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Quotes

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

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

—Thomas Paine, 1778

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

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

—Czech slogan, 1989

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

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

—Vladimir Lenin, 1918

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

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

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

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.

—Erich Fromm, 1941

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

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.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665