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Quotes

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

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

—Henry Clay, 1842

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

—Dolores Ibárruri, 1936

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

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

—Erich Fromm, 1941

To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.

—Mikhail Bakunin, 1871

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

Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.

—James Howell, 1659

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

—Hannah Arendt, 1970
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