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Quotes

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

—James Howell, 1659

Disobedience, 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, 1891

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BC

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

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

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

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790
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