REVOLUTION QUOTES V

quotations about revolution

But the people did get it. They had lost something -- not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable to go on accepting these systems, these portly little idiots in their blue suits, for another year, and then for another day, another hour. That special sort of impatience is the power-surge of revolution.

NEAL ASCHERSON

"1989: how it ended", Open Democracy, November 4, 2009

Tags: Neil Ascherson


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

Tags: John Gardner


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


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

Tags: George Berkeley


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


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


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


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

Tags: Charles Bukowski


If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.

EMMA GOLDMAN

attributed, Psalms of Anarchy

Tags: Emma Goldman


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


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


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


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


If we would trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes and all princes from slaves: But fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy, in a long story of revolutions.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


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


Human; Not Human
Freedom; Not Freedm
Change; No Change
Revolution!

JEAN MICHEL JARRE

"Revolution, Revolutions"


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


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


There's no justice in revolutions, whose spoils are divided up by the Fates over the dead bodies of the freedom fighters who held out until the final hour.

AHLEM MOSTEGHANEMI

The Dust of Promises


Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism", What Is To Be Done?

Tags: Vladimir Lenin