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Quotes

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

—Thomas Paine, 1778

All 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, 1977

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

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

—Henry Clay, 1842

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
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