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.

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

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.

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Revolutions are always verbose.

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.