Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1893Quotes
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, 1862All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829In 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, 1864Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy, 1962All 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, 1849The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1885No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCInsurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
—Wendell Phillips, 1859