Revolutions never go backward.

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.

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.

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

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

This 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.

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.

Revolutions are always verbose.

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

All revolutions devour their own children.

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.