It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936Quotes
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778Disobedience, 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.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.
—James Howell, 1659To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1885In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864All 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, 1921To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.
—Mikhail Bakunin, 1871I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844No 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.
—George Sand, 1851