Archive

Quotes

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

—Pierre Boulez, 1989

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864

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.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1861

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

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