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 main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

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

Governments 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.

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

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

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

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.

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

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

To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against 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.

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.