Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCQuotes
Revolutions are always verbose.
—Leon Trotsky, 1933Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871No 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, 1851It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet, 1983In 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, 1864To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1885Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCThe 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, 1961If not us, who? If not now, when?
—Czech slogan, 1989Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
—Wendell Phillips, 1859