REVOLUTION QUOTES VI

quotations about revolution


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In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea.

GAO XINGJIAN
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Cold Literature", The Case for Literature


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Tags: Gao Xingjian


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

Tags: C. S. Lewis


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


Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up.

HANNAH ARENDT

"Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary", Crises of the Republic

Tags: Hannah Arendt


That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

Tags: William Hazlitt


Revolutions are never pleasant or pretty. Dismantling a power structure is like dismantling a bomb. Embarrassment and confusion fill the air.

RAVIT HECHT

"There Are No Pretty Revolutions", Haaretz, November 10, 2017


The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.

MAXIM GORKY

Untimely Thoughts

Tags: Maxim Gorky


If we behave like those on the other side, then we are the other side. Instead of changing the world, all we'll achieve is a reflection of the one we want to destroy.

JEAN GENET

The Balcony

Tags: Jean Genet


The history of the human race always has been, and most likely always will be, that of evolution and revolution.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

NORMAN MAILER

Barbary Shore

Tags: Norman Mailer


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

Tags: John F. Kennedy


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

Tags: Aung San Suu Kyi


It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws. But when it comes it moves irresistibly.

VLADIMIR LENIN

speech at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow, August 23, 1918

Tags: Vladimir Lenin


First, what is a revolution? Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word "revolution" loosely, without taking careful consideration [of] what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. When you study the historic nature of revolutions, the motive of a revolution, the objective of a revolution, and the result of a revolution, and the methods used in a revolution, you may change words. You may devise another program. You may change your goal and you may change your mind.

MALCOLM X

Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963


Revolution requires extensive and widespread destruction, a fecund and renovating destruction, since in this way and only this way are new worlds born.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

"Statism and Anarchy"

Tags: Mikhail Bakunin


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


So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

It Can't Happen Here

Tags: Sinclair Lewis


Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"The Great Day", Last Poems

Tags: William Butler Yeats