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.

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.

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 not us, who? If not now, when?

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

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

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

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

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.

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

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

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.

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