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Definition
someone who attacks cherished ideas or traditional institutions- During the Reformation, iconoclasts destroyed much religious art.
- Her iconoclasm comes from a deep personal instinct to distrust all conventions.
- He is both iconoclastic and constructive in his attempt to sweep away long-familiar beliefs on the basis of new scientific evidence.
- Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can further go:Mark Twain -- The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
- Even the iconoclastic poet William Blake hinted that we should read between the lines.Dan Brown -- The Lost Symbol
- This was Cuba, of course, the hemisphere's small, lonely iconoclast.Tracy Kidder -- Mountains Beyond Mountains
- Celia's destination was Havana, with her Great-Aunt Alicia, known for her cooking and her iconoclasm.Christina Garcia -- Dreaming in Cuban
- I have become a reformer, and, like all reformers, an iconoclast.George Bernard Shaw -- Man And Superman
- It could be iconoclasm, how do they know?Margaret Atwood -- Cat's Eye
- Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who first launched my plays on the stage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck, exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals.George Bernard Shaw -- Mrs. Warren's Profession
- He also tests well; comes from a strong, loving, Leave It to Beaver family, and can be sort of funny in the arch, smug, iconoclastic way college kids need to be.Ron Suskind -- A Hope in the Unseen
- Luke's an iconoclast.Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass
- Iconoclast.Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl
- She had the neophyte's shock of discovery that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with agility and confusing statistics.Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street
- One of the ironies of America's fast food industry is that a business so dedicated to conformity was founded by iconoclasts and self-made men, by entrepreneurs willing to defy conventional opinion.Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation
- There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order, be disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.Herman Melville -- Billy Budd
- Madonna Ciccone revolutionized the fashion world with her iconoclastic sense of style, sometimes offending people who are not very open-minded"for instance, her rhinestone cross earrings, which made many Christian groups ban her CDs"or who have no sense of humor"like Pepsi, which didn't like it when she danced in front of some burning crosses.Meg Cabot -- The Princess Diaries
- On the following day, Ma'am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma'am Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have found out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,— Ma'am Bougon observed, with stupefaction, that M. Marius was going out again in his new coat.Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- Dale Lasater's iconoclasm seems bred in the bone.Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation
- I appealed to his iconoclast, millionaire rodeo-cowboy ego.Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl