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Quotes

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

—Erich Fromm, 1941

The only justification of rebellion is success.

—Thomas B. Reed, 1878

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

—Havelock Ellis, 1921

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

—Albert Camus, 1951

All revolutions devour their own children.

—Ernst Röhm, 1933

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

—Henry Clay, 1842

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

—Thomas Paine, 1778

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

—Wendell Phillips, 1859

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.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791

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

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

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

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