Politics & Power Quote by Dick Gregory

Flip the old misogynist chestnut on its head, then aim it straight at American politics: that is Dick Gregory in a sentence. “Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned” riffs on “like a woman scorned,” swapping gendered stereotype for partisan identity. The joke lands because it’s both a punchline and a diagnosis of how progressives perform outrage: righteous, theatrical, and, crucially, late.

Gregory’s intent is less “liberals are bad” than “liberals are predictable.” A “scorned” liberal is someone who believes they’re on the right side of history and is shocked - shocked - when power doesn’t reward virtue. The fury isn’t principled anger at injustice; it’s the hotter, more personal anger of betrayal: the candidate sold out, the movement got co-opted, the ally failed the purity test. Gregory compresses a whole ecosystem of infighting into one stinging image: the left doesn’t just oppose conservatives, it punishes defectors.

Context matters because Gregory wasn’t a detached snarker. As a comedian-activist who worked the civil rights circuit, he watched white liberal sympathy surge and vanish with the news cycle. His line needles the class of people who want credit for being “good” but recoil when the costs get real. That’s the subtext: liberalism as self-congratulation until it’s personally inconvenienced.

The brilliance is the double edge. Conservatives hear a jab at sanctimony; radicals hear an indictment of performative allyship. Gregory’s comedy doesn’t just mock - it audits motives.