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Quotes

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

—James Howell, 1659

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

—Jean Genet, 1983

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.

 

—Fidel Castro, 1959

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

—Leo Tolstoy, 1893

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

—Edmund Burke, 1790

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

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

—Hannah Arendt, 1970

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

—Czech slogan, 1989

Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.

—Italo Calvino, 1957

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

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC

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

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

Revolutions never go backward.

—Thomas Skidmore, 1829