Archive

Quotes

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

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

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

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

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

—Jean Genet, 1983

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

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

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, 1864

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.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859