Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich—when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice.
—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 20 BCQuotes
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851All revolutions devour their own children.
—Ernst Röhm, 1933I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet, 1983The 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, 1961If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778All 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