Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

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

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

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

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

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

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

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

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.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.