quotations about revolution
Revolution, my dear prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power, where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement of the rest.
JOHN GARDNER
Grendel
It is far more easy to pull down, than to build up, and to destroy, than to preserve. Revolutions have on this account been falsely supposed to be fertile of great talent; as the dregs rise to the top, during a fermentation, and the lightest things are carried highest by the whirlwind. And the practice of this proposition bears out the theory; for demagogues have succeeded tolerably well in making ruins; but the moment they begin to build anew from the materials that they have overthrown, they have often been uselessly employed with regard to others, and more often dangerously with regard to themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Some men hope for revolution but when you revolt and set up your new government you find your new government is still the same old Papa, he has only put on a cardboard mask.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Notes of a Dirty Old Man
Revolutions are messy--even revolutions driven by the haves versus the have-nots; even revolutions fighting for change in board rooms and institutions versus in the streets. Revolutions are messy even if the intentions of the revolutionaries are noble and positive. How can we prepare ourselves for the messiness? What changes should we brace ourselves for? And what unintended consequences or unforeseen pitfalls should we look out for?
SHARNA GOLDSEKER & MICHAEL MOODY
"Show Me the Impact", Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 13, 2017
Weak men, indeed, are prejudiced towards rules and systems in life and government; and think if these are gone all is gone: but a man of a great soul and free spirit delights in the noble experiment of blowing up systems and dissolving governments, to mould them anew upon other principles and in another shape.
GEORGE BERKELEY
Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher in Seven Dialogues
I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.
C. S. LEWIS
The World's Last Night
Revolutions are only a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job.
J. NEWSINGER
Orwell's Politics
Revolutions are sometimes necessary, even sometimes glorious, but only rarely successful in effecting essential permanent change. Anarchy, a culture without a government, without an established order, is never safe or productive for the general populace.
RICHARD DELONG
"Is establishment a poison pill", Chillicothe Gazette, February 12, 2016
That is how revolutions are created. You can take this to the bank. It cannot be a state where the rich mate on behalf of the poor, they eat on behalf of the poor, drink on behalf of the poor...
MBUTU KARIUKI
"Kenya: Jobless Graduates, Dropouts Living in the Ruins of Broken Dreams", All Africa, February 20, 2016
The new revolutions are signalling an end of a long era equivalent to thousands of years. They are beyond just a merry-go-round of political personalities, they will become the new politics.
JOSE MA. MONTELIBANO
"The New Revolutions", Inquirer, February 12, 2016
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, March 13, 1962
If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.
EMMA GOLDMAN
attributed, Psalms of Anarchy
Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism", What Is To Be Done?
The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.
MAO ZEDONG
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
Left and right, the sour mood of the country burns for a true political and economic rebellion. It may well happen. But look for it out on the streets, not in the hollow rituals of these elections.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"When Chivalry Fails: St. Bernard and the Machine", Counterpunch, February 5, 2016
Revolutions aren't led by well-meaning wimps. Revolutions are about seizing power. They are about righting wrongs. Revolutions demand fierce confrontation and, as Robespierre might say, sharply-administered accountability.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"When Chivalry Fails: St. Bernard and the Machine", Counterpunch, February 5, 2016
Human; Not Human
Freedom; Not Freedm
Change; No Change
Revolution!
JEAN MICHEL JARRE
"Revolution, Revolutions"
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.
EMMA GOLDMAN
My Disillusionment with Russia
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Freedom from Fear