Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Quotes
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844All 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 celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
—Pierre Boulez, 1989No 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 made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCThe spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.
—François Guizot, 1830The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThe only justification of rebellion is success.
—Thomas B. Reed, 1878