Archive

Quotes

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.

—James Howell, 1659

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

—Tennessee Williams, 1944

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

The peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms. 

—Frantz Fanon, 1961

If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

—Thomas Paine, 1778

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

—Jean Genet, 1983

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829