Quotes & Sayings About Backlash

So I think there's going to be a constituent backlash against this thing soon, as they see it moving in that direction ... Whether they can pass something before the American public wakes up, I don't know. — Steve King

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities. — Marvin Olasky

In 1991, though, began an uprising that would propel those reptilian Republicans from a tiny splinter group into the state's dominant political faction, that would reduce Kansas Democrats to third-party status, and that would wreck what remained of the state's progressive legacy. We are accustomed to thinking of the backlash as a phenomenon of the seventies (the busing riots, the tax revolt) or the eighties (the Reagan revolution); in Kansas the great move to the right was a story of the nineties, a story of the present. — Thomas Frank

I'm no stranger to a bit of sexist backlash, but I was surprised by the level of vicious and misogynist hate I received. — Anita Sarkeesian

There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force - then there could very well be a backlash. — Iris Chang

If an adversary didn't target our power plants but they did target the core routers, the backbones that tie our internet connections together, entire parts of the United States could be cut off. That would have a tremendous impact on us as a society and it would have a policy backlash. — Edward Snowden

You can be the outcast or be the backlash of somebody's lack of love. Or you can start speaking up. — Sara Bareilles

I remember my old friend and teacher U.R. Ananthamurthy. Before he died, he left behind a great manuscript, a testament, a manifesto. URA criticised the Nehruvian years but he made a more critical point. Nehru might have made mistakes but Narendra Modi is the mistake that India might regret one day in its angry backlash against the family. Nehru was a classic. Our current regime is a footnote. It can only become history if it destroys the Nehruvian years. — Shiv Visvanathan

The central argument of the backlash - that women's equality is responsible for women's unhappiness. — Susan Faludi

DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad.
BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between.
(an early comment on backlash, from "Glossary for the Eighties") — Ellen Willis

Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that. — Cornel West

[On the racial backlash about Hunger Games casting]: People should have ignored the five racist idiots. — Nina Jacobson

It's hard for people to realize now, but my gosh, when I was in school, you could not name a group that was less cool than Kiss. Going in to school with a Kiss T-shirt, you were asking for ridicule. In '77, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, but by '80, there was a severe backlash. — Eddie Trunk

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, our country has been experiencing an "explosive growth in extremist-group activism across the United States" in recent years. The law center reported that so-called "patriot groups" - right-wing outfits steeped in anti-government conspiracy theories - grew in number from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009 - an astonishing 244 percent increase that apparently reflected a backlash against the election of America's first African American president. — Arsalan Iftikhar

There's a backlash against womyn that's really bad right now. — Kathy Acker

I never had any backlash from the model-turned-actor thing. — Ian Somerhalder

Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi, — Helen Fielding

As black people, we want our story to be this constant ascendance from slavery. But it's not like that. You push and it goes up. Then there's a backlash, and if folks stop pushing, it goes down. Let's face it, it's a lot more complicated. — Stanley Nelson Jr.

European children are educated in a narrative of human tolerance every day, and if you want to be sure to prevent a backlash, you should at least think of bringing Muslim children and teenagers into the fold of that narrative of tolerance. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I'm the one who will take chances, not worry about the backlash. — Magic Johnson

Hadn't been able to avoid hearing about the Tea Party, a recrudescence of the far right sooner than I would've hoped. Depending on whom you ask, the Tea Party formed either as a spontaneous grassroots protest against the government's massive interventions in the economy after the financial collapse of 2008, an hysterical backlash against our first black president, or just a hasty rebranding of the Republican Party now that the name Republican had taken on the same stigma as the Pinto, DC-10, and other products that reliably self-destruct. Their platform was the usual Republican wish list - cut taxes, gut the government, repeal the last century and revoke the social contract - and happened to coincide with the financial interests of their billionaire backers. They were widely regarded, on the left,* as dingbats. But today I was going to resist the impulse to sneer and feel superior and instead try, for once, to listen. — Tim Kreider

In his history of solitude, Anthony Storr writes about the importance of being able to feel at peace in one's own company. But many find that, trained by the Net, they cannot find solitude even at a lake or beach or on a hike. Stillness makes them anxious. I see the beginnings of a backlash as some young people become disillusioned with social media. There is,. too, the renewed interest in yoga, Eastern religions, meditating, and slowness. — Sherry Turkle

The anti-feminism bacllash has been set off not by women's achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finishing line. — Susan Faludi

When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye. — Harvey Fierstein

When I kiss a girl for a part, people think it's sexy. But if two guys kiss, suddenly there's a backlash. It's a double standard. — Olivia Wilde

As for you, she'd say to me, you're just a backlash. Flash in the pan. History will absolve me. But — Margaret Atwood

When I've lost weight, some fans get very upset because they want me to stay curvy. But my own self-worth and wellness regime has to do with my well-being and longevity, so if I make the choice to take care of myself, and the outcome is losing weight, it's disappointing that there might be some backlash. — Sara Ramirez

I live up in the hills, and I don't have any cable, and I have really slow satellite, so that does it - because being on the Internet is okay, but it takes a long time. I have a prediction that at some point, there will be a backlash. Like at the end of the '60s, there was that back-to-the-land movement, and I'm guessing that people will start consciously saying, "I'm not taking the phone with me," or "I'm only checking email x number of times a day," or "I'm not ever gonna self-Google," for example. — George Saunders

This powerful presence of diversity, however, sometimes overwhelms people, and they begin thinking that diversity really doesn't matter or, worse, they overreact and become entrenched, angrily guarding what they perceive as their piece of the social turf. Why is it, after all, that in spite of the growing diversity in our culture, we see a rise in hate crimes, a rise in militia movements, a rise in heated, if not hateful, diatribes over the airwaves? Why the backlash of resentment? You would think that white supremacy groups would be a thing of the past. But, tragically, they continue to exist. Why has the world become more dangerous and not less? — R. Scott Colglazier

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind. — Shane Black

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas. — Erica Jong

I think the problem is that there has been a kind of backlash against feminism. I think women just didn't really see themselves winning that fight, and I think that probably led to a lot women feeling trapped in a perpetual cycle of disappointment - trying to be feminists and failing to be. — Romola Garai

During a period in which women and children's testimony of incest and sexual abuse were gaining an increasingly sympathetic hearing, lobby groups of people accused of child abuse construed and positioned "ritual abuse" as the new frontier of disbelief. The term "ritual abuse" arose from child protection and psychotherapy practice with adults and children disclosing organized abuse, only to be discursively encircled by backlash groups with the rhetoric of "recovered memories", "false allegations" and "moral panic".
Salter, M. (2011), Organized abuse and the politics of disbelief. — Michael Salter

In my humble opinion, preserving racial purity isn't a worthwhile goal. You should be able to date whomever, whenever, wherever without the threat of a backlash. — Candace Kita

Each generation has a backlash against the generation before. — Jo Brand

I think an erotics of place may be one of the reasons why environmentalists are seen as subversive. There is a backlash now: ... [ellipsis in source] take all the regulations away; weaken existing legislation; the endangered species act is too severe, too restrictive; let there be carte blanche for real-estate developers. Because if we really have to confront wildness, solitude, and serenity, both the fierceness and compassionate nature of the land, then we ultimately have to confront it in ourselves, and it's easier to be numb, to be distracted, to be disengaged. — Terry Tempest Williams

The last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women. This counterassault is largely insidious: in a kind of pop-culture version of the Big Lie, it stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall. — Susan Faludi

Women have become stronger, and there's a backlash. Men have become terribly possessive. I find it much easier to get on with women. — Yoko Ono

My tongue is a scalding whiplash. I'm tired of hurting others with it, the way they have hurt me. I've always despised the practice, so once more I'll bite my words back, though the injustice served deserves each backlash of every one. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde. — Diana Trilling

Anytime you're the first to speak out against something, there's going to be a backlash. — Eli Roth

Publishing your writing is a bewildering mix of emotions somewhere between parental angst and walking down a public beach wearing only a thong. [scrub all you want that mental picture isn't going anywhere] You feel all the pride and joy as well as the fear and trepidation that come with putting your child out into the world. At the same time you've exposed a part of yourself that is normally private and while you hope people will appreciate it, there is a very real possibility of a backlash.
You've prepared yourself for either eventuality but a 'no comment' feels like crickets chirping in your soul. — Aaron Blaylock

Israel must never be expected to jeopardize her security: if she was ever foolish enough to do so, and then suffered for it, the backlash against both honest brokers and Palestinians would be immense - 'land for peace' must also bring peace. — Margaret Thatcher

When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is one of the greatest stories in television history. — Carson Daly

When I look at my daughter, who's 24, she is much more confident than I ever was and her expectations are higher. But I worry that there is a backlash brewing against progress on equality. — Frances O'Grady

I've been blessed, because the type I started in was competition based. It was about being witty and smart and innovative and different. I don't get backlash like some of the reality shows today because that's not who I am. — Eva Marcille

Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies forcibly dragged Catholics into Protestant churches. Priests in the American West sometimes chained Indians to church pews to enforce church attendance. After many such episodes in Christendom it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Much of the current hostility against Christians evokes the memory of such examples. The blending of church and state may work for a time but it inevitably provokes a backlash, such as that seen in secular Europe today. — Philip Yancey

I think that feminism is in cycle. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. — Kathleen Hanna

It's like they had a backlash the first 11 years. I think the reason why it always seems like there's a backlash is because when bands are unknown, they only get written about by fans. — Kim Deal

About a hundred or so years before you were born, a Dark-Hunter made the mistake of falling in love with his Talpina. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she didn't pass Artemis's test. Artemis was so angry, she stepped in and banished the Talpinas from us, and implemented the oh so wonderful you're-only-supposed-to-sleep-with-them-once rule. As further backlash, Acheron came up with the never-touch-your-Squire law. I tell you, you haven't lived until you've tried to find a decent one-night stand in seventh-century Britain. (Talon) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I kind of like social media, and I like hearing from people. I don't like the ugly stuff, but there are some people - smart people - who have a very different perspective, and I'll get a backlash from them. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing. — Paul Bloom

CGI has a lot of backlash now. I think it's just because there are so many people doing it. It's a tool and it's only as good as the people behind it. — Rick Baker

I think we all have room to grow. I think every Christian really does need to take up their cross in a lot of areas of life and say, "Man, listen, regardless of what kind of backlash I'm going to get, I need to stand for what I believe in." — LeCrae

When the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash. — Malcolm Gladwell

She'd expected some backlash; it happened every time she shared her strength. But she hadn't anticipated so much raw anguish from Nico di Angelo ... If this was only a portion of Nico's pain ... how could he bear it? — Rick Riordan

One truth is that racism and oppression is deeply embedded in the American experiment. History has taught that each time blacks have made strides for freedom, there has been backlash, retrenchment, and new forms of subjugation that appear on the American landscape, thus the old oppression in a new guise. The new movement is part of a long historical sweep, and it has taken many lifetimes to get to this point in the struggle. Because of the tenacity of opposition to equality of race and economics in America, we cannot "throw the baby out with the bathwater" by looking upon past struggles and tradition with disdain. Past struggles — Frank A Thomas

The ironic, too-cool meta satire, the sneering and mocking? Is actually just a contemporary version of the bourgeois sentimentality it's trying to mock. It is not new. Really it's almost quaint. The backlash has already outlasted it. — Tony Tulathimutte

I'm noticing a lot of the big bloggers who've posted about politics are experiencing an ugly backlash. Readers are angry because they went to the bloggers' sites for a laugh, not a lecture. Again, it's a question of being appropriate for the audience. — Jen Lancaster

I will defend pumpkin until the day I die. It's delicious. It's healthy. I don't understand the backlash. How did pumpkin become this embarrassing thing to love but bacon is still the cool flavor to add to everything? I don't have anything against bacon; just don't come after pumpkin like it's a crime to love an American staple. — Anna Kendrick

The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political system. — Thomas Frank

The Lilith Fair thing was Bummer Town - hey, hop aboard the marginalizing train. I guess you had people come out of that and have careers, but I think there was a pretty intense backlash, too. — St. Vincent

Marxism criticizes the world's dominant economic system, which allows people to amass as much wealth as they can and to spend it as they wish. Should we be surprised that this critique generates backlash? To acquire things and to use them selfishly is a big part of human nature. Technological advances - the new smartphone, the new app, the new car - make each new toy more enticing and addictive. Today technology, more than religion, has become the opium of the people. In developed and developing countries alike, people long to acquire more and consume more. — Philip Clayton

The backlash against Big Government is an encouraging sign of a growing resistance to the mission creep of federal power. — Bob Barr

The white backlash has been at work for a long time. It's been part and parcel of the Republican Party for the last 25 years or so, and it's been highly successful up until Barack Obama was ingeniously able to come up with strategies to deal with it. — Cornel West

The backlash against feminism remains savage, strong, and omnipresent, but it is not winning. The world has changed profoundly, and it needs to change far more. — Rebecca Solnit

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash. — Karl Rove

I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft-a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less. — Ken Thompson

Hiring foreigners is more expensive and more difficult than hiring locals, because of the visa fees and long lead times for visa processing. And companies face a backlash by anti-immigrant groups for hiring foreigners. So they do it only because they have to. — Vivek Wadhwa

Just days after Mitt Romney suggested he might run for president, there's been a backlash. The backlash is led by Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and just to hedge his bets on every issue, Mitt Romney. — Conan O'Brien

I definitely caught a lot of backlash in my situation, not just from students but also from faculty, which was unfortunate, given that I was spending a lot of my time outside school working on a career, which a lot of people didn't really agree with. — Jesse McCartney

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

Quentin Tarantino faced the same backlash when his films came out until eventually people felt they were actually much smarter. — Eli Roth

There is a backlash against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling. — Frank Gehry

If you listen to the Catholic bishops you would think that Catholics are against contraception and legal abortion, but if you ask actual Catholics, you discover that more than 90% of Catholic women use contraception and Catholic women seem to need and choose legal abortion at about the same rate as everybody else. The problem is that the backlash occupies positions of power, not that it represents the majority of people. — Gloria Steinem

It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues. — Rick Perlstein

Instead, when police go looking for drugs, they look in the 'hood. Tactics that would be political suicide in an upscale white suburb are not even newsworthy in poor black and brown communities. So long as mass drug arrests are concentrated in impoverished urban areas, police chiefs have little reason to fear a political backlash, no matter how aggressive and warlike the efforts may — Michelle Alexander

When women criticized men, I called it 'insight' ... When men criticized women, I called it 'sexism' and 'backlash.' — Warren Farrell

After facing backlash from customers, Subway says it will remove a chemical in its bread that is also found in yoga mats. Some people were like, 'You mean I've been eating a dangerous chemical?' While most people were like, 'You mean I can eat my yoga mat?' — Jimmy Fallon

Mass incarceration - not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil rights enforcement - is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement — Michelle Alexander

I'm well aware that millions of nominally Muslim freethinkers are in hiding out of necessity. This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam - especially the pernicious meme "Islamophobia," by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. What worries me is that so many moderate Muslims believe that "Islamophobia" is a bigger problem than literalist Islam is. They seem more outraged that someone like me would equate jihad with holy war than that millions of their co-religionists do this and commit atrocities as a result. — Sam Harris

If #SpartanSurvived failed in its efforts, no one would be the wiser. There was no risk to her online persona. No backlash from haters. Anonymity's cloak both protected her and kept the torch of Spartan alive. Because as much as fandom knew a fan had created the post, the faceless message held the faint promise of authenticity. And if people believed it, then the magic was real. They could change Spartan's fate, because they thought they could, and tonight's video would cast the first spell. — Danika Stone

Together, we came to understand how we beg men to express feelings, but then when men do express feelings, we call it sexism, male chauvinism, or backlash. — Warren Farrell

I've been fighting for nine years and in the beginning there was a lot of backlash and non-supporters of women fighters. We could never find many women fighters and when we did sometimes we were put on the card for the wrong reasons. It was frustrating. When I'd go train in gyms, it seemed like the guys at the gym were skeptical and didn't think I was as serious as they were because I was a woman, but today things are different. — Miesha Tate

This is one of the things I find so insufferable about the liberal backlash against critics of Islam - especially the pernicious meme "Islamophobia," by which anyone who thinks Islam merits special concern at this moment in history is branded a bigot. — Sam Harris

To hear an artist be transparent is one of the greatest things they could ever do for their fans. I love that, when I see my fans on the road we have real conversations and it's not even that I do it as some big ploy to have album sales. I do it because it's important for them to understand who I am. So, whatever backlash comes along with me being transparent, there's nothing I can do about it. — Sevyn Streeter

The backlash against women's rights would be just one of several powerful forces creating a harsh and painful climate for women at work. Reagonomics, the recession, and the expansion of a minimum-wage service economy also helped, in no small measure, to slow and even undermine women's momentum in the job market. But the backlash did more than impede women's opportunities for employment, promotions, and better pay. Its spokesmen kept the news of many of these setbacks from women. Not only did the backlash do grievous damage to working women C it did on the sly. — Susan Faludi

And if I see you step foot on my property again, I'll do more than make a phone call, he says, waving the baseball bat around menacingly. — Sarah Darer Littman

Pleasure and sensation are essential features of the second chakra. If desire is the seed of movement, then pleasure is the root of desire, and sensation is the medium of pleasure. Pleasure is essential for the health of the body, the rejuvenation of spirit, and the healing of our personal and cultural relationships. Unfortunately, we are taught to beware of pleasure, that it's a dangerous temptress waiting to lure us away from our true path. We are taught to repress our need for pleasure, and in so doing, repress our natural bodily impulses, and once again, segregate mind and body. We don't easily allow ourselves enjoyment of even the simple pleasures - time for a little extra sleep, a leisurely walk, or comfortable clothing. These stringent measures arise from the mind, but seldom from the body. We then may experience a backlash in our emotions. — Anodea Judith

When you're out there talking about your faith and what you believe in, you'll face some backlash. But mostly, I've received support. — Scotty McCreery

Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly. — Moshe Sharett

Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups. — Nawal El Saadawi

Obviously there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype you have to believe a backlash too. Any criticism we get, is always stuff we've already criticised ourselves. — Jonny Greenwood

There's always a backlash when you challenge people's convictions and their heroes. — Pink

Global interdependence today means that economic disasters in developing countries could create a backlash on developed countries. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

And when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.6 — Malcolm Gladwell

Fan-fucking-tastic. Not only were Jo and Trixie in danger from this master vampire, but Trixie's beleif in my prickishness was fading fast.
Priorities. I need to focus on getting Jo free of Chester permanently while protecting Trixie from any backlash from the master vampire. I could always prove to her later that I was a dick. — Jocelynn Drake

Yet the apparent strength of this 3-G jihad belies its very weakness. Every day, its supporters post online thousands of revealing messages and videos, giving away much more useful information about themselves than was known about Al Qaeda after 9/11. Their freedom of action has encouraged acts of extreme cruelty, which risks provoking a backlash (consider, for example, the Jordanian government's reaction to the execution of one of its pilots) and alienating potential recruits. — Anonymous

Part of the problem of being labeled a model minority is that everyone thinks you've made it, but that's far from the case. You can see that in the horrific stories where undocumented workers are trying to get into the country. That's the backlash. — Arthur Dong

Every time the media brings up the tea party, it's painted as racist and extremists
but there's never a backlash, no outrage to those comparisons ... Working-class people are hurting
and it doesn't seem like anybody cares. When both sides are high-fiving it on the ninth hole when everybody else is without a job
it makes a whole lot of us angry. Something has to change. The policies have to change. — Hank Williams Jr.

There's backlash about everything I do. — Lana Del Rey