Archive

Quotes

I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

—Vladimir Lenin, 1918

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—François Guizot, 1830

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

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.

—George Sand, 1851