Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCQuotes
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, 1665Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.
—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BCMake the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
—Erich Fromm, 1941The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.
—Albert Camus, 1951Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1776