Reactionary Quotes

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.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Emotional, Win, Cannot

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

Attitude, Dead, Willing

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Walking, Backwards

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

Age, Against, Artist

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

Understand, Enough, Far

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

Become, Ideas, Pakistan

Now that virtually every career is an option for ambitious girls, it can no longer be considered regressive or reactionary to reintroduce discussion of marriage and motherhood to primary education. We certainly do not want to return to the simplistic duality of home economics classes for girls and wood shop for boys.
Camille Paglia

Marriage, Education, Home

I tend to be reactionary.
Billy Corgan

All adventure is now reactionary.
William F. Buckley, Jr.

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

Revolution, After, Makes

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.
Alexander Haig

Long, Done, Three

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

Good, Government, Friends

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

Future, Face, Walking

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.
Gary Vaynerchuk

Time, End, Real

I'm not a reactionary.
Renee Fleming

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.
Henry Cabot Lodge

Life, Selfish, May

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

Vote, Public, Republican

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

Fact, Ideas, Along

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.
Saul Williams

Black, Cannot, Around

There's no such thing as the contemporary novel. Before I seem the complete reactionary, let me add that I've happily joined in many discussions about 'the contemporary novel' where what that usually, unproblematically means is novels that have appeared recently or may appear soon.
Graham Swift

May, Before, Means

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

Bad, Old, Seriously

When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary.
Andrew Sullivan

Marriage, Gay, Started

The right is so reactionary it goes nowhere.
Tom Metzger

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

Everything, Down, Off

An author who sets about to depict events of the past that have run their course is suspected of wishing to avoid the problems of the present day, of being, in other words, a reactionary.
Lion Feuchtwanger

Past, Words, Problems

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.
Bruce Davison

Political, Tolerance, Everybody

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.
Alexander Mackenzie

Country, Sure, Number

It is only with burning anger that we can speak of this attack by counter-revolutionary reactionary elements against the capital of our country, against our people's democratic order and the power of the working class.
Janos Kadar

Power, Anger, Country

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

Social, Religious, Leaders

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

Freedom, Democracy, Matter

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Agatha Christie

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