The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
—Erich Fromm, 1941Quotes
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.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977All 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, 1849Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844