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Subversive   /səbvˈərsɪv/   Listen
Subversive

adjective
1.
In opposition to a civil authority or government.  Synonyms: insurgent, seditious.



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"Subversive" Quotes from Famous Books



... without much humor. "The government has been getting more arbitrary each year," he said. "They were ready enough to let us go, aye. But they may regret it now—not because we could ever be any active threat, but because we will be a subversive example, up there in Earth's sky. Or just because we will be. Mind ye, I know not for sairtain; but 'tis possible they decided we are safer dead, and this is to trick us back. 'Twould be ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... arise— A plan our ancient sires would hate, O fallen from thy virtuous state? For in the line from which we spring The eldest is anointed king: No monarchs from the rule decline, And, least of all, Ikshvaku's line. Our holy sires, to virtue true, Upon our race a lustre threw, But with subversive frenzy thou Hast marred our lineal honour now, Of lofty birth, a noble line Of previous kings is also thine: Then whence this hated folly? whence This sudden change that steals thy sense? Thou shalt not gain thine impious will, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... of this aphorism cannot be challenged, but, like most aphorisms, it only conveys a portion of the truth; for the commercial spirit, though eminently beneficent when under some degree of moral control, may become not merely hurtful, but even subversive of Imperial dominion, when it is allowed to run riot. Livingstone said that in five hundred years the only thing the natives of Africa had learnt from the Portuguese was to distil bad spirits with the help of an old gun barrel. This is, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... that woman does not suffer alone when subject to oppressive and unequal laws, but that whatever affects injuriously her interests, is subversive of the highest good of the race, we earnestly request that in the New Constitution you are about to form for the State of Ohio, women shall be secured, not only the right of suffrage, but all the political and legal rights ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... roar of anger and the harsh-voiced broadcaster returned to the air. His taped broadcast had run out. Now he bellowed such subversive profanity directed at the officials of Tralee-under-Mekin that Bors smiled sourly. It was not good for Mekinese prestige to have a subject people know that one ship could defy the empire, even for minutes. It was still less desirable to have the members ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... phrases, or talk about the sanctity of the home. They're not institutionalists. Only be fair about it; weigh all the pros and cons, and judge honestly, and for heaven's sake don't look at the thing romantically, or go off on theories because they sound large and subversive. Think of practical points, as well as of ultimate principles. Both, to my mind, are on the same side. I'm not asking you to sacrifice right for expediency, or expediency for right. I don't say 'Be sensible,' or 'Be idealistic.' ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... leaders: no substantial political opposition groups exist, although the government has identified the Falungong spiritual movement and the China Democracy Party as subversive groups ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... enough to satisfy the lust of the Russian censorship. It was now suspected that even the "dependable" rabbis might pass many a book as "harmless," though its contents were subversive of the public weal. As a result, a new ukase was issued in 1841, placing the rabbinical censors themselves under Government control. All uncensored books, including those already passed as "harmless," were ordered to be ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... shortly before his death, proposed to the assembled subscribers of Drury Lane Theatre, that the concern should be farmed to some responsible individual under certain conditions and limitations: and that his proposal was rejected, not without indignation, as subversive of the main object, for the attainment of which the enlightened and patriotic assemblage of philodramatists had been induced to risk their subscriptions. Now this object was avowed to be no less than the redemption of the British stage not only from horses, dogs, elephants, and the like ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... complaints against the crown became so general, so bitter, and the excitement so great, that the king, by the advice of the ministers who governed him, issued several ordinances which were regarded by the people as so despotic, as so subversive of all popular rights, as to call for resistance by insurrection and ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... "You hold subversive views, Burleigh—views to which the public mind is not educated up, nor will be in this generation," said Mr. Chiverton. "The old order of things ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... unchecked by a broad sense of humanity, full of subversive wilfulness, and not only untrained in moderation, but degenerating into crass exaggeration, Rousseau was ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... were brought before a committee of the House of Commons, for promulgating, in different ways, these and similar opinions, which were justly regarded as subversive of all morality.—Gataker's "God's Eye on his Israel",—preface, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... questionings of his state that I have mentioned; but I must add that by the time he reached Charing Cross—he smoked a cigar deferred till after the Channel in a compartment by himself—it had suddenly come over him that they were futile. Now that he had left the girl a subversive, unpremeditated heart-beat told him—it made him hold his breath a minute in the carriage—that he had after all not escaped. He was in love with her: he had been in love with her ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... with the theory and practice of party organization, teachings which they eagerly absorbed, and which seemed sinister and ominous to the Whigs. He was showing them, in fact, the way in which elections were to be won; and though the Whigs denounced his system as subversive of individual freedom and private judgment, it was not long before they were also forced to adopt it, or be left alone with their virtue. The organization of political parties in Illinois really takes its rise ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... principles on which society rests by the disorganisation into which his country had fallen, after the upheaval of the Revolution and the disasters of the Napoleonic era which succeeded it. It may even be the truth that his bold and subversive teaching in religious matters was due to a profound conviction that the virtue of the old ideals had been completely exhausted, and that if society was to be regenerated, it must be by a radical reformation of the theoretic conceptions ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case. But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... theocracy, I admit; because the fact of idolatry was a crime, namely, 'crimen laesae majestatis', an overt act subversive of the fundamental law of the state, and breaking asunder the 'vinculum et copulam unitatis et cohaesionis'. But in making the position general, Taylor commits the 'sophisma omissi essentialis'; he omits the essential of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... first cares was to sound the religious sentiment of the people, and here I found, to my surprise, great confusion. As a learned Dutchman most justly wrote a short time ago, "Ideas subversive of every religious dogma have made much way in this land." It is quite a mistake, however, to believe that where faith decreases indifference enters. Such men as appeared to Pascal monstrous creatures—men who live ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... a severe silence, listening with a frowning disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way—she had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring—a handsome piece of a girl, too. "A ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... special collectors from henceforth paying taxes with the national treasury."—Ibid., 744. A report by Roland. The department of Var, having called a meeting of commissaries at Avignon to provide for the defense of these regions, the Minister says: "This step, subversive of all government, nullifies the general regulations of the executive power."—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Deliberation of the three administrative bodies assembled at Marseilles, Nov. 5, 1792.—Petition of Anselme, a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... however it may turn, will be disastrous to slavery, is evident from a great variety of considerations. But that we should pretend to fight for the Constitution and the Union, and yet against its express provisions, in respect to those held in bondage by loyal citizens, is simply to act a part subversive of the true intent of the Constitution. To violate its provisions, in relation to loyal citizens South, is in the highest degree impolitic and suicidal. It is the constant aim of the enemies now in armed rebellion against the Union, to misrepresent the North upon this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... examples of the abuse of the injunction in labor disputes, hundreds of which have been granted, many of them equally subversive of all sound principles of popular government. There is probably not another civilized country in which such judicial tyranny would be tolerated. It is not without significance that in West Virginia, where, as a result ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... these tracts were printed, and gratuitously circulated in France and other countries. As they were adapted to the capacity of all classes of persons, they were eagerly sought after, and read with avidity. The doctrines inculcated in them were subversive of every principle of morality and religion. The everlasting distinctions between virtue and vice, were completely broken down. Marriage was ridiculed—obedience to parents treated as the most abject slavery—subordination to civil ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... government is administered; of the beneficial effect of which the present reign afforded an illustrious example, when addresses from all parts of the kingdom controuled an audacious attempt to introduce a new power subversive of the crown.[911] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... announced that, if any respectable man would call me a disunionist, I would answer him in monosyllables.... But I have often asserted the right, for which the battles of the Revolution were fought—the right of a people to change their government whenever it was found to be oppressive, and subversive of the objects for which governments are instituted—and have contended for the independence and sovereignty of the States, a part of the creed of which Jefferson was the apostle, Madison the expounder, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... of Port Andro during the attack on Belle Isle off the west coast of France. In 1762 he was wounded at Havana in the West Indies. After that he enjoyed four years of quietness at home. Then came the exceedingly difficult task of guiding Canada through twelve years of turbulent politics and most subversive war. ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... "It's an old wheeze. The definition of a red subversive is anybody who doesn't see eye to eye with the United States. They've been pulling the gag for decades. Remember Guatemala and Cuba? Do anything that interferes with American business abroad and the cry goes up, he's an ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... being contrary to the rules of the union, the men in the shop struck work. It is a usual course for men of the union to "strike" in this manner against persons of their own condition, and to exercise a force not resting in law or natural right, but merely on the will of a majority, and directly subversive of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... personality. If any other stimulus is needed it can be given by a grading of diplomas as is now being done in many high schools and colleges. I hold that to add to the marks now in common use what may be called a monetary fringe is both unnecessary and really subversive of the true ends of the school work. As teachers we should seek to elevate ideals, not to lower them; to furnish right motives, not wrong ones; to place before the developing youth high ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... was that of every other delegate,—no more and no less. Neither he nor they, whether more or less opposed to slavery, saw in it a system so subversive of the rights of man that no just government should tolerate it. That was reserved for a later generation, and even that was slow to learn. To the fathers it was, at worst, only an unfortunate and unhappy social condition, which it would be well to be rid of if this ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... explained to his American friends the true character of the Russian, that he was not a man of healthy mental organization, but merely a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, constructed upon a principle subversive of all society as at present constituted—in short, a monster whose very existence must ever be revolting to right-minded persons with brains of honest gray and white. But the solemn promise to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... child is fundamental to the plan of this work. The editors have felt that the inclusion of critical notes in these little books intended for elementary school children would be not only superfluous, but, in the degree in which critical comment drew the child's attention from the text, subversive of the desired result. Nor are there any notes on methods. The best way to teach children to love a poem is to read it inspiringly to them. The French say: "The ear is the pathway to the heart." A poem should ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... summons, an attempt has been made to convene you together; how inconsistent with the rules of propriety, how unmilitary, and how subversive of all order and discipline, let the good sense of the army decide. In the moment of this summons, another anonymous production was sent into circulation, addressed more to the feelings and passions than to the reason and judgment of the army. The author of the piece is entitled to much credit ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... been considered and brought distinctly before Parliament? It strikes the Queen that all the Commons want is a Parliamentary security against the abolition of the Competitive System of Examinations by the Executive. Can this not be obtained by means less subversive of the whole character of our Constitution? The Queen cannot believe that Lord Derby could not find means to come to some agreement with the Opposition, and she trusts he will leave nothing undone to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... a totally different explanation of the phenomenon. We contend that a retrograde motion of such a nebulous mass, is subversive of our whole theory; and we must be permitted to examine certain points, hitherto disregarded by those entertaining antagonist views. It is supposed that the meteors in 1833 fell for eight or nine hours. The orbital velocity of the earth is more than 1,000 miles per minute, and the orbital velocity ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... surroundings, had no temptation to adopt Rousseau's sweeping revolutionary fervour. His nominal whiggism was not warmed into any subversive tendency. The labourers with whose sorrows he sympathised might be ignorant, coarse, and drunken; he saw their faults too clearly to believe in Rousseau's idyllic conventionalities, and painted the truth as realistically as Crabbe: they required to be kept out of the public-house, not ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... of which, on the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. On this opinion, therefore, our faculties are shown to be weak, but not deceitful. The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions, subversive of each other, as equally possible; but only as unable to understand as possible either of the two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognise as true. We are thus taught ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... first, consisted of those who advised her not to take so much care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and with no outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or doubting smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a good red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful sips of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her medicine bottles and her bed. The other ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... entirely subversive of the principles of American government, to say the least," replied Austen, grimly. He was thinking of the pass which Mr. Flint had sent him, and of the kind of men Mr. Flint employed to make the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... which the objector can only give some helpless repetitions. With Balmez, we reply: "But in recommending prudence to the people let us not disguise it under false doctrines—let us beware of calming the exasperation of misfortune by circulating errors subversive of all governments, of all society." (European Civilisation, Chap. 55.) Of men who shrink from investigating such questions, Balmez wrote: "I may be permitted to observe that their prudence is quite thrown away, that their foresight and precaution are of no avail. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... views of religious freedom, as bearing on the meaning of "religion" in the federal constitution, leading up to the conclusion that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties, or subversive of good order." The court then traced the view of polygamy in England and the United States from the time when it was made a capital offence in England (as it was in Virginia in 1788), declaring that, "in the face of all this evidence, it is ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... King, "gave liberty to the nation, and now it is my duty and my hope to give security and strength. It is known to Parliament that certain subversive elements, not in Italy alone, but throughout Europe, throughout the world, have been using the most devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Cold, calculating criminals have perpetrated crimes against the most innocent and the most highly placed, which ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... in Rhode Island, the commissioners found no difficulty in the full exercise of the powers committed to them. In Massachusetts, they were considered as men clothed with an authority subversive of the liberties of the colony, which the sovereign could not rightly confer. The people of that province had been long in habits of self-government, and seem to have entertained opinions which justified their practice. They did not acknowledge that allegiance to the crown which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... holy indignation, and will have rejected far from you this guilty and shameful provocation. Notwithstanding, that none of you may say he has been deluded by fallacious seductions, and by the preachers of subversive doctrines, or ignorant of what is contriving by the foes of all order, all law, all right, true liberty, and your happiness, we to-day again raise and utter abroad our voice, so that you may be more certain of the absoluteness with which we prohibit men, of whatever ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... before the publication of "Emile," Rousseau had issued "The Social Contract," the most revolutionary of all his works, subversive of all precedents in politics, government, and the organization of society, while also confounding Christianity with ecclesiasticism and attacking its influence in the social order. All his works obtained a wide fame before publication ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... was not himself present on this occasion, heard what Clarence had done, he said that such proceedings were subversive of the laws of the realm, and destructive to all good government, and he commanded that Clarence should be arrested and ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... and vigorous call to arms against the Arnold Law. It was as subversive as anything Doak had seen in ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... dinners he would regard with any thing better than a friendly contempt, combined with a certain mild indignation at your having presumed to ask him, used to such different ways. It is far more graceful to accept the small fact, and let him have his whim, which is not a subversive one or at all dangerous to the community, being of a sort easy ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... you!" cried Mrs. Gollinger, enthusiastically. "But then, the Bishop has always assured me that your real nature was very different from that which—if you will pardon my saying so—seems to be revealed by your brilliant but—er—rather subversive book. 'If you only knew my niece, dear Mrs. Gollinger,' he always said, 'you would see that her novel was written in all innocence of heart;' and to tell you the truth, when I first read the book I didn't think it so very, very shocking. It wasn't till the dear Bishop had ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... bring it back within safe limits. Still, to hasten this auspicious result at the present crisis we ought to remember that every rational creature must be presumed to intend the natural consequences of his own teachings. Those who announce abstract doctrines subversive of the Constitution and the Union must not be surprised should their heated partisans advance one step further and attempt by violence to carry these doctrines into practical effect. In this view of the subject, it ought never to be forgotten that however great may ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... might, without injury to its efficiency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers who should form themselves into political clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the frank indifference of utter worldliness. Powerful enough to have been tyrannical oppressors, they were singularly tolerant and gentle, contenting themselves with a playful, good-natured irreverence, which tormented the good father more than opposition. They were felt to be dangerous and subversive. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... public performance of the Noces de Figaro, in 1784, was the culmination of a three years' struggle. Louis XVI had declared the play subversive, and the author had raised a storm of protest in its behalf. A special performance was conceded for the Court; and the Parisian public, irritated at being thus excluded, then raised for the first time the cry of tyranny and oppression. When at last the Government in its weakness made the final ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... the woman who had given me such a plausible lecture on pride. Alas, for our fallen nature! Which is more subversive of peace and Christian fellowship—ignorance of our own characters, or the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... of paints has been very correctly characterized as "a species of corporeal hypocrisy as subversive of delicacy of mind as it is of the natural complexion," and has been, of late years, discarded at the toilette ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... adapted to the requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment in the heart of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... Government," he declared, "has usurped the powers of Law and Justice to an extent subversive of republican institutions, and not to be borne by any free people. He has given access to the vaults of prisons but not to the bar of justice. It is a part of the nature of frail men to sin against laws, both human and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... Tyrrell's very able book 'Lex Orandi.' The test of truth for a dogma is not its correspondence with phenomenal fact, but its 'prayer-value.' This writer, at any rate before his suspension by the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, is less subversive in his treatment of history than the French critics whom we have quoted. Although in apologetics the criterion for the acceptance of dogmas must, he thinks, be a moral and practical one, he sometimes speaks as if the 'prayer-value' ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... stood grim behind my chair, roasting, as usual, his posterior before a blazing fire, with soldierly devotion to duty. Conversation fell a little flat. The arrival of the evening newspapers, half an hour belated, created a diversion. The war is sometimes subversive of nice table decorum. I read out the cream of the news. Discussion thereon lasted us until coffee and cigarettes were brought in and the servants left ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... he said, smiling. "Decidedly not. As Mr Reardon would say, it would be totally subversive of discipline. It couldn't be done. But one gentleman can of course apologise to another, and I do so most heartily. My dear Mr Herrick, I beg your ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... an administrator in troubled times largely rests. The same policy of investigation and research was pursued. Solemn warning was given that freedom of speech and assembly must be respected rigidly but that neither must become the instrument of license nor of subversive speech or conduct. At the time when the situation reached a critical stage ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... Lodge, while the placing in the hands of the craft so powerful, and at times, and with bad spirits, so annoying a privilege as that of immediate appeal, would necessarily tend to impair the energies and lessen the dignity of the Master, while it would be subversive of that spirit of discipline which pervades every part of the institution, and to which it is mainly indebted for ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... majesty upon any bill or other proceeding depending in either house of Parliament, with a view to influence the votes of the members, is a high crime and misdemeanour, derogatory to the honour of the crown, a breach of the fundamental privileges of Parliament, and subversive of the constitution of this country." A more explicit or emphatic defiance to the king would have been hard to frame. Two days afterward the Lords rejected the India Bill, and on the next day, the 18th of December, George turned the ministers ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... the same mineral. For the reader will often find that crystals of a mineral determined to be the same by physical characters, crystalline form, and optical properties, have been declared by skilful analysers to be composed of distinct elements. This disagreement seemed at first subversive of the atomic theory, or the doctrine that there is a fixed and constant relation between the crystalline form and structure of a mineral and its chemical composition. The apparent anomaly, however, which threatened to throw ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... the freemason is regarded as the embodiment of radical and subversive ideas. The church ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... of its reason. Making every allowance for the extravagances of the French rulers, unpractised in government and driven by a burning sense of mission to universal mankind, it was to me evident that their demands upon other nations, and notably upon Great Britain, were subversive of all public order and law, and of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... ordering the king's messengers to search for the authors, printers, and publishers of the North Briton, arrest them and seize their papers. Warrants of this kind to be executed on persons not named, without evidence of their identity or guilt, had hitherto been held lawful, but they were subversive of the liberty of the subject and contrary to the spirit of the constitution. During three days forty-nine persons were arrested under this warrant. Among them were the avowed publisher of the North Briton, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... condition of life. The claims of poor Susan, her modesty, her attachment, and her beauty—were all insufficient to prevail against such a host of opposing motives; and the consequence, though bitter, and subversive of her happiness, was a final determination on the part of Denny, to acquaint her, with a kind of ex-officio formality, that all intercourse upon the subject of their mutual attachment must cease between them. Notwithstanding his boasted knowledge, however, he ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... were most misleading to the British public. Moreover, his letters, over which I could have no control, and which I heard of for the first time when the copies of his paper arrived in Kuram, were most subversive of the truth. It was on the receipt of these letters that I felt it to be my duty to send the too imaginative author ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... none was greater than the younger Dumas—and none had to be greater! To make his audience accept—that is, identify itself with—the action of the hero in "Denise," or the mother's decision in "Les Idees de Mms. Aubray," so subversive of general social feeling, and thereby to experience fully the great dramatic moment in each play, there had to go the effect of innumerable small impulses. And to realize some situations is even beyond ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... special employment standards of the Federal government I turn now to a matter relating to American citizenship. The subversive character of the Communist Party in the United States has been clearly demonstrated in many ways, including court proceedings. We should recognize by law a fact that is plain to all thoughtful citizens-that we are dealing here with actions akin to treason—that when ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... administrative departments no less than a clever manipulator of seditious movements. But he had mainly distinguished himself as a rebel against authority. And it was in the temper of a rebel that he came to Athens. Obstacles, however, external as well as internal, made a subversive enterprise impossible. With the quick adaptability of his nature, he turned into a guardian of established institutions: the foe of revolution and friend of reform. Supported by the Crown, he was able to lift his voice for a "Revisionist" ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... dice-box. For the frivolously inclined, "Puss in the Corner" is a harmless indoor game. I throw out these observations for what they may be worth, and trusting that they will not be regarded as dangerously subversive of morality, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... enjoined submission and obedience even to the tyranny of Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of political subjection. Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To forms of government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among the external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... to that he believed that there was a possibility that this entire matter might have been started by subversive individuals for the purpose of creating a mass hysteria. He suggested that the Bureau keep this in mind in any interviews conducted regarding reported sightings. General Schulgen stated to that he would make available to ...
— Federal Bureau of Investigation FOIA Documents - Unidentified Flying Objects • United States Federal Bureau of Investigation

... I have produced many arguments, which to me were conclusive, to prove that the prevailing notion respecting a sexual character was subversive of morality; and I have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... this will be through the prevalence of its spirit in the hearts of your pupils, and not from any assistance which you can usually derive from it in managing particular cases of transgression. Many teachers make great mistakes in this respect. A bad boy, who has done something openly and directly subversive of the good order of the school, or the rights of his companions, is called before the master, who thinks that the most powerful weapon to wield against him is the Bible. So, while the trembling culprit stands before him, he administers to ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... counsel for the defendants, made a motion before Judge Tallmadge for an order to prevent the District Attorney from using the preliminary evidence taken at the private examinations. "It was a proceeding," he said, "arbitrary and subversive of the first principles of law and liberty,"—"which would have disgraced the reign of Charles and stained the character of Jeffries." The District Attorney was heard in opposition, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... description. Coleridge himself shrank from his own wonders, and wanted to call the piece "A Poet's Reverie." "It is as bad as Bottom the weaver's declaration that he is not a lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all credit—which the tale should force upon us—of its truth?" Lamb himself was forced, by the temper of the time, to declare that he "disliked all the miraculous part of it," as if it were not all ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... cruelly calumniated, and could he discover the author of the aspersion, he would vindicate his honour with his sword. In fine, he explained the whole business in such a manner, as, though I could not entirely approve, yet evinced it to be by no means subversive of the general amiableness of his character. How deplorable is the situation in which we are placed, when even the generous and candid temper of my St. Julian, can be induced to think of a young nobleman in a light he does ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... and so we mused upon the whims of Fate That had degraded Tragedy from its old, supreme estate; And duly, at the Morton bar, we stigmatized the age As sinfully subversive of the interests of the Stage! For Jack and I were actors in the halcyon, palmy days Long, long before the Hoyt school of farce became the craze; Yet, as I now recall it, it was twenty years ago That we were Roman soldiers ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the innocent and defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. Such proceedings not only disgrace the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army and destructive of the ends of our present movements. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... their pre-eminence by the judicious recognition of heresies. In all ages there has been a conservative clique which restricted religion to ceremonial observances. Again and again some intellectual or emotional outburst has swept away such narrow limits and proclaimed doctrines which seemed subversive of the orthodoxy of the day. But they have simply become the orthodoxy of the morrow, under the protection of the same Brahman caste. The assailants are turned into champions, and in time the bold reformers stiffen ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... then feel this deficiency at an epocha like the one in question: when means so despotic were daily adopted to curb the growing spirit of enquiry that despot ministers might pursue measures so tragical; so subversive of the order which they pretended to maintain, and so destructive to the happiness they were appointed to guard? Alas! the topics were so numerous, so melancholy, so almost maddening, that the man who would paint them truly must temper and rein-in his feelings with an iron arm: otherwise, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Carlisle, "you are, as usual, brilliant. Your imagination vaults—your daring is splendid. But as usual you are visionary and impractical. Buy them? To do this would require the credit of a nation! It would be subversive of all peace and all industry. You do not realize the sums required. You do not realize ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The Admiral was a naval officer of the old school—of the school who called their men "my children"—and who detested the Republican form of government as being subversive of discipline. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... uproot the hedges of caution in the minds of the common people, but he could not understand how such men as Hanky and Panky, who evidently did not believe that there had been any miracle at all, had been led to throw themselves so energetically into a movement so subversive of all their traditions, when, as it seemed to him, if they had held out they might have pricked the balloon bubble easily enough, and maintained ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... began to denounce the consumers of animal food with every unpleasant illustration the shambles could be made to supply. In very select companies of sympathizers, as well as in the Graduating Circle of Progressive Gladiators, it was known that Mrs. Romulus maintained a hideous doctrine subversive of that sacrament of the family which raises the life of man above the life of the wolf ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... of its agitation than to the South's wild outcry and preposterous effrontery of demand. Conservative northerners began to see that, bad as abolitionism might be, the means proposed for its suppression were worse still, being absolutely subversive of personal liberty, free speech, and a free press. More serious was the conviction, which the South's attitude nursed, that such mortal horror at Abolitionists and their propaganda could only be explained by some sort of a conviction on the part of the South ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... thought, Americans of the mid-twentieth century have added positive opposition. Critical ideas are apt to make any critic suspected of being subversive. The Southwest, Texas especially, is more articulately aware of its land spaces than of any other feature pertaining to itself. Yet in the realm of government, the Southwest has not produced a single spacious thinker. So far as the cultural ancestry of the region goes, the South ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... publicly preached, but otherwise openly advocated the doctrine called "the higher law," a doctrine which is unauthorized by the Bible, at war with the principles, precepts and examples of Christ and his Apostles, subversive alike of civil government, civil society, and the legal rights of individual citizens, and in effect constitutes, in the opinion of this Board, a species of moral treason against ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... evil: perhaps it is not so; nay, perhaps, it is a good! Is not an interregnum of genius necessary somewhere? A great genius, sun-like, compels lesser suns to gravitate with and to him; and this is subversive of originality. Age is as visible in thought as it is in man. Death is indispensably requisite for a new life. Genius is like a tree, sheltering and affording support to numberless creepers and climbers, which latter die and live many times ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... he has suffered lawsuits, illness, poverty, exile, divorce; that in the police description he is characterised as a person without a permanent situation, with uncertain income; married, but had deserted his wife and left his children; known as entertaining subversive opinions on social questions (by The Red Room, The New Realm and other works Strindberg became the great standard-bearer of the Swedish Radicals in their campaign against conventionalism and bureaucracy); that he ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... Don't attempt to control them contrary to their judgment. Strange if this, which is so much insisted on as the policy of our Church, be right, that she cannot get a single man, of all she sends out to China, to think so. Can it be that the Missionary work is so subversive of right reason, or of correct judgment, or of conscientiousness, that all become perverted by engaging ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... attained if I had been aided by those who surrounded me, instead of being made the butt of their railleries; if our authorities had sustained me with their influence instead of treating me as a subversive spirit. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... under which the Burra people bend, introducing discord into families, restraining the energies of the fishermen, and tending to a deeply rooted aversion towards the lessees and their service, but producing systems of chicanery and deceit subversive of moral principle and destructive of all efforts in the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... heavenly bodies, indeed, finds its best opportunities in unlooked-for disclosures; for it deals with transcendental conditions, and what is strange to terrestrial experience may serve admirably to expound what is normal in the skies. In celestial science especially, facts that appear subversive are often the most illuminative, and the prospect of its advance widens and brightens with each divagation enforced or permitted from the strait paths of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... which appears to conflict with statements contained in the standards of the Church, the Presbytery of Muirtown declares first of all, its unshaken adherence to the said standards; secondly, deplores the existence in any quarter of notions contradictory or subversive of said standards; thirdly, thanks Doctor Saunderson for the vigilance he has shown in the cause of sound doctrine; fourthly, calls upon all ministers within the bounds to have a care that they create no offence or misunderstanding by their teaching, and finally ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... "Important Advices," spread before the community the King's speech to Parliament. This state-paper, which was read the world over, represented the people of Boston as being "in a state of disobedience to all law and government, and to have proceeded to measures subversive of the Constitution, and attended with circumstances that might manifest a disposition to throw off their dependence upon Great Britain"; and it contained a pledge "to defeat the mischievous designs of those turbulent and seditious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.' A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he 'has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... a knave, you have heard a friend of yours grossly insulted, and you ask me what's the matter." The car swung round a corner, and Lady Touchstone, who was unready, heeled over with a cry. "I wish Mason wouldn't do that," she added testily, dabbing at her toque. "So subversive of dignity. What was I saying? Oh yes. A change. We'd better ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... Driven from my cloister, I lived on the scanty allowance the Assembly had assigned to me; I gave lessons in Latin and Mathematics and I wrote pamphlets on the persecution of the Church of France. I have even composed a work of some length, to prove that the Constitutional oath of the Priests is subversive of Ecclesiastical discipline. The advances made by the Revolution deprived me of all my pupils, while I could not get my pension because I had not the certificate of citizenship required by law. This certificate I went to the Hotel de Ville to claim, in the conviction I was well entitled to it. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... new Governor lacked nerve and decision, and was quite unfitted for his position. His method of dealing with an Indian murderer was long repeated on Red River as a subject for humor, when he instructed the interpreter to announce to the criminal: "that he had manifested a disposition subversive of all order, and if he should not be punished in this world, he would be sure to be punished in the next." The hopelessness of carrying on the affairs of the Colony apart from those of the general affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company, was now seen, and on the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... would have regarded that person as a fit subject for the lunatic asylum. But the passing of that Act and its operation have rudely forced the fact upon us that the Union Parliament is capable of producing any measure that is subversive of native interests; and that the complete arrest of native progress is the object aimed at in their efforts to include the Protectorates in their Union. Thus we think that their sole reason for seeking to incorporate Basutoland, Swaziland and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... it is utterly subversive of Christianity; for if this theory is true the fall of man is entirely fabulous; and if the fall, then the redemption, these two being inseparably ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... of immense consequence that the States retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the shelter of a foreign jurisdiction, is so subversive of order and so pregnant of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of praemunire should be revised and modified, against all citizens who attempt to carry their causes before any other than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... happy hours together reading and discussing the books which he bought for her by the armful at a shop in Charing Cross Road, where, open to the street, were piles of books almost blatantly subversive of society—Nietsche, Havelock Ellis, Shaw, Ibsen, Anarchist tracts, Socialist and Labour journals, R.P.A. cheap reprints, every sort and kind of book that in an ordinary shop would only be procured upon a special order.... ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty realism was subversive of popular superstitions, when logically carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... supplications of the service, that they were—she had been heard to state it more or less publicly and repeatedly—suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate to term highly unbecoming in a lady of her station, subversive and unchristian. The personal burdens inflicted on him by her ladyship he prayed for patience to endure. He surprised Weyburn in speaking of Lady Charlotte as 'educated and accomplished.' She was rather more so than Weyburn knew, and more so than was common among ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... vehement, the immense probability that there has been error—but the CERTAINTY of such error necessarily and exclusively appearing from the record itself. To act upon speculation, instead of certainty, in these cases, is dangerous to the last degree, and subversive of some of the fundamental principles of English jurisprudence. "Judgment may be reversed in a criminal case by writ of error," says Blackstone, "for NOTORIOUS (i. e. palpable, manifest, patent) mistakes in the judgment, as when a man is found guilty of PERJURY, (i. e. of a misdemeanour,) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... accomplished in that way; chiefly, perhaps, by military discipline in subordination to personal authority, and also by an unsparing surveillance of popular education, with a view to fortify the preconceptions handed down from the passing order as well as to eliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the well-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperial system in this direction, e.g., there has been evidence of an obscurely growing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass. So much so that hasty observers, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... biographic sketch, at those who, while exercising care in raising dogs and horses, allowed unworthy husbands to have offspring. This, in itself, was a praiseworthy thought; but the method adopted by Lycurgus to overcome that objection was subversive of all morality and affection. He considered it advisable that among worthy men there should be a community of wives and children, for which purpose he tried to suppress jealousy, ridiculing those who insisted on ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck



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