Revolution Quotes
Most popular revolution quotes
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
Freedom never yet was given to nations as a gift, but only as a reward, bravely earned by one's own exertions.
Revolutions are built on empty bellies.
I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.
No one is more surprised than a revolutionary rebelled against.
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
I am proud of the revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought . . . the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but the hands of God.
An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
He who throws a bomb and kills a pedestrian, declares that as a victim of society he has rebelled against society. But could not the poor victim object: "Am I society?"
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
Death is the price of revolution.
Revolution accelerates evolution.
When reform becomes impossible, revolution becomes imperative.
Revolutions never go backward.
Martyrs are needed to create incidents. Incidents are needed to create revolutions. Revolutions are needed to create progress.
Revolutions are never peaceful.
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up.
The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
The seed of revolution is repression.
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Revolutions are born of hope.
A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.
All oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.
Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous.
A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
A successful revolution begins to develop a stake in the status quo.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
Revolutions have never succeeded unless the establishment does three-quarters of the work.
When people do not feel they have a place at the table, they turn it over.
We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration.
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
