An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842Quotes
In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983No 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.
—George Sand, 1851The only justification of rebellion is success.
—Thomas B. Reed, 1878It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936All 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, 1977All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Disobedience, 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.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844The 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, 1961The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
—Erich Fromm, 1941