Archive

Quotes

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

—Jean Genet, 1983

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

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

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

The 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, 1862

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

 

—Fidel Castro, 1959

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.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791

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

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957