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

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

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

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

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

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

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.

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

No 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.

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

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

The 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. 

All revolutions devour their own children.