Archive

Quotes

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

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

—James Howell, 1659

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829

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

—Jean Genet, 1983

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

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.

—Henry Clay, 1842

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

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791

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

—John F. Kennedy, 1962