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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Aristotle3 quotes
No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCIn revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interests are at stake. — Aristotle · 350 BCInferiors revolt in order that they may be equal and equals that they might be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. — Aristotle · 350 BCAlbert Camus2 quotes
What is a rebel? A man who says no. — Albert Camus · 1951Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. — Albert Camus · 1951Edmund Burke2 quotes
A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. — Edmund Burke · 1790George Orwell2 quotes
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. — George Orwell · 1945There are only four ways in which a ruling class can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself. — George Orwell · 1949Karl Marx2 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx · 1845Mao Zedong2 quotes
A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. — Mao Zedong · 1927Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy, and creates dissension. — Mao Zedong · 1937Abraham Lincoln1 quote
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. — Abraham Lincoln · 1848Barbara Tuchman1 quote
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. — Barbara Tuchman · 1972Charles James Fox1 quote
How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best! — Charles James Fox · 1789Che Guevara1 quote
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. — Che Guevara · 1967Czar Alexander II of Russia1 quote
Better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait till it begins to abolish itself from below. — Czar Alexander II of Russia · 1856Denis Diderot1 quote
And with the guts of the last priest
Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772Fidel Castro1 quote
A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. — Fidel Castro · 1961G.K. Chesterton1 quote
Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelley, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness. — G.K. Chesterton · 1901G.M. Trevelyan1 quote
If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt. — G.M. Trevelyan · 1942Georg Buchner1 quote
The revolution is like Saturn-it eats its children. — Georg Buchner · 1835George Bernard Shaw1 quote
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder. — George Bernard Shaw · 1903Germaine Greer1 quote
Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. — Germaine Greer · 1970Gil Scott-Heron1 quote
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. — Gil Scott-Heron · 1970Hannah Arendt1 quote
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970Havelock Ellis1 quote
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. — Havelock Ellis · 1922Henry David Thoreau1 quote
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. — Henry David Thoreau · 1848John Adams1 quote
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818John F. Kennedy1 quote
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. — John F. Kennedy · 1977Jose Ortega y Gasset1 quote
A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation. — Jose Ortega y Gasset · 1930Joseph Conrad1 quote
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims. — Joseph Conrad · 1911Kwame Nkrumah1 quote
Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought. — Kwame Nkrumah · 1964Leo Tolstoy1 quote
There can be only one permanent revolution-a moral one. — Leo Tolstoy · 1900Mahatma Gandhi1 quote
We are engaged in a spiritual war. We are not living in normal times. — Mahatma Gandhi · 1921Mark Twain1 quote
No people in the world ever did achieve freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must begin in blood. — Mark Twain · 1889