Archive

Quotes

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

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

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

—Jean Genet, 1983

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

—Albert Camus, 1951

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

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

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

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936