radical
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radical
In politics, one who desires extreme change of part or all of the social order. The term (which derives from the Latin word for root, and thus implies change beginning at a system's roots) was given this sense by Charles James Fox in 1797 when he demanded radical reform consisting of universal manhood suffrage. In France before 1848, republicans and advocates of universal male suffrage were called radicals. The term was later applied to Marxists ( Marxism) who called for fundamental social change to eradicate divisions among social classes. In popular usage, it is applied to political extremism, not necessarily violent, of both the left and the right.
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In politics, someone who demands substantial or extreme changes in the existing system.
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Radicals
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"Radical simply means grasping things at the root."
- Angela Y. Davis
"The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old."
- Robert Frost
"The force of what was called Panther rhetoric or word mongering resided not in elegant discourse but in strength of affirmation (or denial), in anger of tone and timbre. When the anger led to action there was no turgidity or over-emphasis. Anyone who has witnessed political rows among the Whites will have to admit that the Whites aren't overburdened with poetic imagination."
- Jean Genet
"To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character."
- Emma Goldman
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."
- George Orwell
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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Politics
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more
