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.
P. D. James (1920-2014) British mystery writer [Phyllis Dorothy James White]
Time To Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography, “Diary 1997” (1999)
(Source)
Quotations about:
subversion
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
What happens when a state tries to purge its state universities or a community tries to purge its public schools of alleged subversives? […] What happens is the demoralization and eventual corruption of the school system. This is not a momentary or even temporary affair; it is something the consequences of which may be felt for years. The search for subversives results in the intimidation of the independent, the original, the imaginative, and the experimental-minded. It discourages independence of thought in teachers and students alike. It discourages the reading of books that may excite the suspicion of some investigator or some Legionnaire. It discourages the discussion of controversial matters in the classroom, for such discussion may be reported, or misreported, and cause trouble. It creates a situation where first-rate minds will not go into teaching or into administration and where students therefore get poor teaching. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience. In the long run it will create a generation not only deprived of liberty but incapable of enjoying liberty.
Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
“Free Enterprise in Ideas,” Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)
(Source)
Originally published in the Saturday Review (1952), based on a speech to the Advertising Council's American Round Table, New York City (1951).
The parliamentary battle of the NSDAP [Nazi Party] had the single purpose of destroying the parliamentary system from within through its own methods. It was necessary above all to make formal use of the possibilities of the party-state system but to refuse real cooperation and thereby to render the parliamentary system, which is by nature dependent upon the responsible cooperation of the opposition, incapable of action.
Ernst Rudolf Huber (1903-1990), German jurist and constitutional historian
Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich [Verfassungsrecht des Grossdeutschen Reiches] (1939)
(Source)
Reprinted in National Socialism, US State Department (1943).
He [the pseudo-conservative] sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its own way in the world … cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed.
Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) American historian and intellectual
“The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt” (1954)
(Source)
The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a natural characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. Knowing his rule rests upon compulsion rather than consent, the dictator must always assume the disloyalty, not for a few but of many, and guard against it by continual inquisition and liquidation of the unreliable. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practic. The democratic state, on the other hand, is based on the consent of its members. The vast majority of our people are intensely loyal, as they have amply demonstrated. To question, even by implication, the loyalty and devotion of a large group of citizens is to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust which is neither justified, healthy, nor consistent with our traditions. […] I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our ancient rights of free men. Moreover, we will win the contest of ideas that afflicts the world not by suppressing those rights, but by their triumph. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Veto Message, Illinois State Senate Bill 102 (1951-06-26)
(Source)
The Broyles Bill would have required all public workers, teachers, and officials, as well as candidates for office to sign loyalty oaths. Its veto by Stevenson, as Illinois Governor, was widely used by his political enemies during the Red Scare of the era.
This quote is widely misidentified as a more generic comment condemning the federal McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. I've been unable to find any primary source connecting this quotation to that event.
It is often elided and paraphrased down, e.g.:The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.
Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) American playwright, screenwriter
Letter to Rep. John S. Wood, House Committee on Un-American Activities (19 May 1952)
(Source)
National Archives copy. Reprinted in The Nation (31 May 1952).
In the letter Hellman offers to come before the committee and talk of her own life and beliefs, but not if she could then be compelled to "name names" of others. As a result of the letter and her invoking the Fifth Amendment at the HUAC hearings, Hellman was put on the Hollywood Blacklist for the rest of the decade.
