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Quotes

If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

—Thomas Paine, 1778

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

 

—Fidel Castro, 1959

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

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

—François Guizot, 1830

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

—Pierre Boulez, 1989

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

—Henry Clay, 1842

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859