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Subversive   Listen
adjective
Subversive  adj.  Tending to subvert; having a tendency to overthrow and ruin. "Lying is a vice subversive of the very ends and design of conversation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subversive" Quotes from Famous Books



... perpetual surveillance over the liberated negroes, and to establish a legislative despotism. The several laws passed are based upon the most vicious principles of legislation, and in their operation will be found intolerably oppressive and entirely subversive of the just intentions of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... substitute definite distinctions, which, however considerable they may be, do not point to ulterior unknown differences, would be to replace classes with more by classes with fewer attributes in common; and would be subversive of the Natural ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... is the measure of all things.' As applied to conduct, this dictum is commonly interpreted as meaning that good is entirely subjective, relative to the individual. Viewed in this light the saying is one-sided and sceptical, subversive of all objective morality. But the dictum may be regarded as expressing an important truth, that the good is personal and must ultimately be the good for man as ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... place in literature and art. She was a full-fledged democracy. Political discussion was perfectly free. At this time she was guided by the statesman Pericles, who was personally a freethinker, or at least was in touch with all the subversive speculations of the day. He was especially intimate with the philosopher Anaxagoras who had come from Ionia to teach at Athens. In regard to the popular gods ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... the law cannot be withdrawn where they have once been conceded. Not only because their withdrawal would be opposed to the spirit of our age, but also because it would immediately drive all Jews, rich and poor alike, into the ranks of subversive parties. Nothing effectual can really be done to our injury. In olden days our jewels were seized. How is our movable property to be got hold of now? It consists of printed papers which are locked up somewhere or ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... 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

... ground that as a woman she had no right to vote—a point which we do not propose to consider,) the course of Judge Hunt, in taking the case from the jury, and ordering a verdict of guilty to be entered up, was so remarkable, so contrary to all rules of law, and so subversive of the system of jury trials in criminal cases, that it should not be allowed to pass without an emphatic protest on the part of every public journal ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... immediately made January 14, 1791, by the Pennsylvania Assembly in a series of resolutions which are supposed to have been drafted by Mr. Gallatin, and to have been the first legislative paper from his pen. They distinctly charged that the obnoxious bill was "subversive of the peace, liberty, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... predicted(825) the probability of such an attempt being made. Nor was the work irreligious and blasphemous in its spirit, like the attacks of the last century. It professed to be executed solely in the interests of science; and, though subversive of historic religion, to be conservative of ideal. The critical part was only a means to an end; its real basis was speculative. But the literary aspect of the question was lost sight of in the religious. The heart spoke forth its terror at the idea of losing its most sacred hope, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... and enthusiastic men called the attention of the community to the moral wrong and political reproach of slavery. In the name and spirit of democracy, the moral and political powers of the people were invoked to limit, discountenance, and put an end to a system so manifestly subversive of its foundation principles. It was a revival of the language of Jefferson and Page and Randolph, an echo of the voice of him who penned the Declaration of Independence and originated ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Peace and Goodwill to all Mankind. That conviction is this: that to make taxation the incident of protection to special interests, and those engaged in them, is robbery to the rest of the community, and subversive of National Morality and National Prosperity. I believe that taxes are necessary for the support of government, I believe they must be raised by levy, I even believe that some customs taxes may be more practicable and economical than some internal taxes; ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... to shreds, it was reviled as subversive of morality and religion, good arrows in those days. It was called puerile, half-educated stuff—I half-educated! More, an utterly false charge of plagiarism was cooked up against me and so well and venomously run that vast numbers of people concluded that I was ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... masterpiece of supernatural 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 miraculous! Wordsworth wanted the Mariner "to have a character and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... that, since France had repealed the Concordat, they could find their best support in Italy? Or were they driven by the instinct of self-preservation to accept the constitutional government as a bulwark against the incoming tide of Anarchism, Socialism, and the other subversive forces? The Church is the most conservative element in Christendom; in a new upheaval it will surely rally to the side of any other element which promises to save society from chaos. These motives have been cited to explain the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... he maintained 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 ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... convention willing to discharge its duty to the memorialists, and to the people whose protests could not there be heard. His principal argument was that the principles guiding this committee in its decision were subversive of the principles of true republicanism; that they were also against the principles of the Bible. Since the committee had admitted the evil of slavery, he contended, the failure to find a remedy is unworthy of the representatives of the people of the State. He maintained ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... ratified. Of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The nebular hypothesis—a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery—has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day. But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... opinion, of his 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 misdemeanor, derogatory to the honor of the crown, a breach of the fundamental privileges of Parliament, and subversive of the constitution of the country." It was opposed by Pitt, chiefly on the ground that Mr. Baker only based the necessity for such a resolution on common report, which he, fairly enough, denied to be a sufficient justification ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... their hands and looked aghast. The idea of any man venturing to do what no one ever thought of doing before was so utterly subversive of all their ideas of propriety—such a desperate piece of profane originality—that ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... times; and a great work usually originates in the age. Certain events must precede the man of genius, who often becomes only the vehicle of public feeling. MACHIAVEL has been reproached for propagating a political system subversive of all human honour and happiness; but was it Machiavel who formed his age, or the age which created Machiavel? Living among the petty principalities of Italy, where stratagem and assassination were the practices ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... in my power to obtain mercy for the unfortunate young man. All our endeavours were fruitless. The minister of war refused to listen to the applications by which he was besieged. In a military view, the crime was flagrant, subversive of discipline, and especially dangerous as a precedent in an army where promotion from the ranks continually placed between men, originally from the same class of society and long comrades and equals, the ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... emanated from one of the early popes. They are worthy of such an origin. They recommend that blind and slavish submission to ecclesiastical dictation which the so-called successors of Peter have ever since inculcated. "It need hardly be remarked," says Dr. Lightfoot, "how subversive of the true spirit of Christianity, in the negation of individual freedom and the consequent suppression of direct responsibility to God in Christ, is the crushing despotism with which" the language of these letters, "if taken literally, would invest the episcopal office." ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... views can be maintained. The first is refuted by its own consequences which only very few of its advocates were bold enough to adopt. The possibility of God telling a falsehood, which is implied in the purely human validity of good and evil, is subversive of all religion. God would then cease to be trustworthy, and there would be no reason for giving him obedience. Besides, if revelation alone determines right and wrong, it would follow that if God chose to reverse his orders, our moral judgments would be turned ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... 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, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... by all as a compromise between the Book of Common Order and the English Prayer Book, and appears to have excited no enthusiasm, even among its promoters; it was too subversive of Scottish custom to please those who were loyal to the old usage, and it was not sufficiently liturgical to suit James and his ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston

... avowed by the French government in 1792, and such is the Lacedaimonian policy* pursued by the French government in 1796! It cannot then, I conceive, be contended, that a treaty with a government still professing principles which have been repeatedly proved to be subversive of all social order, which have been acknowledged by their parents to have for their object the methodical demolition of existing constitutions, can be concluded without danger or risk. That danger, I admit, is greatly diminished, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... born of war, have been caused and supported by labor. All modern history proves this, from the end of the Roman empire down to the present day. And as if to give a sort of legal sanction to these usurpations, the doctrine of labor, subversive of property, is professed at great length in the Roman law under the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... that had occurred to him before. Admittedly the new phonetic orthography was more efficient than the old, if less esthetic; but since little of the earlier literature was being re-issued in modern spelling not too many books had actually been condemned as subversive—only a few works on history, politics, philosophy, and the like, together with some scientific texts restricted for security reasons; but one by one, the great old writings ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... 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 self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... no evil which one man may do to another is of any moment, since he cannot touch his soul which is eternal and beyond the reach of any human power! In the destiny of a soul what can the destruction of one of its bodies signify? This is an argument which is subversive of morality and ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... wisdom of the centuries as you ought. Consequently I've got to instruct you. I'm going to waltz around in a motor-car, probably with tabs up, and lecture. And there aren't to be any questions asked, for that's subversive ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... problematical existence we must be "content with what has been reported by those ancients, who, assuming to be their descendants, must therefore be supposed to have been well acquainted with their own ancestors and family connections." And the Theism of Anaxagoras was still more decidedly subversive, not only of Mythology, but of the whole religion of outward nature; it being an appeal from the world without, to the consciousness ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... honestly. Still, there were occasions when, under the stress of temptation, fair-dealing was lost sight of, and immediate prospect of gain was allowed to lead to the commission of acts destructive of all feeling of security, subversive of commercial morals, and calculated to effect a rupture of commercial relations, which it may often have taken a long term of years to re-establish. Herodotus tells us that, at a date considerably anterior to the Trojan war, when the ascendancy over the other Phoenician cities ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... clauses it contained one which declared that no Praetor and no Consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of office. It would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive of the old system of the Republic this new law would have been, had the new law and the old system attempted to live together. The Propraetor would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the province or for the Consulship, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... done long before;" while others contended, that "every addition made to the grandeur of the senate was a diminution of the dignity of the people; and that all such distinctions as set the orders of the state at a distance from each other, were equally subversive of liberty and concord. During five hundred and fifty-eight years," they asserted, "all the spectators had sat promiscuously: what reason then had now occurred, on a sudden, that should make the senators disdain to ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... unsettlement of men's minds, the bringing into contempt all the institutions which have been hitherto venerated, the aggrandisement of the power of the people, the embodying and recognition of popular authority, the use and abuse of the King's name, the truckling to the press, are things so subversive of government, so prejudicial to order and tranquillity, so encouraging to sedition and disaffection, that I do not see the possibility of the country settling down into that calm and undisturbed state in which it was before ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... said Cerizet, "you'll have married Celeste and got your foot into the stirrup. You are lucky, you are, not to have sat, like me, in the prisoners' dock. I've been there twice: once in 1825, for 'subversive articles' which I never wrote, and the second time for receiving the profits of a joint-stock company which had slipped through my fingers! Come, let's warm this thing up! Sac-a-papier! Dutocq and I are sorely in need of that twenty-five thousand francs. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... Church of England chaplain appointed and salaried by the Government, I know not; but you know as well as I do that a man being a clergyman of the Church of England is no longer a guarantee that he does not entertain and teach views and practices more subversive of unsophisticated Protestant principles and feelings than could be as successfully done by a Roman Catholic priest. Besides, as a general rule, men, especially young men, do not regard, and are not controlled, as to their own worship and pastorate, except by the services and pastoral ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... the Monarchists carried by a majority of 1,305 votes over the combined strength of the Government Republicans and the Boulangist Revisionists. This district is a coal and iron-mining as well as a silk-growing district. It is fall of workmen, and it has been a point of attack for the Socialist and subversive leaders in France for many years past. All the traditions of Alais itself are strongly Protestant. The fortifications of the town were destroyed by Louis XIV. at the end of the seventeenth century, and at no great distance is the Tour ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... goodness, a new need for personal atonement with the ideal holiness which he has learned to apprehend; and as the public ritual does not meet these needs, he seeks for new religious associations and perhaps appears to preach a doctrine contrary to patriotism, as it is subversive of the established religion of his country, and to be wilfully destroying what his countrymen revere, and wilfully breaking through old ties and obligations. Thus the individualist stage of religion succeeds ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... of property", period. At the same time Judge Comstock's opinion in the case sharply repudiates all arguments against the statute sounding in Natural Law concepts, fundamental principles of liberty, common reason and natural rights, and so forth. Such theories were subversive of the necessary powers of government. Furthermore, there was "no process of reasoning by which it can be demonstrated that the 'Act for the Prevention of Intemperance, Pauperism and Crime' is void, upon principles and theories outside of the constitution, which ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... knowledge, and that he fled from his Latin teacher, the celebrated Puoti, on account of his somewhat exclusive love of grammatical rules. None the less, though con-genitally averse to the materialistic and subversive theories that were then seething in Naples, he became entangled in the anti-Bourbon movements of the late thirties, and narrowly avoided the death-penalty which struck down some of his comrades. At other times his natural piety laid him open to the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... possible,[K] but 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 salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... looked upon with suspicion by the Establishment. They are "new", "different", "subversive", "godless", "wicked." Hence, they are criticized, denounced, raided and often broken up as threats to existing ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... had occasion recently to correct a certain tendency on your part to employing War Department property and the servants of the Crown for your own special use. I need hardly point out to you that such conduct on your part is subversive to discipline and directly contrary to the spirit and letter of regulations. More especially would I urge the impropriety of utilizing government telegraph lines for the purpose of securing information regarding your gambling ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... all that too?—to disown the flower of the world's youth, and ruin the world's finest cities? It seems to me that people wish to do so much in the name of morality, that they end by wishing to do what would be subversive of ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... 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 that are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to make the attempt. I speak of things as they were in those days, not as they are now. Happily at the present day it is considered highly disgraceful for an officer to be drunk; and not only is it disgraceful, but subversive of discipline, whether he is on or off duty, and thus injurious to the interests of the service, and prejudicial to his own health and morals. Taking the matter up only in a personal point of view, how can a man tell how he will behave when he has allowed liquor to steal away ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... and fifty signatures, protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the just judgments of the Almighty." In like manner the memorial of one hundred and fifty-one clergymen ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... the unwilling interest beneath. Cecil suspected that this woman was trained in discriminations and half-lights to which she and her generation had joyfully made themselves blind. She felt uncomfortably young; a little bit smiled at in the most kindly of hidden ways. Just as she was leaving, the subversive softness came close to her again, like a wave of too much perfume as you open a church-door; as if some one were trying to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... for the deed, the sincere intention for the achievement, or the yearning of the heart for the practical accomplishment, is subversive of all our standards of conduct. No business could be run on the basis of paying men in accordance with their readiness to work, irrespective of the service rendered, as is the case in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. But God seems to be able to run the universe on that basis. No ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones

... "I'll be over. You can knock off, Jerry. Oh, except for one thing. Subject's name is Warren Dickens. Just for luck, get a complete dossier on him. I doubt if he's got a criminal or subversive record, but ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... ripe for open schism. The tenets of Zwingli had taken root in German Switzerland. Calvin was gaining ground in the French cantons. Geneva had become a stationary fortress, the stronghold of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under Spartan discipline ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... whole voyage. We were to be disagreeably undeceived. A gale sprang up with little warning about midnight, and hove us almost on our beam-ends; and though we righted with the loss only of a spar or two, we were tumbled about in a manner subversive of all comfort, to say the least ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... 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 ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... courses, Nature with her subversive forces, Time, too, the iron-toothed and sinewed, And the edacious years continued. Thrones rose and fell; and still the crescent, Unsanative and now senescent, A plastered skeleton of lath, Looked forward to a day of wrath. ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Korac's party, chiefly from Slavonia and Serbia. This remarkable man, whose mind floats serenely in a body that is paralysed, has twice been included in the Cabinet. By many he is looked upon as too subversive, but he believes that a revolution will come unless his department acts in a revolutionary fashion. His programme includes old-age pensions from the age of sixty—the people being now enfeebled by the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... done. Not rational, and well-fitted for their purposes, I am very ready to admit. For God forbid that guilt should ever leave a man the free, undisturbed use of his faculties! For as guilt never rose from a true use of our rational faculties, so it is very frequently subversive of them. God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices! No: it takes the lead, and is never found where justice ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... has met with opinions adverse to his own, he should remember, that his views are, perhaps, the same as those which I too once held, and which I have abandoned, because, after a wider range of study, I found them unsupported by solid proof, subversive of the interest of Man, and fatal to the progress of his knowledge. To examine the notions in which we have been educated, and to turn aside from those which will not bear the test, is a task so painful, that they who shrink from the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... an anonymous 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

... were, at this moment especially, so necessary to him. Some even went so far as to denounce him publicly, and he was mentioned one day from the height of the pulpit, to the indignation of the pupils of the upper Normal College, as a man at once dangerous and subversive. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... 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 ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... all understand Ricardo's law of rent as to learn our catechisms, the face of the world would have been changed for the better. But for that very reason the greatest care is taken to keep such beneficially subversive knowledge from us, with the result that in public life we are either place-hunters, anarchists, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... Austria, and America reproduce with great exactness under similar economic conditions the same social evils, and in those countries, as in ours, Sweated Industries—by which I mean trades where there is no organisation, where wages are exceptionally low, and conditions subversive of physical health and moral welfare—cast dark shadows in what is, upon the whole, the growing and ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... unsuspiciously honest. They also frankly confess their own and each others' errors, ignorance, prejudices, and faults. Would they have done this save from simple hearted truthfulness? Would a designing knave voluntarily reveal to a suspicious scrutiny actions and traits naturally subversive of confidence in him? The conduct of the disciples under the circumstances, through all the scenes of their after lives, proves their undivided and earnest honesty. The cause they had espoused was, if we deny its truth, to the last degree repulsive in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... weak and defenceless colony against the pernicious designs of their Spanish rivals. Some men he discovered who were attempting to entice servants to revolt; these were ordered to receive so many stripes. Others, in defiance of the feeble power of the magistrate, took to such courses as were subversive of public peace and justice. Except a few negroes whom Sir John Yeamans and his followers brought along with them from Barbadoes, there were no labourers but Europeans for the purposes of culture. Until the fields were ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... thing. He was charming in conversation, and he set forth at length his theory as to the work of the coral insects, formed after long study of the barrier reefs and atolls of remote seas. His ideas were subversive of those of Darwin, with whom he disputed the matter before Darwin died. They are now well-known and I think accepted, though unfortunately he died before setting them forth in due order. They are revolutionary in their ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... an act of treason, would not have been adequate to the danger. Influential persons would have been justly submitted to question on their allegiance, and insufficient answers would have been interpreted as justifying suspicion. Not the expression only, of opinions subversive of society, but the holding such opinions, however discovered, would have been regarded and treated as a crime, with the full consent of what is called the common sense and educated judgment of ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... 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 be so read that it will ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... my dear reviewer, that such notions are subversive of right thinking and are in fact the poisonous fruit of an era which has relaxed its hold on any ideal outside of material well-being. For that reason when I read in Miss Addams's book such words as these, "Evil does not shock us as it once did," I am filled with anger. I wonder ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... thinking for a moment,—"no matter," he resumed. "I guess it was nothing very important, so good-by, David, and a—good-by!" He was going to say "and a merry Christmas;" but for a man of purely business habits to unbend so far and become cheerful—why, it's subversive of all business discipline, and so ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... their own assemblages of oligarches the full power to modify the organic laws of their States—an assumption without precedent and without repetition in the history of State constitutions in this country, and utterly subversive of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... protested against the gross inequalities of selection by which men of short service were sent home before those who had been out in 1914, 1915, 1916. They demanded justness, fair play, and denounced red tape and official lies. "We want to go home!" was their shout on parade. A serious business, subversive of discipline. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... Transportation—controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr—the Facilities Protection Service is a source of funding and jobs for the Mahdi Army. One senior U.S. official described the Facilities Protection Service as "incompetent, dysfunctional, or subversive." Several Iraqis simply referred ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... people that subversive or mistaken doctrines had their rise. A Father of the Church said that property was theft many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops, and of the theory that the State owed every man a living. Nay, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... so lay themselves liable to the imputation of sympathizing with the accused at the expense of the accuser, and some commanding officers are so sensitive that they look upon such demonstrations as utterly subversive of discipline, and ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... there remain any suspicion, that this science is uncertain and chimerical; unless we should entertain such a scepticism as is entirely subversive of all speculation, and even action. It cannot be doubted, that the mind is endowed with several powers and faculties, that these powers are distinct from each other, that what is really distinct to the immediate ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... hearing? How often must it be repeated that theology as well as physical science is satisfied by the Diluvial explanation of the origin of petrified organisms, whereas inexorable logic compels the Vulcanists to own that their thesis is subversive of all ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... element of theocratic government can claim political validity. The magistrate is concerned only with the preservation of social peace and does not deal with the problem of men's souls. Where, indeed, opinions destructive of the State are entertained or a party subversive of peace makes its appearance, the magistrate has the right of suppression; though in the latter case force is the worst and last of remedies. In the English situation, it follows that all men are to be tolerated save Catholics, Mahomedans and atheists. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... not to a desire for the promotion of a crusade, but to greed. Gregory's conduct seemed to bear out this interpretation of his motives. Despite the excommunication Frederick once more set sail in June, 1228. But an expedition under such circumstances was an independent act subversive of all ecclesiastical discipline. Consequently, instead of his departure being the signal for the removal of his sentence, Frederick was followed to Palestine by the anathema of the Church. The Pope having got Frederick into his power intended to keep him ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... said 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 how ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... legislation, could not fail to end the trouble which is at the present moment making a tremendous drain on the pockets of the law-abiding citizen of this country, in that system of workhouses, which besides being subversive of the very idea of home-life amongst our poor, degrades the non-worker, and rankles as a lasting shame in the hearts of those whom misfortune alone has driven to that last resource of the unfortunate. Were one able to follow the example set us, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Socialist and journalist, born in Paris, adopted the views of SAINT-SIMON (q. v.); held subversive views on the marriage laws, which involved him in some trouble; wrote a useful and sensible book on Algerian colonisation, and several works, mainly interpretative of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... released. This action of the State was effective; for it quieted the people and nipped what promised to be a rebellion, in the bud. But it raised a storm of denunciation from all the Hindu papers, which spoke of it as a violation of the Queen's Proclamation and an act subversive of the most sacred rights of the people of the country and of the most elementary form of justice! One writer claims that "the meanest British subject is entitled to a writ of Habeas Corpus, and thus secure an effective protection against arbitrary imprisonment and arrest by the government." ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... ought to be made, and, if any, in what respect. If this basis is unjust or unreasonable, surely it ought to be abandoned; but if it be just and reasonable, and any change in it will make concessions subversive of equality and tending in its consequences to sap the foundations of our prosperity, then the reasons are equally strong for adhering to the ground already taken, and supporting it by such further ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... 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 ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... whatever, political, moral, or religious, with a view to their alteration or subversion, is an assumption of superiority not warranted by the Constitution, insulting to the States interfered with, tending to endanger their domestic peace and tranquillity, subversive of the objects for which the Constitution was formed, and, by necessary consequence, tending to weaken and destroy the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... year, accordingly, the Emperor made his remarkable confession of religious faith to his friend, Admiral Hollmann. He had just heard a lecture by Professor Delitzsch on "Babel und Bibel," and as he considered the Professor's views to some extent subversive of orthodox Christian belief, he took the opportunity to tell his people his own sentiments on the whole matter. In writing to Admiral Hollmann he instructed him to make the "confession" as public as possible, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... the native powers of India, must, in case of disagreement about the necessity thereof, be decided by the strongest"; and hath thereby advanced a dangerous and most indecently expressed position, subversive of the rights of allies, and tending to breed war and confusion, instead of cordiality and cooeperation amongst them, and to destroy all confidence of the princes of India in the faith and justice of the English nation. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... point for discussion, he kept by that which chance first presented. Like one who himself wished information, he first put a question, and then, profiting by the concessions of his respondent, brought him to a proposition subversive of that which in the beginning of the debate had been considered as a first principle. He spent one part of the day in conferences of this kind, on morals. To these everyone was welcome, and according to the testimony of Xenophon, none departed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... in closing the era of revolutions, by satisfying the legitimate needs of the People, and by protecting them from subversive passions. It consists, above all, in creating institutions which survive men, and which shall in fact form the foundations on which something durable ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... attitude in the hills and high places—so that it was necessary to employ force and violent measures, in order to make them return to the fulfilment of their duty. Exemplary punishments were inflicted, which procured a partial result. But that subversive idea was one of fatal consequences, and produced some pernicious fruits so lasting that they have come down ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... direct you, whenever you have ministerial affairs to communicate, that it is done jointly with your respectable brother, and not mix naval business with the other; for, what may be very proper language for a representative of majesty, may be very subversive of that dicipline of respect from the different ranks in our service. A representative may dictate to an admiral, a captain of a man of war would be censured for the same thing: therefore, you will see the propriety of my steering close between the two situations. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... written exhortations to stand firm in the faith, or by publishing violent pamphlets such as /The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women/, in which he undertook to prove that the rule of women is repugnant to nature, contrary to God's ordinances, and subversive of good order, equity, and justice. Though this document was aimed principally against Catharine de' Medici, Queen Mary of England, and Mary of Guise regent of Scotland, it rankled in the mind of Queen Elizabeth after her accession, and did not serve to raise the apostle ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... said ordinance prescribes to the people of South Carolina a course of conduct in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the destruction of the Union—that Union, which, coeval with our political existence, led our fathers, without any other ties to unite them than those of patriotism and ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... 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

... Conservatives of the province were deeply irritated at this action of the lieutenant-governor, and induced Sir John Macdonald, then leader of the opposition, to make a motion in the house of commons, declaring Mr. Letellier's conduct "unwise and subversive of the sound principles of responsible government." This motion was made as an amendment on the proposal to go into committee of supply, and under a peculiar usage of the Canadian commons it was not permitted ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which was to 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

... This system, subversive of all efficient service, and leading inevitably to the worst evils of misappropriation of the national funds, had perhaps its worst aspects in the colonies. A Government berth in Cuba was a recognised means of making ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... State, the name "Roosevelt" stood for a man as honest as he was energetic, and as fearless as he was true. Platt and the Machine naturally wished to get rid of this marplot, who could not be manipulated, who held strange and subversive ideas as to the extent to which the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code should be allowed to encroach on politics and Big Business, and who was hopelessly "altruistic" in caring for the poor and down trodden ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... 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 ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... 1724 the English law held any one legally responsible for action subversive of law and order unless he was "totally deprived of his understanding and memory and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast." Since 1843, the criterion of responsibility under the law is "knowledge ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... heathen superstition embedded in the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's ways toward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on "The Old Testament and its New Enemies." But a great light has since dawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in a divine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible in regarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David's pride in his census ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... or she would hardly have understood it from his words, they were so rapid and vehement. And yet they were tender, too; spoken in a loving tone, and containing ever and anon assurances of respect, and a resolve to be guided now and for ever by her wishes,—even though those wishes should be utterly subversive of his happiness. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... peasantry may have been so fed with lies that it will be unable to believe that our soldiers can be trusted to behave like civilized beings when the time has come for a forward march. It is clear that riotous license is subversive of discipline, and conduces to defeat—as it probably has in recent Continental experience. For, although ancient warriors used to ravage a country, and although women have occasionally intervened in order to stop a battle, surely never before in the history of the world ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... 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 ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... mean money. What is so powerless as poverty? do I not know it—not of yesterday, or the day before, but for many a long year? What so helpless, what so jarring to temper, so dangerous to all principle, and so subversive of all dignity? I can afford to say these things, and you can afford to hear them, for there is a sort of brotherhood between us. We claim the same land for our origin. Whatever our birthplace, we ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... laws as well as Postal Regulations covering matters which are akin to libel. The answer to libel is truth, but not always, for sometimes the truth may be spread with so malicious an intent as to support an action. It is not well to put into a letter any derogatory or subversive statement that cannot be fully proved. This becomes of particular importance in answering inquiries concerning character or credit, but in practically every case libel is a question ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... cheek to ask me for money, I would give him the toe of my boot. However, let him have the benefit of the doubt. I am perfectly willing to take it that he has done nothing worse than to stick a knife into somebody—with extenuating circumstances—French fashion, don't you know. But that subversive sanguinary rot of doing away with all law and order in the world makes my blood boil. It's simply cutting the ground from under the feet of every decent, respectable, hard-working person. I tell you that ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... altered shape and furnished with certain favourite appendages. The Gnostics called themselves believers; and their most celebrated teachers would willingly have remained in the bosom of the Church; but it soon appeared that their principles were subversive of the New Testament revelation; and they were accordingly excluded ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Interim involved and maintained doctrines and principles subversive of genuine Lutheranism and was prepared, introduced, and defended by the very men who were regarded as pillars of the Lutheran Church, it was evident from the outset that this document must of necessity precipitate most serious internal troubles. From the moment ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... irresponsible power, combined with the most remorseless priestcraft, was the Inquisition; for it not merely punished men for obeying their own consciences, but tried them in defiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a law contradictory of every other law, but it established a tribunal subversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. It was a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and noble effort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety. By a decree of 1751, it was ordered that thenceforth no judicial burnings should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... have the power of altering the government, when found to be inadequate to the security of public happiness. In the last case, he affirms that even three fourths of the community have not a right to alter a government which experience has proved to be subversive of national felicity; nay, that the most necessary and urgent alterations cannot be made without the absolute unanimity of all the States. Does not the thirteenth article of the confederation expressly require, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... capacity of a preposition, from its meaning in other situations, by spelling it in different ways. I know of no good argument in support of the former of these two opinions; nor has it probably been ever maintained. The latter opinion, which seems to be the real one, is founded on a principle subversive of the analogy and stability of written language, namely, that the various significations of the same word are to be distinguished in writing, by changing its letters, the constituent elements of the word. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... no evidence whatsoever that can be relied upon of the great antiquity of this manuscript: on the contrary what we do know about it as a fact is utterly subversive of such an assumption: this copy in the Mediceo-Laurentian Library in Florence of all the Annals of Tacitus cannot be traced further back than to the possession of a man who flourished in the days of Leo X. and the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... 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 ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.' Now, were this precept obeyed," he continues, "it is manifest that slavery could not in fact exist for a single instant. The principle of the precept is absolutely subversive of the principle of slavery." If strong assertion were argument, we should no doubt be overwhelmed by the irresistible logic of Dr. Wayland. But the assertion of no man can be accepted as sound argument. We want to know the very meaning of the words of the great Teacher, and to be ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... 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 zoological ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name of the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had never read a work of fiction in his life, but he knew by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's literature, when put forth in pink covers, was subversive of several respectable institutions. Besides, he didn't believe in women knowing how to write at all, and it irritated him to see this inky goddess correcting proof-sheets under his nose—irritated him the more that, as I say, he was in love with her ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... did not breakfast with slashed young men; it would have been subversive to discipline, and it was negligently, through a lateral entrance, that presently he appeared. In evening clothes on this early morning, he surveyed his visitor, a big fellow with a slight moustache, an easy way and a missing front tooth, who went ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... totally unknown to the Roman polity. Whatever inner things any man or nation chose to bear witness to, said the Roman state, were to be supposed to exist; and might be proclaimed, were they not subversive of the public order, for the benefit of any that needed them. There were two exceptions: Druidism; we have glanced at a possible reason why it was proscribed in Gaul by Augustus; another reason may been that the Druids clung to the memories of Celtic—and so ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... substantial political opposition groups exist, although the government has identified the Falungong spiritual movement and the China Democracy Party as subversive groups ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... constant disregard of 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 ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... dwellers on the unseen worlds of those incredibly remote suns, to haunt whose houses of light, life came forth, a shy visitant, from the rayless crypts of matter. He could no more apprehend limits to time than bounds to space. No subversive radium speculations had shaken his steady scientific faith in the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. Always and forever must there have been stars. And surely, in that cosmic ferment, ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... proved that he had 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... strength of its arguments and the energy 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 ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... repudiated the step which South Carolina had taken. Georgia responded: "We abhor the doctrine of nullification as neither a peaceful nor a constitutional remedy." Alabama found it "unsound in theory and dangerous in practice." North Carolina replied that it was "revolutionary in character, subversive of the Constitution of the United States." Mississippi answered: "It is disunion by force—it is civil war." Virginia spoke more softly, condemning the tariff and sustaining the principle of the Virginia resolutions but denying that South Carolina could find in them ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... they'd given me two to five years for carrying a dangerous weapon and subversive literature. Now what would I get if I went out and really messed some ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole

... 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.... It was a very fierce shop. Its ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... of that period they may prohibit the traffic altogether. The census in the constitution was intended to introduce equality in the burdens to be laid on the community.—No gentleman objected to laying duties, imposts, and exercises, uniformly. But uniformity of taxes would be subversive of the principles of equality: For that it was not possible to select any article which would be easy for one state, but what would be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... church relationship are exalted above the personal relationship of the individual with his God, many teachers now incline to an opposite extreme, which makes little of the church as an institution, substituting therefor a sort of "loyalty to Christ," individualism, subversive of true ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... well enough as contributing to the liveliness of the little society—a pretty smiling young girl is seldom de trop; but then she must be satisfied without lovers, whose presence the Colonel considered subversive of all rational comfort. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... Spartan and Roman republican manners; the citizen succeeding to Monsieur; the blasphemous, incredulous, atheistical principles instilled into the then growing generation of all classes; the system of equality, subversive of courtliness, and the obliging attentions and suavities of society, poisoned at once the source 220of morals and of manners; for there can be nothing gentlemanlike in atheism, radicalism, and the level, ling system. To this state of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... any other subject involving the technical training of the engineer. To permit the so-called "man in the street" to say whether he shall or shall not permit the carrying out of some important piece of civic hygiene is to introduce a principle subversive of all system and obstructive of all progress in the science of public health. It is absurd that in a case like this the pronouncements of the judges are to be submitted to the criticisms of the jury. England has already had one or two pretty severe lessons through allowing such places as ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... some degree traced to the shameful and scandalous conduct of some of the Liverpool merchants, who had used their private influence to poison the minds of the natives by attributing particular motives to the travellers, which were at variance with the interests of the country, and subversive of the authority of the chiefs. Nor is this scarcely a matter of doubt, when we peruse the following extract from a letter addressed by John Lander to the editor ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... and the divinity of Christ, without recourse to a Logos christology. Some of the more unsuccessful of these attempts have since been grouped under the heads of Dynamistic and of Modalistic Monarchianism ( 40). At the same time Montanism was excluded from the Church ( 41), as subversive of the distinction between the clergy and laity and the established organs of the Church's government, which in the recent rise of a theory of the necessity of the episcopate (see above, 27) had become important. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... church on Sunday morning; and as he paced the gravel sweep before the door, his light overcoat on his arm and his prayer-book in one carefully-gloved hand, he reflected agreeably on the strength of character which kept her true to her early training in surroundings so subversive to religious principles. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... proper development in the pursuit of butterflies, a development which he would never gain by unsuccessful and involuntary cricket. House masters too are apt to complain that freedom for hobbies is subversive of discipline, and to quote the old adage about Satan and idle hands. That there is risk, is not to be denied. But you cannot run a school without taking risks. Our whole system of leaving the government largely in the hands of boys is full of ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... Gospel a grudge because the Gospel condemns the religious wisdom of the world. Jealous for its own religious views, the world in turn charges the Gospel with being a subversive and licentious doctrine, offensive to God and man, a doctrine to be persecuted as ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... his refusal to communicate to his colleagues in the Superior Council his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, the Company's Resident at Oude, was guilty of a new offence, arrogating to himself unprecedented and dangerous powers, on principles utterly subversive of all order and discipline in service, and introductory to corrupt confederacies and disobedience among the Company's servants; the said Warren Hastings insisting that Mr. Middleton, the Company's covenanted servant, the public Resident for transacting the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to its full extent, would, we believe, be subversive of all right, and soon place all power in the hands of the most evil and wicked men in the community. Reason with the nation that invades our soil, and tramples under foot our rights and liberties, and should it not desist, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. It is computed that in 1883 there were in England and Wales no fewer than 27,069 independent local authorities,[257] and that the rate-payer was taxed by eighteen different kinds ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg



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