Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Quotes
Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
—Pierre Boulez, 1989I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
—Germaine Greer, 1970The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.
—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BCAll revolutions devour their own children.
—Ernst Röhm, 1933The 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, 1862This 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.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1861The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.
—François Guizot, 1830If not us, who? If not now, when?
—Czech slogan, 1989Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1776There 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, 1665