Revolution Quotes

And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

~ Terry Pratchett

Each of you must decide where you stand. All we ask is that you refuse to kneel. You are the people. You have the power. Open your eyes. Open your minds. Then close the fingers on your hand.

~ Jay Kristoff

A conscience is easier to swallow on an empty belly, simpler to swing with a broken wrist. The people who hate money are the ones who don’t have any. The people who hate power are the ones who are powerless

~ Jay Kristoff

The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.

~ Bill Mollison

I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.

~ Anne Lamott

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.

~ Masanobu Fukuoka

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

~ Hannah Arendt

Pioneering is never done in front of cheerleaders urging on a roaring grandstand of popular approval.

~ George Takei

The emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the working class itself — without the assistance of governments.

~ Pierre-Jospeh Proudhon

[R]evolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of argument and reasoning

~ David Hume

A new dynasty is never founded without a struggle. Blood makes good manure. It will be a good thing for the Rougon family to be founded on a massacre, like many illustrious families.--Monsieur de Carnavant

~ Émile Zola

Lenin only believes in the revolution and in the virtue of expediency.'One must be prepared for every sacrifice, to use, if necessary, every stratagem, ruse, illegal method, to be determined to conceal the truth, for the sole purpose of accomplishing, despite everything, the communist task'.

~ Albert Camus

Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings.

~ Joseph Conrad

If there was a spectre haunting France in the 1780's, it was not that of revolution but that of state bankruptcy. The whole social and political structure of France stood in the way of tapping the wealth of the better-off, the only sure way of emerging from the financial impasse.

~ J.m. Roberts

FAITES L'AMOUR ET RECOMMENCEZ (make love and make it again)

~ Anouk Markovits

There is nothing illogical in the desire of the have-nots to appropriate the wealth of the haves; in fact, it is part and parcel of the law of animal life. The bear robs the hive and the wolf the fold, and when nature red in tooth and claw is stretched into its human dimension, there is nothing irrational in Marx's theory that, granted the power, one social class should devour another. But what is irrational is, to assume that by robbing the hive the bear will assume the industry of the bee, or by robbing the fold the wolf will become as pacific as the sheep. It is astonishing that a man of Marx's high intelligence could have believed in ritualistic cannibalism on the social plane; that by wresting the forces of production from the bourgeoisie and centralizing them in the hands of the proletariat, the proletariat would automatically aacquire the skills of the ruling class. And it is equally astonishing that a man of Lenin's mental calibre could have attempted to put this magic into practice.

~ J.f.c. Fuller

A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.

~ Edmund Burke

Every reform was once a private opinion and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All reformers are bachelors.

~ George Moore

Not actual suffering but the hope of better things incites people to revolt.

~ Eric Hoffer

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Thinkers prepare the revolution bandits carry it out.

~ Mariano Azuela

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal and equals that they may be superior.

~ Aristotle

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

~ Benjamin Franklin

In almost any society I think the quality of the non-conformists is like to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists.

~ Margaret Mead

Whatever little we have gained we have gained by agitation while we have uniformly lost by moderation.

~ Daniel O'connell

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

~ Lewis Mumford

One revolution is like one cocktail it just gets you organized for the next.

~ Will Rogers

A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.

~ James J. Walker

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

~ Richard S. Childs

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity sluggish and indomitable as a glacier will mitigate the most violent and depress the most exalted revolution.

~ T. S. Eliot

It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour his religion his soul and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

It is essential to the triumph of reform that it shall never succeed.

~ William Hazlitt

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

~ Oscar Wilde

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

~ George Bernard Shaw

It is not the prisoners who need reformation it is the prisons.

~ Oscar Wilde

By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may drown a nation.

~ Edmund Burke

The times spat at me. I spit back at the times.

~ Andrei Voznesensky

All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.

~ Thomas Carlyle