Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944Quotes
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, 1849Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThis 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, 1861The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet, 1983Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.
—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BCThe 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.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1776Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.
—Leo Tolstoy, 1893Those 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.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1885