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Quotes

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

—James Howell, 1659

To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933

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

—Albert Camus, 1951

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

—Erich Fromm, 1941

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.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1861

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

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.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903