Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871Quotes
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.
—Albert Camus, 1951The 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, 1961Make the revolution a parent of settlement and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke, 1790All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
—Henry Clay, 1842Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCRevolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580