonard Cohen
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
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision. — Abraham Joshua Heschel
Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down. — Oscar Romero
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything that it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. — Erica Jong
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
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
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us. — Joanna Macy
The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left. — Robert Bork
We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day — John F. Kennedy
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
My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar. — Gus Van Sant
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. — Hal Borland
I have to say that Adam Levine is truly a daring young man to go on Twitter to bash Fox News. He's so rebellious, so subversive. I mean, for a musician, seriously, could you find a more predictable stance than that? He's as edgy as a hacky sack, which also describes his music. — Greg Gutfeld
Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It's a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people's minds. I'm talking about your language. — Mark Pagel
U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive. — Robert Fisk
Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today. For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive. — Mary Whitehouse
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. — Bertrand Russell
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
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. — Thomas Kuhn
If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible. — Desmond Tutu
It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement. — Anthony Trollope
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. — George Orwell
Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. — Henry Steele Commager
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
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 Said
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
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
In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
If [the legislature] will positively enact a thing to be done, the judges are not at liberty to reject it, for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government. — William Blackstone
[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
In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law. — Nadine Gordimer
Wonder Showzen is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. — Eric Andre
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
In Conclusion
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