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

To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.

Revolutions never go backward.

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.

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

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

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

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.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.