Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790Quotes
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Disobedience, 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.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
—Germaine Greer, 1970The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1918Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871The 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, 1862An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842