"I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally"
About this Quote
Dismissal dressed up as nostalgia is a classic power move, and Dulles pulls it off with patrician ease. By waving off “student riots” as something he once did “occasionally,” he reduces present unrest to a youthful phase - a kind of civic acne that clears up with age, jobs, and mortgages. The line works because it’s not just minimizing protest; it’s reclaiming it. If the elder statesman has rioted too, then today’s dissent can’t possibly signal a real crisis. It’s been safely pre-experienced, cataloged, and filed away.
The Sorbonne detail is doing strategic work. It flatters his cosmopolitan credentials while turning revolt into a rite of passage for the educated classes: a Parisian anecdote, not a political emergency. That framing quietly separates “respectable” student disorder from the kind of mass politics that actually threatens order - labor movements, anti-colonial uprisings, or anything that stops being charming when it leaves the university quarter.
Context matters: Dulles helped architect the Cold War’s moral posture, selling stability as virtue and upheaval as risk. This quote reflects that worldview, but with a disarming chuckle instead of a briefing memo. The subtext is a warning to take protests seriously only when they become inconvenient - and an invitation to elites to treat dissent as performance, not pressure. It’s condescension with a well-tailored smile: history as a reassurance, rather than a reckoning.
The Sorbonne detail is doing strategic work. It flatters his cosmopolitan credentials while turning revolt into a rite of passage for the educated classes: a Parisian anecdote, not a political emergency. That framing quietly separates “respectable” student disorder from the kind of mass politics that actually threatens order - labor movements, anti-colonial uprisings, or anything that stops being charming when it leaves the university quarter.
Context matters: Dulles helped architect the Cold War’s moral posture, selling stability as virtue and upheaval as risk. This quote reflects that worldview, but with a disarming chuckle instead of a briefing memo. The subtext is a warning to take protests seriously only when they become inconvenient - and an invitation to elites to treat dissent as performance, not pressure. It’s condescension with a well-tailored smile: history as a reassurance, rather than a reckoning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by John
Add to List
