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Quotes

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829

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 always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

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

—François Guizot, 1830

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

—Pierre Boulez, 1989

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

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

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

I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

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.

—Victor Hugo, 1862

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970