Top 278 Subversive Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

It's even occurred to me, as a teeny little subversive whisper of a thought, that if we stop mowing the lawn right now, it will probably be a long, long time before the yard gets overrun by lions and snakes.

Racism is over in the 'Star Trek' future, but they found a way to comment on sexism and racism in the present day in such a subversive and smart way, you know?

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.

We need to be I think equally sensitive to the injurious power of certain kinds of speech acts but also to the subversive and possibly liberatory effects of certain kinds of play.

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.

The attitude toward women in this industry is nauseating. There are all sorts of porcine executives who are uncomfortable with a woman doing anything subversive. They want the movie about the beautiful girl who trips and falls, the adorable klutz.

The Fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.

Feminist pedagogy can only be liberatory if it is truly revolutionary because the mechanisms of appropriation within white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy are able to co-opt with tremendous ease that which merely appears radical or subversive

If I say most people are pretty decent that may sound nice and warm but actually it's really radical and subversive and that's why, all throughout history, those who have advocated a more hopeful view of human nature - often the anarchists - have been persecuted.

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.

The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that's not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.

If architecture is going to nudge, cajole, and inspire a community to challenge the status quo into making responsible changes, it will take the subversive leadership of academics and practitioners who keep reminding students of the profession’s responsibilities.

I've never been a popular person, but it doesn't matter. I have everything in my life that I want. I'm not a walking publicity stunt. I'm not an anarchist, or bitter. I'm not trying to be subversive. I just try to remain unguarded, unprotected by fear, and agents and publicists, and I feel comfortable that way.

My designs are slightly subversive in their way; it can be in the cut or the colour, but they're always obtainable: they're not so difficult that a 40-year-old woman wanting to go to a cocktail party looking foxy and a little bit different in something well-made would be alienated by them.

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.

Insofar as the universities are free and independent, they will also be "subversive," in the sense that dominant structures of power and their ideological support will be subjected to challenge and critique, a counterpart to attitudes that are fostered in the hard sciences wherever they are taken seriously.

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.

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.

I loved practical jokes. I loved being goofy on the playground, and I loved doing silly cartoons, but I was not this subversive little delinquent. I am an Eagle Scout, after all.

I think we think that American books are funny or they're serious literature. But humor is subversive. When you add an element of absurdism, you can get away with more, work in dark, daring questions you might not have written toward otherwise.

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.

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.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

Some comedians are silly or goofy or straight joke writers who avoid anything subversive or political. Others are drawn to it. The beauty of standup is there is room for everyone, and years of performing in front of crowds will dictate what you can or can't do.

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.

My early novels were written in quite a dark place. I stand by them, but I would never write them again. I think it is subversive to embrace emotional optimism, because it goes against the grain.

It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

If you see the blood, then there's an easy association of the violence. The violence that happens when there isn't blood is actually much more subversive and unsettling.

Teachings and ideologies subversive to the fundamental principles of this great Republic, which are contrary to the Constitution of the United States, or which are detrimental to the progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will be condemned, whether advocated by Republicans or Democrats.

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture.

I wish that there were more games having the courage to talk about more subversive topics. Talking about politics, sexuality, human relationships.

I went from doing something that was very original, sort of subversive, and specific in its voice - The Grinder - and loved every minute of it, but having done that, I was anxious to do something that had more broad appeal and to embrace the good things about that.

...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.

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.

Those of us who live in Mumbai or Delhi have notions about what women who live in Bhopal, or smaller towns, are like; and that perception is wrong. Some people are scared by how complex and subversive these women's lives can be.

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

Fashion is the opposite of the real, its worst enemy. Fashion photography is subversive; it makes you believe everything is true, whereas this could not be more false. It is the opposite of a mirror, a deformation.

Even things like Abba - I think it's always got a dark, subversive element to it. You've got these four blonde Swedish people singing about their relationships breaking up while they're all going out with each other.

There are certain things you must not say in spite of the fact that supposedly democracy means free speech. No. You are not allowed free speech. If you speak freely, you are then deemed as I was, to be a subversive.

Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

I feel like it's a subversive thing [a certain body type to admire] which keeps women preoccupied with something that doesn't matter, and takes up a lot of space, and prevents people from what they're meant to be doing.

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.

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.

The political cartoon, in a way, is one of the highest forms of expression about our times. I don't believe in dramatic statements when it comes to political critique. It doesn't communicate in a way that's subversive enough.

I don't think of myself as being particulary a subversive writer, but I like to think that my work could afford someone else, the extra degree of freedom that I found when I first found science fiction.

'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. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.

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.

Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.

My mantra was to educate people - to actually give them the know-how they could use - and to do it in a very subversive kind of way. I would entertain them, and I was going to teach them whether they knew it or not.

Everything serious in the world is well approached by humour. It's a powerful and often quite subversive tool. I suppose there is an argument that could be made against me for being frivolous, but I do think a laugh is a very generous thing to give.

Everyone asks me, 'Why do you choose such subversive or shocking themes?' but when I'm alone in my office, I'm not like, 'OK I'm going to shock.' I want to write about a character who fascinates me, someone who I don't understand.

Which is more subversive-and corrosive-to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.

I'm interested in genre in a way, I suppose because you have a framework of something and you can just twist it to explore the psychology or try different subversive ideas on something that feels familiar.

Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a Liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County.

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.

Theater will never, and never has, gotten audiences like film. But theater goes to work on society in a different and more subversive way.

My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!