Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1893Quotes
The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.
—François Guizot, 1830Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1918I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet, 1983Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
—Pierre Boulez, 1989Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.
—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BCAll successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970