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

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. 

No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.

Governments 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.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

All men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

All revolutions devour their own children.

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

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.

There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.