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, 1862Quotes
Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
—Wendell Phillips, 1859If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844This 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, 1861To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1885In 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, 1864The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1918All revolutions devour their own children.
—Ernst Röhm, 1933Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC