Terror

Terror

Terror, from French terreur, from Latin terror meaning "great fear", a noun derived from the Latin verb terrere meaning "to frighten", is a policy of political repression and violence intended to subdue political opposition. The term was first used for the Reign of Terror imposed by the Jacobins during the French Revolution. Modern instances of terror include red terror or white terror.

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Famous quotes containing the word terror:

    We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of terror have been reigns of madness and malignity,—a total perversion of opinion; society is upside down, and its best men are thought too bad to live.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
    Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
    Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
    To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
    The night can sweat with terror as before
    We pieced our thoughts into philosophy....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)