The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
—Erich Fromm, 1941Quotes
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, 1862The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
—Germaine Greer, 1970Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790There 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, 1665The only justification of rebellion is success.
—Thomas B. Reed, 1878All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.
—Albert Camus, 1951If not us, who? If not now, when?
—Czech slogan, 1989Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829This 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, 1861Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.
—James Howell, 1659Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944All 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