Reactionary Quotes

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

Reactionary: A man walking backwards with his face to the future.

Do the days work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but dont be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but dont be a demagogue. Dont hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Dont hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Dont expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Dont hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.

A radical is one of whom people say He goes too far.

A conservative, on the other hand, is one who doesn't go far enough. Then there is the reactionary, one who doesn't go at all. All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

One cannot but wonder at this constantly recurring phrase getting something for nothing, as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition of disturbers of society. Except for our animal outfit, practically all we have is handed us gratis. Can the most complacent reactionary flatter himself that he invented the art of writing or the printing press, or discovered his religious, economic, and moral convictions, or any of the devices which supply him with meat and raiment or any of the sources of such pleasure as he may derive from literature or the fine arts? In short, civilization is little else than getting something for nothing.

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.

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.

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.

All adventure is now reactionary.

The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far;

by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

We oppose the reactionary policies of the U.

S. government but we do not oppose the American people. We want to have many good friends in the United States.

It didn't take long for the world to realize that the Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the bloody reactionary regime that followed, and which executed more people in three months than the Shah had done in 30 years.

I am sure that in Canada the people appreciate this principle, and the general intelligence which prevails over that country is such that I am sure there is no danger of a reactionary policy ever finding a response in the hearts of any considerable number of our people.

Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands.

To make things 'perfectly clear' is reactionary and stupefying. The real is not perfectly clear.

When religious leaders get involved in elections, it is usually with a reactionary social agenda.

The right is so reactionary it goes nowhere.

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.

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life.

Aside from rabid Islamists, no one who wishes to be taken seriously can publicly say anything bad about the old Jews of Europe without sounding like reactionary troglodytes.

Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I'm going to continue fighting for the end user.

The lack of trust in supranational entities and cosmopolitan elite creates a fertile ground for tribalist belongings and reactionary politics.

Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist.

The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.

Without democracy there is no freedom. Violence, no matter who is using it, is always reactionary.

A major fault, for example, is the fact that, along with the materialist principle, Darwin introduced into his theory of evolution reactionary Malthusian ideas.