Archive

Quotes

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

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

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

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

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

—François Guizot, 1830

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 BC

There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665

I have been ever of the opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the state.

—Albert Camus, 1951
  •