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Quotes

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

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

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

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933

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.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1861

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

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.

—Victor Hugo, 1862

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

All men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC