"Agitator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Israelites come to us through Hellenic sources, and very naturally are not complimentary. These picture Moses, or Osarsiph, as they call him, as an agitator, an undesirable citizen, who sought to overturn the government, and failing in this, fled to the desert with a few hundred outlaws. They managed to hold out against the forces sent to capture them, were gradually added to by other refugees, and through ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... man talks all day long to a succession of sympathetic hearers about his own overwork, and drifts into actual ill-health, though he is not making an hour's continuous exertion in the day. I knew a young agitator in that state who thought that he could not make a propagandist speech unless the deeply admiring pitman, in whose cottage he was staying, played the Marseillaise on a harmonium before he started. Often such a man takes to drink. In any case he is liable, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... agitators. Typical of these was the agreement made by Duke George of {555} Saxony and other large mine-owners not to raise wages, [Sidenote: 1520] not to allow miners to go from place to place seeking work, and not to hire any troublesome agitator once ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a sudden inspiration? There perhaps the ambitious young man was wrong; for the spring of our actions is often unseen, lost and hidden amid the internal disturbance of the crisis, even as the agitator who starts a crowd himself disappears in it. A human being resembles a crowd; both are manifold, complicated things, full of confused and irregular impulses, but there is an agitator in the background; and the movements ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... disputed the soundness of the law I had thus bought and paid for! "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" All I can say is, that I took the best opinion that love or money could get me; and I should add, that my lawyer, unawed by the alleged ipse dixit of the great Agitator (to be sure, he is dead), still stoutly maintains his own views ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... man; he made you see the ghastly deed, and feel its shuddering wickedness. Men and women and children sat spellbound; and for once no man could say aloud or feel in his heart that the pictures of a Socialist agitator were overdrawn—no, not even Ashton Chalmers, president of the First National Bank of Leesville, or old Abel Granitch, proprietor of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... know it? Wait! Hold on," he said, "let's go slowly—let's go very slowly. She is partly German by birth. That proves nothing. Granted that Jarras suspected her, not as a social agitator, but as a German agent. Granted he did not tell you what he suspected, but merely ordered her arrest with the others—perhaps under cover of Buckhurst's arrest—you know what a secret man, the Emperor was—how, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... his fortune Mr. Lodge inherited a violent and bitter dislike of England. Probably no man—not even the most extreme Irish agitator—is more responsible for the feeling existing against England than Mr. Lodge; because the outspoken Irish agitator is known for what he is and treated accordingly; carrying out Mr. Roosevelt's thought, he will be execrated by decent people; but Mr. Lodge, posing as ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... the outside to dry himself, and got on to the ferry about eleven, after encountering various perils and vexations, in the loss of horse-shoes and wheel-pins, and in a great gap in the road, over which we had to lead the horses, and haul the carriage separately. At this place we supplicated our agitator for leave to eat a little breakfast; but he would not stop an instant, and we were obliged to snatch up a roll or two apiece and gnaw the dry crusts during our passage to keep soul and body together. We got in soon after one, and I have spent my time in eating, drinking, sleeping, ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... murmured. "That fellow is an agitator from Berlin who has come to stir up trouble in the Coblenz district. He's urging these men to start an uprising that will take the American troops by surprise and wipe them out. From something he said I have an idea that he was concerned in the plot ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... element desires that the Negro play the part of the foil and accept this as mainly his mission in America. It has scant sympathy with the college professor and the political agitator that would set the race to dreaming very largely of higher things. The element, therefore, that is most desirous of retaining the Negro population and seeks to make the race satisfied with its present habitat is for the very reason leading to that course, thoroughly opposed to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... (March 31, 1850) the great political gladiator and pro-slavery agitator and originator and disseminator of disunion doctrines was dead;(70) but there were others to uphold and carry forward his ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... gigantic height. In point of fact, it ought rather to have been termed an unarmed insurrection. Passive resistance was the order and the practice of the day. The people were instructed by the agitators, or rather by the great agitator himself, to oppose the laws without violating them; a piece of advice which involved an impossibility in the first place, but which was as false in itself, as replete with dishonesty and imposture, as it was deceitful and treacherous to the poor people who were foolish and ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... speaker," he said critically. "Did you get that way selling autos, or did you used to be an agitator or something?" ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... said his father, "you mingled with the men leaving the shops. You did a thing no member of our family has ever done— consented to an interview with a professional labor agitator." ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... far; the ship's voyage has suddenly ended between sea and sky. If Robespierre can, to-night, produce his Henriot and Company, and get his work done by them, he and Sansculottism may still subsist some time; if not, probably not. Oliver Cromwell, when that Agitator Serjeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, and began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouthpiece of Thousands expectant there,—discerned, with those truculent eyes of his, how ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... first disciple, and gave himself up patiently to the work of teaching his doctrine. His authority, which became so absolute in the last years of his life, was obtained with difficulty and very slowly. The great agitator met with such serious obstacles that he was banished for a time from Geneva on account of the severity of his reform. A party of honest citizens still clung to their old luxury and their old customs. But, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... than a local reputation in labor circles as an agitator, and was in demand as an organizer in different parts of the valley. He worked at his trade more or less, having rigged up a steel device on the stump of his right forearm that would hold a saw, a plane or a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... I'm not a bally prophet, you know, but I'll go this far. Your little tin hero is riding for a fall. It's all very well for him to do the romantic and that sort of piffle, by Jove, but when you scrape the paint off he's just a receiver of stolen property and a common agitator. Don't take my word for it. Ask Bleyer." Without looking at him he gave a little jerk of the head toward his superintendent. "Who is the most undesirable citizen here, Bleyer? Who makes all the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... sympathizers with the cause of labour agitation are the principal advisers at such a time. We remember, and the trolleymen certainly do, that at the critical juncture several summers ago, when a final decision was to have been rendered by the striking trolleymen, an agitator from Bridgeport not only agitated, but nearly managed to turn the balance toward an irreparable break in negotiations. We remember that New Haven people absolutely lost all patience at that juncture, and would have stampeded from their thorough ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... said, without looking round, "that a man is in a street row in Dublin, when no one knows he is even in the town. Suppose the—eh—English side of the question is getting battered, and he hits out and kills a drunken beast of an Irish agitator. Suppose an innocent man is accused of it and the right chap is forced to come forward and show up UNDER A FALSE NAME and gets five years. Suppose he escapes after three and a half, and goes home, saying that he has been in ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... a notorious agitator upon another theatre, they would hunt down and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say that whilst I recognize in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... domination of the manifestly unworthy. The world's brightest intellects are answering one by one to the roll-call of the New Order, and falling into line on the side championed by every prophet, from Moses to the "agitator" that died o' Wednesday. Inconceivably long and cruel has the bondage been, hideous beyond measure the degradation of the disinherited; but I think the cycle of soul-slaying loyalty to error draws near its close; for the whole armoury of the Father of Lies can furnish ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... receiving titles to landed property. Mr. Plaatje's articles on native affairs have been marked by the robust common sense and moderation so characteristic of Mr. Booker Washington. He realizes the great debt which the Natives owe to the men who brought civilization to South Africa. He is no agitator or firebrand, no stirrer-up of bad feeling between black and white. He accepts the position which the Natives occupy to-day in the body politic as the natural result of their lack of education and civilization. He is devoted to his own people, and notes with ever-increasing regret the lack of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... agitator. A man of the people, rough-hewn, narrow as a labor-leader may well be, earnest and sincere. He is a proper, ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... principles, and could be daring and skilful in asserting them. But he had held carefully within the constitutional lines; he had kept himself clear of conspiracies; he had never, like the Gracchi, put himself forward as a tribune or attempted the part of a popular agitator. When he had exerted himself in the political world of Rome, it had been to maintain the law against violence, to resist and punish encroachments of arbitrary power, or to rescue the Empire from being gambled away by incapable or profligate aristocrats. Thus he had gathered for himself ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... elaborateness in such details as the dispute over the Liberator claim at Yatala, the trial of Pole and the inquest on Challerson, with their rendering of witnesses' depositions in the manner of a newspaper report, the riot at Green Valley and Oxley, and the scene at the funeral of the agitator Radetsky? Yet, though these episodes are given at great length, and do not form any essential part of the story of Hereward Pole and Ruth Allerton—the vindication of a man's honour and the triumph of a woman's invincible devotion—they are ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... most highly have been fastidious scholars—we shall not yet have measured Lincoln's effort and performance. For these are not the compositions of a cloistered man of letters, they are the outpourings of an agitator upon the stump. The men who think hard are few; few of them can clothe their thought in apt and simple words; very, very few are those who in doing this could hold the attention of a miscellaneous and large crowd. Popular government owes that comparative failure, of which in recent times ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... The Convention chose Patrick Henry to be the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. A skilled agitator, a great orator, and a radical-turning-conservative, Henry ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... their lot; labourers and dockers who had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race. O'Flynn, the printer of the Bomb, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... noblest efforts to acquire glory and honor, here or hereafter. According to the inflection of the voice a word may strike terror into the bravest heart or lull a timid child to peaceful slumber. The word of an agitator may rouse the passions of a mob and impel it to awful bloodshed, as in the French Revolution, where dictatorial mandates of mob-rule killed and exiled at pleasure, or, the strain of "Home, Sweet Home" may cement the setting of a ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... socialism of Marx, however, still remains the socialism of the more ignorant classes, and also of the popular agitator. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... of all the negations, back of the inexpugnable proof that no such man or God as Christ existed, or was known to his contemporaries, Jewish and Roman, there must have been some legend which had crystallized into a mighty religion. Was He an agitator who preferred His obscurity that His glory might be all the greater? There must have been a beginning to the myth; behind the gospels—though they are obviously imitated from the older testaments, imitated and diluted—were unknown ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... had been on the point of inheriting a fortune in itself gave him standing; he told his story in public-houses and elsewhere, and relished the distinction of having such a story to tell. Even as his brother Richard could not rest unless he was prominent as an agitator, so it became a necessity to 'Arry to lead in the gin-palace and the music-hall. He made ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... governed the Great Powers may have deprecated Rakovski as much as he deprecated them. It must have been exasperating for those solid persons subsequently to acknowledge—if they did so—that this unbalanced agitator weighed them very well. But the Balkan countries were too weak; they had to suffer being thrown aside, pushed here and there, and trampled on; for when the Great Powers came down to the Balkans they could really not pay much ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... sound system of government," says this transatlantic writer, "requires the people to read and inform themselves upon political subjects; else they are the prey of every quack, every impostor, and every agitator who may practice his trade in the country. If they do not read; if they do not learn; if they do not digest by discussion and reflection what they have read and learned; if they do not qualify themselves to form opinions for themselves, other men will form opinions for them, not according ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... was indeed a heretic and an agitator of the lower orders; to the pagans, he was a magician who through sham miracles and with subversive words had incited the people to rebellion, and as a leader of a gang of desperate men had attempted to seize the royal crown of Judaea, as others had done before and after him. The non-Christian ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... physician; but unfortunately he also was a respectable man. When he saw something going forwards that he did not think was right, he protested and voted against it and then—he collapsed! There was nothing of the low agitator about HIM. As for the Brigands, they laughed at his protests and his ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... outspoken Socialistic sympathies had by this time alienated a large portion of the Scandinavian public. The cry was heard on all sides that he had ceased to be a poet, and had become instead a mere political agitator. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting Bjoernson's reply when at his request a friend repeated to him the opinion which was entertained ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... repeal, but the repeal he demanded did not involve the creation of an Irish republic. Ireland was still to be connected with Great Britain by "the golden link of the crown," and though agitation was carried to the verge of rebellion, the great agitator never actually advised his dupes to rise in arms for a war of independence. Short of this he did all in his power, and with too much success, to inflame them with a malignant hatred of the sister country. If the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Hebrew sense of an inspired voice crying in a wilderness of unbelief. Lassalle was no prophet. His function was to reduce principles to action, to engage the forces of the times in the spirit of the times, and by combat with such weapons as lay to hand to urge the cause forward. The word "agitator" might have been invented for him. He was the first great warrior of socialism. It is no reflection upon Marx to indicate that the present need of the Social Democracy is for warriors rather ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... American mails reported here to-day, I hope that the reports dispatched in the ordinary course of my duty have all reached your Excellency safely. In case they have not done so, I may report that since my audience with Mr. Wilson, the removal of the 'agitator' Dernburg, the mission of Meyer Gerhardt, and the arrival of the Press telegrams from Berlin giving details of the last-named, things have been pretty quiet generally; the situation has reverted to the normal, and will remain normal if our ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... led straight-forward to this point. It amazed her to find the certainty take possession of her mind that her vocation had been made ready for her from the beginning. She had the feeling of a reformer, a radical, and even of a political agitator, as she tried to face her stormy future in that summer morning loneliness. But by the time she had finished her early breakfast, and was driving out of the gate with the doctor, the day seemed so much ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... down the Durham coalfields tramped a misguided agitator (in after life the veteran servant of the Durham Miners' Association), by name Tommy Ramsey. With bills under his arm and crake in hand, he went from house-row to house-row calling the miners out. He ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... tide ran on. In 1647 there was "The Character of an Agitator," and also John Cleveland's Character of a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... is that nothing is accidental, and that if men move in a given direction, they do so in obedience to an impulsion as automatic as is the impulsion of gravitation. Therefore, 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. This problem has long interested me, and I harbor no doubt not only that the equilibrium of society is very rapidly shifting, but that Mr. Roosevelt has, half-automatically, been stimulated by the instability ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... autoclave was the digester of Denis Papin, invented in 1681, which is still used in cooking, but the appliance finds a much wider range of employment in chemical industry, where it is utilized in various forms in the manufacture of candles, coal-tar colours, &c. Frequently an agitator, passing through a stuffing-box, is fitted so that the contents may be stirred, and renewable linings are provided in cases where the substances under treatment exert ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... his text, protested against France concluding any peace or even any armistice so long as the Germans had not withdrawn across the frontier. There was still no little talk of that description. The old agitator Auguste Blanqui—long confined in one of the cages of Mont Saint-Michel, but now once more in Paris—never wearied of opposing peace in the discourses that he delivered at his own particular club, which, like ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Scotland.—You might suggest, that were it in Ireland, one might see a rail way out of it, or rather in it. This jest may be expected to be appreciated by a parson's wife of the sharper sort. Something ought to be got out of the visit of the agitator BURNS to the North. Example of what can be done in this direction:—"People who play with fire (persons who go in for strikes) must expect BURNS." However, be careful not to say this to a Scotchman, or he may want your blood before you get to the cigarettes. North Britons are ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... the compliment, remarks, that their "good Union-loving friends in Boston are now solacing the South with sugar-plums in the shape of resolutions and speeches, and spice in the form of a row, got up on the occasion of the first appearance of George Thompson, an imported incendiary and hireling agitator. Such manifestation possesses an advantage which doubtless constitutes no small recommendation with our good brethren of Boston,—it is very cheap. The cottoncratical clerks and warehousemen may raise ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... Zenodotus a weaver of tapestry—whose quadriga had once proved victorious—hastily made their way into the town to give the requisite orders in their stables, and they were closely followed by Hippias, the handsome agitator, who was the favorite driver in the arena for the horses belonging to wealthy owners. In the train of these three every lover of horses vanished from the scene, with a number of Hippias' friends, and of flower-sellers, door-keepers, and ticket-holders-in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... originally a Methodist, having become a Quaker, while his mother remained a Wesleyan. At 13 he was sent to the care of his uncle, Thomas S., a clergyman, near Bath, but a Radical and anti-corn-law agitator. Declining a Univ. career he became a school assistant, but shortly after accepted a situation under the engineer of the London and Birmingham railway, in which he remained until the great railway crisis of 1846 threw him out of employment. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... of May, in the middle of the Irish distress, the great agitator of old, Daniel O'Connell, died in his seventy-second year, on his way to Rome. The news of his death was received in Ireland as only one drop more in the full cup of national misery. In the same month of May another and a very different orator, Dr. Chalmers, the great impassioned ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... At Berlin he breathed for the first time the free air of intellectual Europe, and he was never able long to live out of that element again. One of his closest comrades at the University was Bakunin, a hot-headed young Radical, who subsequently became a Nihilist agitator. There is no doubt that his fiery harangues gave Turgenev much material for his later novels. It is characteristic, too, that while his student friends went wild at the theatre over Schiller, Turgenev immensely ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Nevertheless, the Ministers felt that it would not do to repudiate him. Lincoln took that view. He wrote to Burnside deploring his action and sustaining his authority.(16) And then, as a sort of grim practical joke, he commuted Vallandigham's sentence from imprisonment to banishment. The agitator was sent across the lines ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... beastly drunkard," as the New York Observer, in answer to a challenge, proved him to be beyond the possibility of successful contradiction. Tom Paine was of a Quaker family; was a staymaker by trade, but an agitator by occupation. He had obtained an appointment as exciseman, but was dismissed from his office, and emigrated to America in 1774. He somehow obtained an introduction to Dr. Franklin in London, who gave him a letter of introduction ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... would give this Hurlstone any trouble. It seems I must look elsewhere for the brains of this party, and to find a solution of this young man's mystery; and, if I judge correctly, it is with this beautiful young agitator of revolutions and her oratorical duenna ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with business interests, for the Government to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out to be bad, would be to incur ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... saw the thick, muddy, and turbid liquid, which was being stirred up by a gigantic "agitator," he could hardly believe that it could ever produce the beautiful white crystal with which he was so ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... in my opinion a journalist incurs a heavy responsibility if he neglects a favourable opportunity of emancipating the masses—the humble and oppressed. I know well enough that in exalted circles I shall be called an agitator, and all that sort of thing; but they may call what they like. If only my conscience doesn't reproach ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... knew by reputation only as a wrong-headed politician; but he spoke of Miss Denham pleasantly two or three times, praising her accomplishments and her winning manners. His hearer suspected that it might be done to dissociate the idea of her from the ruffling agitator. 'Is she pretty?' was a question that sprang from Rosamund's intimate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the general-agent of one of them—the Marchesa Fermi, a Roman—had spoken to her about the meeting which was to take place at his house, and had mentioned the discourse to be pronounced by that strange personage about whom all Rome was already talking, knowing him as an enthusiastic religious agitator and miracle worker, most popular in the Testaccio district. The Marchesa was determined to hear him without being seen. She had arranged everything with Guarnacci, and had admitted three or four friends into the conspiracy, each in her turn obtaining permission to introduce ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... present itself, he endeavored to inoculate others with his dissatisfaction. Bince had hired the man, and during the several months that Krovac had been with the company, the assistant general manager had learned enough from other workers to realize that the man was an agitator and a troublemaker. Several times he had been upon the point of discharging him, but now he was glad that he had not, for he thought he saw in him a type that in the light of present conditions might be ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... action of extremists and believe that the present unrest is evil. A well-known Hindu writer describes the situation in the following words: "The class of people the Indian Extremists appeal to, consists of irresponsible and impressionable students and the ignorant populace; and the agitator, who is thoroughly cognizant of this fact, uses it for his purposes. He appeals to their feelings, and succeeds in making them believe in the soundness of his fallacies and mischievous preachings. The authorities have therefore to see that this class of people is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... every time he came to it, and barking at the top of his voice every instant. Birds rose before him in flocks, sandpipers took to their wings in panic, swallows swooped down over him in anxious clouds, sharp-tailed sparrows and all other winged creatures fled wildly before this "agitator," who seemed to have no aim except to disturb, and reminded me irresistibly of his human prototype. Somewhere in that "league upon league of marsh grass," I suppose, were the blackbird's little folk; for the watcher on the bank was in deepest ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... state that the great agitator against the continuance of the barbarities of hanging, drawing and quartering was Sir Samuel Romilly, who in the reign of George III., brought upon himself the odium of the law-officers of the Crown, who declared he was "breaking down the bulwarks of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... dealing with a law-breaker and political agitator is totally foreign to Mr. Roosevelt; even his critics admit that he both talks and fights in the open. In two speeches in Khartum, one at a dinner given in his honor by British military and civil officers, and one at a reception arranged by native Egyptian military men and officials, he pointed ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... couldn't quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an "agitator"—as though that, forsooth, settled ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... he becomes a Nihilist we shall have the Commune in our cities, and beyond them the Jacqueries! It is impossible that the authorities should not see this. But the authorities obey the deputy, the deputy obeys the elector, and the elector obeys the agitator.' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... will the Government do; so that you see the settlement is very completely in my hands." This man was a valuable ally to Riel; for almost literally did he, while portending to speak for the Dominion authorities, corroborate the allegation of the arch agitator. Then two officials, Messrs Snow and Mair, sent out by Mr. McDougall, while he was yet Minister of Public Works, had established an intimacy with the obnoxious white man, received his hospitality, and given acquiescent ear to his ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... he might avert the impending Civil War. He had induced the legislature to establish the first public school for deaf-mutes, the school that drew Bell to Boston in 1871. And he had been for years a most restless agitator for improvements in telegraphy and the post office. So, as a promoter of schemes for the public good, Hubbard was by no means a novice. His first step toward capturing the attention of an indifferent nation was to beat the big drum of publicity. He saw that this new idea of telephoning ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... persecution of the existing powers which hold him responsible for all acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the other, the lack of understanding on the part of his own followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... assumptions the States of this Union would have no security for peace or tranquillity, but might be converted into the mere instruments of Executive will. Actuated by selfish purposes, he might become the great agitator, fomenting assaults upon the State constitutions and declaring the majority of to-day to be the minority of to-morrow, and the minority, in its turn, the majority, before whose decrees the established order of things in the State should ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... attention to my unique establishment. I can offer you an excellent engagement as the figure-head of a vessel about to be produced in a new nautical drama. It is at present called "The Shark and the Alligator," but may be altered with equal effect to "The Mayor and the Agitator." Begging a reply, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... agitator, was especially identified with the movement for manhood suffrage and the ballot, and was the leading spirit in two large popular demonstrations ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that in your water tank the best way is to put your arsenate of lead in in the form of a paste and dilute it until you get it so that there is about two pounds of arsenate of lead to a gallon of water, and with that you can pour it into your tank and if you have an agitator in there you won't have any difficulty with it. In the early days of spraying when we used blue vitriol with lime, we tried a concentrated solution of the blue vitriol and lime and found we couldn't get it through the strainer, but by diluting it, putting our blue vitriol in ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... sympathies into the groove of unity (not their necessary or even their most natural groove), Mazzini made an Italian kingdom possible. There is reason to think that the King's ministers were kept entirely ignorant of his correspondence with the Agitator. The letters were impersonal drafts carried to and fro by means of trusted emissaries; each party freely expounded his views, and stated the terms on which his support could be given. Victor Emmanuel's favourite idea was ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the enthusiasts before they have had time to cool; but even this process—so skilfully conducted by the initiated—seems unworthy of great and noble charities, or of great and noble causes. It is true also that the agitator—no matter what he may be agitating—is always sure of his market; a circumstance which made that most conservative of chancellors, Lord Eldon, swear with bitter oaths that, if he were to begin life over again, he would begin it as an agitator. Tom Moore tells a pleasant story ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... opposition to the Crimean War; but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody ought to fight anybody, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have said that—it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, with this order on my hands. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the province and the royal council sat. It was from the balcony on the State street side that the news of the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. Here, in 1835, William Lloyd Garrison found refuge from a mob which had broken up an anti-slavery meeting and threatened the life of this brave agitator. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... no harm done, or else some disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the passer-by to think that any one so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Executive offices at Asbury Park to have the newspaper men present for a conference that afternoon; that he would give out a reply to a telegram he had received. With the newspaper group, I attended this conference. It appeared that an Irish agitator named Jeremiah O'Leary, who had been organizing and speaking against the President and trying to array the Irish vote against him, wrote an offensive letter to the President, calling attention to the results of ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the curtain has risen on the fourth act, and England, as always heretofore, is the chief actor. And where now is the great anti-slavery agitator? Why, England has reversed her position, and suddenly discovered the surpassing beauty and perfection of secession and slavery. Secession, an anarchical absurdity, destructive of all law, and all government, she kindly adopts as the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... legislation; but he assisted at the process of their realization with greater and greater temperateness and wise deliberation as his part in affairs became more and more prominent and responsible, and was at the last as little like an agitator as any man that served ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... 5. You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type). Old inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... of eighty, afflicted with the palsy, was arrested during the reign of terror, under suspicion of being an agitator. Being asked what he had to say to the accusation, "Alas, gentlemen, it is very true, I am agitated enough, God knows, for I have not been able to keep a limb ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... History. It may be that the student of the Past must still content himself with critical inquiries—Ib. p. v. Few scholars are critics, few critics are philosophers, and few philosophers look with equal care on both sides of a question.—W. S. LANDOR in HOLYOAKE'S Agitator's Life, ii. 315. Introduire dans l'histoire, et sans tenir compte des passions politiques et religieuses, le doute methodique que Descartes, le premier, appliqua a l'etude de la philosophie, n'est-ce pas la une excellente methode? n'est-ce pas meme la meilleure?—CHANTELAUZE, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... a matter of values and neither the negro himself, his friends, his enemies, his lauders, nor his critics has grown quite certain in appraising these. The rabid agitator who goes about the land preaching the independence and glory of his race, and by his very mouthings retarding both, the saintly missionary, whose only mission is like that of "Pooh Bah," to be insulted; the man of the cloth who thunders against the sins of the world and from whom ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... foretell anything. You never know what workingmen in their lodges will do. There, as a rule, the 'Walking delegate' and a few agitators rule with despotic power. If a workman, whose large family forces him to take conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation and demands that traitors to the cause of labor be expelled. This throttles freedom of action in many labor unions, so that often what appears on the surface to be the unanimous action of the members ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... Because a man is great is no reason why he should be proclaimed perfect. Such men as Victor Hugo need no veneer—the truth will answer: he would explode a keg of powder to kill a fly. He was an agitator. But these zealous souls are needed—not to govern or to be blindly followed, but rather to make other men think for themselves. Yet to do this in a monarchy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... infidelity, the dragon still assails the woman. Reason, toleration, humanity, charity and liberality are terms which have been selected and abused by the servants of the devil "to deceive the hearts of the simple." These are alike the watchwords of the spiritual seducer and the political agitator. What dogma or heresy so absurd,—what conduct so immoral, as not to find patronage in the journals of the day? or not to find tolerance or protection under the fostering wings of church or state? What is impiously called "free love," as well as avowed infidelity ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... himself could invidiously and continuously rob the customer without fear of any law. All of this was converted into a code of moralities; and any bold spirit who exposed its cant and sham was denounced as an agitator and as an enemy of law and order. [Footnote: A few progressive jurists in the International Prison Congress are attempting to secure the recognition in law of the principle that society, as a supreme necessity, is obligated to protect its members from being made the victims of the cunning and unscrupulous. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... but he found himself generally distrusted and despised. He had been a great man in the knot of ignorant and hotheaded outlaws who had urged the feeble Monmouth to destruction: but there was no place for a lowminded agitator, half maniac and half knave, among the grave statesmen and generals who partook the cares of the resolute ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disaster which now and then gains ascendancy in the community of reformers. It is the professional agitator, the parasite who will speak for or against a principle according to the economic advantage which one side or the other may offer. You may hold that such a man is not altogether undesirable, provided he can ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the state, and has behaved as a good citizen should; but if he accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the people against them, or if he seditiously strives to abrogate the law without their consent, he is a mere agitator and rebel. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Jeppe contemptuously. "You, who throw your money away over the first tramp you meet! And you defend an abominable agitator, who never goes out by daylight like other people, but goes ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... honour of Virginia." At the end of the week the Major's hand was held out, but his heart still bore his grievance, and he began quoting William L. Yancey, as he had once quoted Mr. Addison. In the little meetings at Uplands or at Chericoke, he would now declaim the words of the impassioned agitator as vigorously as in the old days he had recited those of the polished gentleman of letters. The rector and the doctor would sit silent and abashed, and only the Governor would break in now and then with: "You go too far, Major. There is a step from which there is no drawing ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... lasting impression on him. It didn't trouble him that the minister offered him wine bought from the wine-merchant Hgstedt at sixty-five re the pint, and wafers from Lettstroem, the baker, at one crown a pound, as the flesh and blood of the great agitator Jesus of Nazareth, who was done to death nineteen hundred years ago. He didn't think about it, for one didn't think in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... type was the peasant Kryloff, a popular agitator who inflamed the whole of South Russia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Intoxicated by the success of his oratory, he grew to believe in his own mission of Saviour, and undertook a pilgrimage to St. Petersburg in order to be made a ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... an American actor, a Welsh socialist agitator, and a German army officer, Fraulein Furst at last placed herself and her great brewery interests into the trustworthy hands of Otto Ottenburg, who had been her suitor ever since he was a clerk, learning his business in ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather |
