Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

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.

The only justification of rebellion is success.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Revolutions are always verbose.

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

Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.