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Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands.
Robert Conquest
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Interpretation

What this quote means

People often resist or oppose ideas they do not fully grasp, but are fervent in their beliefs regarding topics they do understand.

This quote by Robert Conquest suggests that individuals tend to hold reactionary or conservative views primarily on subjects with which they are familiar. It highlights the tendency of people to strongly defend or critique ideas based on their understanding, which can lead to rigid perspectives that may not allow for growth or exploration of new thoughts.

Themes

UnderstandingReactionaryBeliefsOppositionKnowledge

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion about political ideologies to illustrate how people's knowledge affects their viewpoints.

More from Robert Conquest

To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault.
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