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.

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

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

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

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

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

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.

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

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