Archive

Quotes

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

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

—Albert Camus, 1951

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

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.

—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BC

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

The 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, 1862

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.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829

Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859