Definition of Subversive

Subversive

Tending to subvert; having a tendency to overthrow and ruin.

Related Definitions:

And, Having, Overthrow, Ruin, Subvert, Tendency, Tending, To

Subversive Quotations

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
Henry Miller

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell

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.
Bertrand Russell

Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity.
Leonard Cohen

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
Raoul Vaneigem

The real breeders of discontent and alien doctrines of government and philosophies subversive of good citizenship are such as these who take the law into their own hands.
John L. Lewis

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.
Anthony Trollope

Sometimes people get mad at The Simpsons' subversive story telling, but there's another message in there, which is a celebration of making wild, funny stories.
Matt Groening

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.
Andy Goldsworthy

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.
Ethan Hawke

My house was bugged. They couldn't find any information on me being a subversive because I happen to love America; I just don't like some of the things the government is doing.
Eartha Kitt

I am not a member of any organization listed by the Attorney General as subversive. In any instance where I lent my name in the past, it was certainly without knowledge that such an organization was subversive. I have always been essentially and foremost an American.
Judy Holliday

Granted, there are times when, for business reasons, you do something that's more mainstream. But even then, I try to find something that has a dark or subversive aspect.
Ryan Phillippe

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.
Robert Bork

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.
Lionel Trilling

Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.
Carol P. Christ

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.
Dan Simmons

U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.
Robert Fisk

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.
Mary Whitehouse

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
Henry Steele Commager

More Subversive Quotations

Subversive Translations

subversive in Dutch is subversief, ondermijnend
subversive in German is Staatsfeindlich
subversive in Spanish is subversivo

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