Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Revolutionaries

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.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can’t sit on it.
William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) English Anglican Clergyman, Priest, Mystic

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 children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer

Riots are the voices of the unheard.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist

Plots, true or false, are necessary things, to raise up commonwealths, and ruin kings.
John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright

Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.
George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.
Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author

In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interests are at stake.
Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar

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

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer

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.
George Sand (1804–76) French Novelist, Dramatist

Revolutions are always verbose.
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist

Revolutions never go backwards.
Wendell Phillips (1811–84) American Abolitionist, Lawyer, Orator

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.
Alexander Herzen (1812–70) Russian Revolutionary, Writer

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.
Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.
John Mason Brown (1900–69) American Author, Drama Critic

Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.
Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist

Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.
Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author

Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author

In this Revolution no plans have been written for retreat.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

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

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.
Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) Soviet Leader

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

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.
Abbie Hoffman (1936–89) American Political Activist, Anarchist

Whether a revolutions succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer

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