The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

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

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

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.

No 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.

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.

The peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms. 

Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.

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