Top 210 Reactionary Quotes & Sayings

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

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.

I tend to be reactionary.

Earnestness is good; it means business. But fanaticism overdoes, and is consequently reactionary.

There are judges who stretch the law... to suit reactionary attitudes.

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.

History respects revolutions; and yet, if a revolution is progressive, support it; if it is reactionary, resist it!

I'm not a reactionary.

Hip-hop belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's one of the most radical, revolutionary and reactionary music there is.

The life is worth living. It's not true, what the tired and reactionary say. We're not on this earth to suffer and die. We're here to fulfill a mission.

No influence so quickly converts a radical into a reactionary as does his election to power.

The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.

The continuous war between the reactionary and the progressive forces determine the degree of mankind's happiness.

I wrote 'The Painted Word,' about modern art, and was denounced as reactionary. In fact, it is just a history, although a rather loaded one.

I don't recognize this new brand of Republicanism that's afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects.

Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands.

Reactionary movements can't sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on.

Our idea for Hannibal Lecter is that he's very reactionary - he's somebody who can adapt really well to circumstances.

In retrospect, we could see that the 1950s had been a reactionary period in America of Eisenhower blandness, of virulent anticommunism, of the 'Feminine Mystique.'

An artist must be a reactionary

Well, there's a lot to react against![in response to the accusation that she was a reactionary]

Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

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.

I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.

If any one age could be singled out as the worst in the history of Christendom, it would be the administration of Pope Pius XII, the most reactionary head of the most reactionary single force in the world - a force that binds men's minds, a force that divides them, a force that chains them so that they are unable to think and act for themselves.

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.

Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.

Learning slowly to not be so reactionary while inserting verbal gratitude into stressful situations is almost like being healed of mental blindness.

A lot of my inspiration is reactionary to images I see in the media.

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

In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.

To get nominated by the Republican Party you've got to be pretty reactionary, really.

A reactionary revolution is nothing but a high-speed evolution backwards!

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

California is the most reactionary state in America. Fascist sentiments are very strong here.

Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

Reactionary: One who wants the rules enforced so nobody can take his pile away from him the way he got it from others.

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

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

A reactionary is someone who wants to return to a previous state - that's never a possibility in my books. For me, everything's irreversible in the life of a society, as well as an individual's.

There is nothing new in state interventionism. It is as old and reactionary as societal organization itself. Always, when it permeates the body politic, it kills the nation.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF. Much of it is right-wing, reactionary crap.

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

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

To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

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.

All adventure is now reactionary.

The middle man governs, however extreme may seem to be the men who sit on the Front Bench, in their reactionary or revolutionary opinions.

I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am very reactionary.

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