Lapham’s Quarterly

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

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

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

To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

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.

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

Revolutions never go backward.

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