Archive

Quotes

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

—James Howell, 1659

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

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

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. 

—Frantz Fanon, 1961

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

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

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

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

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

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

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

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829

I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844