The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become Hollywood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that
—Huey P. Newton (1942–89) American Political Activist
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.
—Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) Soviet Leader
A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) German Philosopher, Linguist, Statesman
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
—Che Guevara (1928–67) Argentine-Cuban Revolutionary
Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off.
—Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist
Revolutions are not made for export.
—Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) Russian Head of State, Political leader
I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.
—William H. Seward (1801–72) American Elected Representative, Lawyer, Politician, Activist
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, to raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
The dead have been awakened—shall I sleep? The world’s at war with tyrants—shall I crouch? the harvest’s ripe—and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, its echo in my heart.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can’t.
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer
You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.
—Huey P. Newton (1942–89) American Political Activist
Revolutions are not made, they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.
—Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator
The seed of revolution is repression.
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State
You said, “They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.”—“What,” I asked you, “is harmless about a dreamer, and what,” I asked you, “is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chinese Statesman
Riots are the voices of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
True revolutionaries are like God—they create the world in their own image. Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
It’s not the work which kills people, it’s the worry. It’s not the revolution that destroys machinery it’s the friction.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
When the sword of rebellion is drawn, the sheath should be thrown away.
—English Proverb
When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters.
—George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–95) British Statesman, Writer, Politician
Political convulsions, like geological upheavings, usher in new epochs of the world’s progress.
—Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator
Anyone who can be proved to be a seditious person is an outlaw before God and the emperor; and whoever is the first to put him to death does right and well. Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.
—Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German Lutheran Philosopher, Theologian, Poet, Literary Critic
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Insurrection: Insurrection as soon as circumstances allow: insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous: the insurrection of the masses: the holy war of the oppressed: the republic to make republicans: the people in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection announce with its awful voice the decrees of God: let it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood all the country that it is destined to make fertile.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Revolution is the larva of civilization.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
One revolution is just like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendor.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.
—Richard Hooker (1554–1600) English Anglican Theologian, Political Theorist
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all—he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime.
—Angela Davis (b.1944) American Political Activist, Academic
I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.
—Abbie Hoffman (1936–89) American Political Activist, Anarchist
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer