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

This 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.

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

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

The 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. 

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

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

There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.

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.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

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.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

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