Lapham’s Quarterly

Revolutions never go backward.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

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

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

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man, not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

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.

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

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

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

To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.

If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

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

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.

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

The 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. 

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

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

The only justification of rebellion is success.

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous. 

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

All revolutions devour their own children.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

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

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.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

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.

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

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

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

Those 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.

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

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

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

In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.

No 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.

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.

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.

Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.

Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles. 

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

Revolutions are always verbose.

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.

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.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.