Archive

Quotes

There 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

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

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

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

—Pierre Boulez, 1989

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—James Howell, 1659

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.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

—François Guizot, 1830

Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.

—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BC

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

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.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

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.

—George Sand, 1851