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

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.

The only justification of rebellion is success.

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

No 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.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

All men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.

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.

If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.