A Quote by Diane Ackerman
... love is an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, an uprising in the body politic, a private mutiny.
Related Quotes
Avoid the politic, the factious fool,
The busy, buzzing, talking harden'd knave;
The quaint smooth rogue that sins against his reason,
Calls saucy loud sedition public zeal,
And mutiny the dictates of his spirit.
To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.
Religion is an act of sedition against reason. Whatever religion is most seductive and likely to draw in victims to surrender their skepticism is the worst.
The revolt against freedom, which can be traced back so far, is associated with a revolt against reason that [gives] sentiment primacy to evaluate actions and experiences according to the subjective emotions with which they are associated.
Law and order are the medicine of the body politic and when the body politic gets sick, medicine must be administered.
Sports movies are often very good at dramatizing the intersection of public and private realms: the body politic.
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.
When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. pioneered the 'presidential greatness poll' in 1948, the top five were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jefferson. Only Wilson appears to be seriously fading, probably because his support for the World War I-era Sedition Act now seems outrageous; in this analogy, Woodrow is like the Doors and the Sedition Act is Oliver Stone.
The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack.
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
If the theatre has taught me anything, it's that when things change in the body, in the body politic, in the body of the world, in the body of the earth, in the body of the person, there's change. You never go back.
Conscience has nothing to do as lawgiver or judge; but is a witness against me if I do wrong, and which approves if I do right. To act against conscience is to act against reason and God's Law.
Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.
Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law. And yet we must not regard this revolt as entirely negative. The energy that rejects many obsolete laws is an entirely positive impulse for renewal of life and law.
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