Reactionaries Quotes

Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those - regardless of their political party - who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are each of us the result of billions of years of the universe evolving toward its own splendor. And evolution builds: the very mitochondria that power our cells and give us life once existed as separate organisms that first infected our pre–pre–human ancestors and then became one with them. We each contain not only the slime mold and the worm, the fish and amphibian and reptile, but the pig and the ape and the barely human. If we look hard enough, we can discern hundreds of parts: kings and queens, warriors and troubadours, mages, bullies, and saints. And hustlers, adventurers, survivors, rebels, reactionaries, and rogues. And the part of us that wants to be more than human, or rather more fully human. I believe that we need to enlist all these separate selves into a single army of free companions who respect each other and love each other to the death. And who are willing to devote their lives to fight together in order to win a shared splendor.
I will return to this theme of integration again and again, for it is key to everything. All of my characters struggle with themselves, and face as well external obstacles such as exploding stars or dragons or icy wastelands cold enough to freeze the breath. Maram, who writes poems glorifying his second chakra (the body's sexual center), pants like a dog after every enticing woman he sees. Even as he resists his essential nobility and destiny as a hero, he insists that every man deserves at least one vice. When it is pointed ~ David Zindell

The only reactionaries are those who find themselves at home in the present. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"59 ~ James T. Patterson

Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it. Yet, imperialism is still alive, still running amuck in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the West imperialism is still oppressing the people at home. This situation must change. It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism. ~ Mao Zedong

What a country, and what a culture, when the liberals cry before they are hurt, and the reactionaries pose as brave nonconformists, while the radicals make a fetish of their own jokey irrelevance. ~ Christopher Hitchens

We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War. ~ Andrei Grechko

Indeed, some "revolutionaries" brand as "innocents," "dreamers," or even "reactionaries"; those who would challenge this educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic liberation - the process of humanization - is not another deposit to be made in men. ~ Paulo Freire

But what we know, we who are either observers of a business we once were in and loved, or are people within it now, our business as a whole, when it is not obsessed with the business of business, is eaten up with a form of cultural conservatism which is truly amazing. Indeed, more often than not it is eaten up with pure reactionary-ism. ~ Hodding Carter III

Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, lives, and behaviors of others. They react to their own problems, pains, and behaviors. ~ Melody Beattie

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people. ~ Fred Hampton

I am quite reactionary about Aussies travelling. Why, we've only been here a hundred years. What can be added by going before we are here? - that is not right but for we are here, but only just here. If we don't hold what we have we may never find it again, so delicate a thing it is, yet it gives the appearance of being overpowerful on close examination ... I don't think a change of location can answer our questions. ~ Joy Hester

The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times. ~ Adolf Hitler

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

Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right. ~ Mao Zedong

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. ~ John Mica

All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger. ~ Mao Zedong

If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress. ~ Isabel Paterson

Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Conservatives are time-biders. And they understand, as Corey Robin explains in his indispensable book 'The Reactionary Mind,' that the direction of human history is not on their side - that is why they are reactionaries - because, other things equal, civilization does tend towards more inclusion, more emancipation, more liberalism. ~ Rick Perlstein

How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises? ~ Stephen Fry

We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea. ~ Robert Menzies

The Tories had the legal right to demand extra meetings of the council but I could decide when they would be held and always called them for Friday afternoons, knowing that three or four of the richer Tories went to the country early and were not prepared to stay in the city beyond lunchtime. I realised that nothing in politics is new when I read in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars that Julius Caesar pulled the same trick when reactionaries in the senate were making his life difficult. ~ Ken Livingstone

The inspired principles in the Constitution are the principles of the rule of law which, if preserved, guarantee liberty to every man. These principles are assumed in the Constitution because they had come to be assumed by Americans generally, as they struggled through several generations to find institutional safeguards for the liberty that they prized so highly. Many theoreticians of law and politics have rejected such a tenuous and fragile basis for a nation's freedom. They dream of constitutional arrangements based on clear libertarian principles which would maximize individual liberty whether or not the people understood or supported the basic principles. Their objection does raise the important secondary problem of preserving the liberty we have obtained.

The early Americans themselves recognized the necessity of "public virtue" for the continuing security of their liberty. . . .

The radicals of the left today seek freedom from social and material deprivation through the application of government power. On the right, according to your preferences in political taxonomy, we have either those libertarians who would go far beyond the classically liberal views of the Founding Fathers in restricting the role of government, or those reactionaries who would be willing to invoke arbitrarily the power of government to reshape moral society in their own image. Modern prophets seem to reject both the reactionary and radical left views. And in clearly recognizi ~ Noel B. Reynolds

Football allows the intellectual part of my brain to evolve, but it allows the emotional part to remain unchanged. It has a liberal cerebellum and a reactionary heart. And this is all I want from everything, all the time, always. ~ Chuck Klosterman

Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue. ~ Robin G. Collingwood

Henceforth we will tackle our enemies that come face to face with us and we will not be stabbed in from behind by internal foes ... To this end, we will arm the allies and comrades of the broad masses without giving respite to reactionaries, and avenge the blood of our comrades double - and triple - fold. ~ Mengistu Haile Mariam

Depending upon their version of Eurocentric Racialism, then 9 times out of 10 I feel very comfortable with it. This is how it's supposed to be. I would like to think the Klu [sic] Klux Klan version isn't included in this. Eurocentrics goes beyond reactionary Christian, political militias. I believe in seizing the end of time, not being a passive part of it. ~ Douglas Pearce

Liberals and leftists are not wrong in describing romanticism as reactionary, because it did indeed become that after 1810. The problem is that they make that description true of the movement as a whole, as if romanticism were essentially reactionary. ~ Frederick C. Beiser

We're certainly not perfect, and we're not probably even better than anybody else, except that perhaps we are given to certain kinds of contemplation that provide a valuable balance to the knee-jerk reactionary behavior of most of our newspapers and political leaders. Poets are great doubters. ~ Sam Hamill

react is important here. However you approach codependency, however you define it, and from whatever frame of reference you choose to diagnose and treat it, codependency is primarily a reactionary process. Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, ~ Melody Beattie

[Reactionaries] Just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. We keep ourselves in a crisis state ... ready to react to emergencies that aren't really emergencies. Someone does something, so we must do something back. Someone says something, so we must say something. Someone feels a certain way, so we must feel a certain way. WE JUMP INTO THE FIRST FEELING THAT COMES OUR WAY AND THEN WALLOW IN IT. ~ Melody Beattie

Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice. ~ Evgeny Morozov

It's very clear you have to engage the public and say: You have to vote no on 74, no on 75, no on 76, no on 77. Those are the issues that Arnold pushing. And those are reactionary, Republican initiatives. ~ Warren Beatty

The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees. ~ Enver Hoxha

It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself. ~ Mao Zedong

Some of the big philosophical problems have been solved by science, at least to a 1st approximation. Examples: the problems of matter, and mind. Only philosophical reactionaries, like Noam Chomsky, claim that they are and will remain mysteries. ~ Mario Bunge

The issue is, the Arabs have many allies. Among the worst reactionaries in the world. No religion out of which so much murder comes as there is in certain parts of Islam. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm ... The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward. ~ Friedrich Engels

The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march ~ Bhagat Singh

It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt's and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration ... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary. ~ William Howard Taft

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit ... Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong. ~ Louis Kronenberger

All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right. ~ Mao Zedong

The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted
in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest
at the command
of his head. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining. ~ Christina Stead

It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony. ~ Andre Breton

But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect. ~ Huey Newton

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad. ~ Lynne Truss

The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools ~ John Dewey

Obama wants to stand for a peaceful, generous, encompassing approach that would bring all Americans, but not just Americans, the whole of international society, together to advance civilization towards what we all understand is necessary to advance. Because of that he's being subjected to very serious rejections from the reactionary portion of the system, which, unfortunately, is the dominant portion. ~ Gilberto Gil

What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments. ~ Gilles Deleuze

The enemy will not perish of himself. Neither will the Chinese reactionaries nor the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism in China step down from the stage of history of their own accord. ~ Mao Zedong

The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary. ~ Jilly Cooper

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph. ~ Mao Zedong

The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights. ~ Russell Kirk

We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious "voice" of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the "pursuit of happiness" to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity -- often against ethnic minorities and so-called "deviant" individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word "libertarian," a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word "anarchist," which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect -- acolytes of Ayn Rand, the "earth mother" of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property -- have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of "socialism," "socialisms" that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated. ~ Murray Bookchin

The death penalty can be tolerated only by extreme statist reactionaries who demand a state that is so powerful that it has the right to kill. ~ Noam Chomsky

I'd be a conservative if I'd never met any. They're selfish, mean-spirited, egocentric, reactionary, and boring. ~ Pat Conroy

The Italian neofascists were learning from the U.S. reactionaries how to achieve fascism's class goals within the confines of quasi-democratic forms: use an upbeat, Reaganesque optimism; replace the jackbooted militarists with media-hyped crowd pleasers; convince people that government is the enemy - especially its social service sector - while strengthening the repressive capacities of the state; instigate racist hostility and antagonisms between the resident population and immigrants; preach the mythical virtues of the free market; and pursue tax and spending measures that redistribute income upward. ~ Michael Parenti

There are always two kinds of people in every country: Progressives and reactionaries; wise people and ignorant; democrats and fascists; libertarians and oppressive. All struggles happen between these two parties. If you are in the first group, your greatest reward will be dignity and victory! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

All reactionaries are paper tigers. ~ Mao Zedong

He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. ~ G.K. Chesterton

As Aristotle said, you have to be an aristocrat or a reactionary to write a good proletarian poem. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

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. ~ Jack Schwartz

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. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future. ~ Aneurin Bevan

For new media reactionaries ... the problem is technology, the endless distractions of the Internet, the breakdown of authority in an age of blogs and Twitter, the collapse of narrative in a hyper-linked, multi-networked world. ~ David L. Ulin

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. ~ Kim Jong Il

The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance. ~ Mao Zedong

Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress. ~ A. Philip Randolph

Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The state machine, including the army, the police and the courts, is the instrument with which one class oppresses another. It is an instrument of oppression against all hostile classes; it means violence and is certainly not anything 'benevolent.' 'You are merciless.' Quite so. We definitely do not adopt a benevolent policy towards the reactionary activities of the reactionaries and the reactionary classes. ~ Mao Zedong

It is right to rebel against reactionaries. ~ Mao Zedong

As masters of the bond market, the Rothschilds were already more feared than loved. Reactionaries on the Right lamented the rise of a new form of wealth, higher-yielding and more liquid than the landed estates of Europe's aristocratic elites. As Heinrich Heine discerned, there was something profoundly revolutionary about the financial system the Rothschilds were creating: ~ Niall Ferguson

We face a deep moral crisis, which we might also describe as a 'crisis of community.' Alongside increasing economic stratification and the continuation of an adaptive racism, a 'morality' of individualism has grown more and more severe. With this deadly combination, we have been losing the spirit that's needed to hold any community or any nation together: a sense of responsibility for each other. In the long term no community can survive when greed and irresponsibility are incentivized instead of reined in. This crisis point to a decision we have to make as a society: Do we want to live in a nation that is defined by inclusionary, solidaristic community values, or one that is defined by the moralistically bankrupt values of Wall Street and the bigoted, exclusionary "solidarity" of reactionaries? ~ Jonathan Smucker

Look at the John Birch Society. Look at Hitler. The reactionaries are always better organizers. ~ Cesar Chavez

Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I can be very reactionary. It's a gift and a curse. ~ Xosha Roquemore