Agitation Quotes - page 4
[Property furnishes] almost the only motive power of agitation. A violent political movement (setting aside those where religious controversy is at work) is generally only an indication that a class of those who have little see their way to getting more by means of a political convulsion.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
[The Communist's] objective is not to secure ‘agreements' or ‘compromises,' but to use the tribunes of governments for disruptive agitation, and destroy the representative system from within... Any Communist, sitting in any ‘bourgeoisie' government, represents only the Communist International.
Dorothy Thompson
Yet in time of stress and public agitation we have too great a tendency to disregard this policy and indulge in race hatred, religious intolerance, and disregard of equal rights. Such sentiments are bound to react upon those who harbor them. Instead of being a benefit they are a positive injury.
Calvin Coolidge
What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.
David Hume
It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life? To learn the art of remaining motionless amid the agitation of the whirlwind, to learn to remain still and to be as transparent as this fixed light amid the frantic branches this may be a program for life.
Octavio Paz
... de gevaare drygt aan alle kanten om een oorlog met die kaffers.
Translated:... dangers are arising on all sides which could precipitate a war with the Africans.
- Thomas Francois Burgers, MS Appelgryn, 1979, p. 71-72
:August 1875, informing President Burgers of the agitation by Cetshwayo and Sekhukhune, after Cetshwayo was prevented from attacking the Swazis, and a buffer zone was annexed by Joubert on May 25, 1875.
Piet Joubert
Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.
Learned Hand
Probably no agitation has ever attained the magnitude, either in the number of its recruits or the area of its influence, which has been attained by Modern Socialism, and at the same time been so little understood and so misunderstood, not only by the hostile and the indifferent, but by the friendly, and even by the great mass of its adherents themselves.
Benjamin Tucker
There is inherent in every true football supporter a reservoir of natural optimism. This inner holding pond of hope springs eternal, and is the safety valve that regulates the emotional turbulence synonymous with professional football. It mollifies the annual agitation and soothes the savage beast of frustration. Without this optimistic dimension the personality of the authentic fan is incomplete.
Damien Richardson
The present industrial era brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers. I conjecture that this class attained its acme of popularity and power, at least in America, toward the close of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Almost at the opening of the present century a progressively rigorous opposition found for its mouthpiece the President of the Union himself. If Mr. Roosevelt became, what his adversaries are pleased to call, an agitator, his agitation had a cause which is as deserving of study as is the path of a cyclone.
Brooks Adams
As property is in the main the chief subject-matter of legislation, so it is almost the only motive power of agitation. A violent political movement (setting aside those where religious controversy is at work) is generally only an indication that a class of those who have little see their way to getting more by means of a political convulsion.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
His agitation was subsiding; already he was becoming aware that he had not got it in him to make these men believe that what he said was true. He had had so much of this in the past; he was accustomed to being right and being disbelieved on vital issues. It was what happened to him; other people could put across their convictions and win credence, but he had never been able to do that. Now it was happening again.
Nevil Shute
