Quotations about:
    revolution


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There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate — died of malnutrition — because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

In the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
The Grapes of Wrath, ch. 25 (1939)
 
Added on 24-Sep-15 | Last updated 24-Sep-15
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The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) Polish-Lithuanian poet, essayist, diplomat
“The Child of Europe” (1946)
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Added on 16-Sep-15 | Last updated 16-Sep-15
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Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) American abolitionist, orator, writer
Speech on West India Emancipation (4 Aug 1857)
 
Added on 10-Sep-15 | Last updated 10-Sep-15
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Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Night Watch (2002)
 
Added on 9-Sep-15 | Last updated 9-Sep-15
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I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We’re tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We’re tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We’re tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, “Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.” For ten thousand years they’ve said that. We want our Utopia now — and we’re going to try our hands at it.

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist, playwright
Main Street, ch. 16 [Carol] (1920)
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Added on 8-Sep-15 | Last updated 8-Sep-15
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Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to James C. Conkling (26 Aug 1863)
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Added on 21-Aug-15 | Last updated 21-Aug-15
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Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian and author
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945, ch. 8 (1972)
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Added on 9-Jun-15 | Last updated 9-Jun-15
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When the gap between the ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian and author
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Foreward (1978)
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Added on 2-Jun-15 | Last updated 2-Jun-15
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With hearts fortified with these animating Reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the World, declare, that, exerting the utmost Energy of those Powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the Arms we have been compelled by our Enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every Hazard, with unabating Firmness and Perseverance, employ for the preservation of our Liberties; being with one Mind resolved to die Freemen rather than to live Slaves.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms” (6 Jul 1775) [with John Dickinson]
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Final version as approved by the Continental Congress. An earlier draft by Jefferson used these terms:

We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.
 
Added on 7-Apr-15 | Last updated 4-Jul-22
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It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.

Samuel Adams (1722-1803) American revolutionary, statesman
(Spurious)

Frequently attributed to Samuel or John Adams, but not found before the 1990s. See here and here for more information.
 
Added on 23-Mar-15 | Last updated 23-Mar-15
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Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother’s Sword has been sheathed in a Brother’s breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?

George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
Letter to George William Fairfax (31 May 1775)
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Added on 18-Feb-15 | Last updated 18-Feb-15
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Man cannot live without hope. If it is not engendered by his own convictions and desires, it can easily be fired from without, and by the most meretricious and empty of promises.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
“What Has Happened to the American Dream?” Atlantic Monthly (Apr 1961)
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Added on 28-Jan-15 | Last updated 28-Jan-15
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A riot is the language of the unheard.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“The Other America,” speech, Stanford University (14 Apr 1967)
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Added on 26-Jan-15 | Last updated 18-Jan-21
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The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Rebel (1951)
 
Added on 8-Dec-14 | Last updated 8-Dec-14
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The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deiciders.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
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Added on 28-Nov-14 | Last updated 28-Nov-14
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The Russian government is an absolute monarchy tempered by assassination.

Astolphe-Louis-Léonor, Marquis de Custine (1790-1857) French aristocrat and writer
La Russie en 1839, Vol. 1 (1843)
 
Added on 27-May-14 | Last updated 27-May-14
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It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland; but something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech, Independence Hall, Philadelphia (22 Feb 1861)
 
Added on 1-Apr-14 | Last updated 1-Apr-14
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Rebels and dissidents challenge the complacent belief in a just world, and, as the theory would predict, they are usually denigrated for their efforts. While they are alive, they may be called “cantankerous,” “crazy,” “hysterical,” “uppity,” or “duped.” Dead, some of them become saints and heroes, the sterling characters of history. It’s a matter of proportion. One angry rebel is crazy, three is a conspiracy, fifty is a movement.

Carol Tavris (b. 1944) American social psychologist and author
“Anger in an Unjust World,” Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (1982)
 
Added on 11-Mar-14 | Last updated 17-Jul-16
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Traters, I will here remark, are a onfortnit class of peple. If they wasn’t, they wouldn’t be traters. They conspire to bust up a country — they fail, and they’re traters. They bust her, and they become statesmen and heroes.

[Traitors, I will here remark, are an unfortunate class of people. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be traitors. They conspire to bust up a country — they fail, and they’re traitors. They bust her, and they become statesmen and heroes.]

Artemus Ward (1834-1867) American humorist, editor, lecturer [pseud. of Charles Farrar Browne]
“The Tower of London,” The Complete Works of Atermus Ward (1898)
 
Added on 4-Mar-14 | Last updated 4-Mar-14
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I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 8 “Arrival,” sec. 5 [Yury] (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]
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Alternate translations:

I used to be very revolutionary-minded, but now I think that nothing can be gained by violence. People must be drawn to good by goodness.
[tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), UK ed.]

I used to be in a very revolutionary mood, but now I think that we'll gain nothing by violence. People must be drawn to the good by the good.
[tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky (2010)]

 
Added on 25-Feb-14 | Last updated 5-Mar-24
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But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track minds, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshipped for decades thereafter, for centuries.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 14 “Return to Varykino,” sec. 14 (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]
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Alternate translations:

But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track minds, men who are narrow-minded to the point of genius. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days; the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but for decades thereafter, for centuries, the spirit of narrowness which led to the upheaval is worshipped as holy.
[tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), UK ed., "Again Varykino"]

Revolutions are produced by men of action, one-sided fanatics, geniuses of self-limitation. In a few hours or days they overturn the old order. The upheavals last for weeks, for years at the most, and then for decades, for centuries, people bow down to the spirit of limitation that led to the upheavals as to something sacred.
[tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky (2010), "In Varykino Again"]

 
Added on 18-Feb-14 | Last updated 7-Feb-24
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CAESAR: Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Julius Caesar, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 202ff (1.2.202-205) (1599)
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See Plutarch.
 
Added on 11-Feb-14 | Last updated 29-Jan-24
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When it was told that Antony and Dolabella were in a plot against him, Caesar said he did not fear such fat, luxurious men, but rather the pale, lean fellows, meaning Cassius and Brutus.

Plutarch (AD 46-127) Greek historian, biographer, essayist [Mestrius Plutarchos]
“Caesar,” Lives [tr. Dryden (1693)]
 
Added on 4-Feb-14 | Last updated 4-Feb-14
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Nothing stands between the people’s miserable present and its glorious future, except a minority, perhaps a majority, of perverse or merely ignorant individuals. All that is necessary is to liquidate a few thousands, or it may be a few millions, of these living obstacles to progress, and then to coerce and propagandize the rest into acquiescence. When these unpleasant but necessary preliminaries are over, the governage will begin. Such is the theory that secular apocalypticism, which is the religion of the revolutionaries. But in practice, it is hardly necessary to say, the means employed positively guarantee that the end actually reached shall be profoundly different form that which the prophetic theorists envisage.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Religion and Time,” in Christopher Isherwood, ed. Vedanta for the Western World (1945)
 
Added on 14-Jan-14 | Last updated 22-Nov-21
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The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one is a criminal.

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) American psychoanalyst and social philosopher
Escape from Freedom, 7.2 (1941)
 
Added on 10-Dec-13 | Last updated 10-Dec-13
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Take the most radical revolutionist and place him upon the all-Russian throne or give him dictatorial power, for which so many of our green revolutionists daydream, and within a year he will have become worse than the Emperor himself.

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian anarchist, political theorist
Science and the Urgent Revolutionary Task (1870)
 
Added on 3-Dec-13 | Last updated 3-Dec-13
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There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Prince, ch. 6 (1513) [tr. Ricci (1903)]

Alt. trans.: "Nothing is more difficult to transact, nor more dubious to succeed, nor more dangerous to manage, than to make oneself chief to introduce new orders. Because the introducer has for enemies all those whom the old orders benefit, and has for lukewarm defenders all those who might benefit from the new orders. [tr. Codevilla]
 
Added on 24-Oct-13 | Last updated 21-Apr-17
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Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Declaration of Independence” (4 Jul 1776)
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As modified and approved by the Continental Congress. Jefferson's "original rough draft" is very similar:

Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide new guards for their future security.
 
Added on 13-Aug-13 | Last updated 4-Jul-22
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Everywhere inequality is a cause of revolution, but an inequality in which there is no proportion — for instance, a perpetual monarchy among equals; and always it is the desire of equality which rises in rebellion.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Politics [Πολιτικά], Book 5, ch. 1, sec. 11 / 1301b [tr. Jowett (1865)]
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Alternate translations:
  • "Inequality is always the occasion of sedition, but not when those who are unequal are treated in a different manner correspondent to that inequality. Thus kingly power is unequal when exercised over equals. Upon the whole, those who aim after an equality are the cause of seditions." [tr. Ellis (1912)]

  • "For party strife is everywhere due to inequality, where classes that are unequal do not receive a share of power in proportion (for a lifelong monarchy is an unequal feature when it exists among equals); for generally the motive for factious strife is the desire for equality." [tr. Rackham (1932)]

  • "Factional conflict is everywhere the result of inequality, at any rate where there is no proportion among those who are unequal (a permanent kingship is unequal if it exists among equal persons); in general, it is equality they seek when they engage in factional conflict." [tr. Lord (1984)]

  • "Faction, indeed, is everywhere due to inequality, when unequals do not receive what is proportionate (for example, a permanent kingship is unequal if it exists among equals), since people generally engage in faction in pursuit of equality." [tr. Reeve (2007)]

 
Added on 30-Jul-13 | Last updated 26-Jul-22
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Let our affection flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Man the Reformer,” lecture, Boston (1841-01-25)
 
Added on 2-Jul-13 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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People here expect a revolution. There will be no revolution, none that deserves to be called so. There may be a scramble for money. But as the people we see want the things we now have and not better things, it is very certain that they will, under whatever change of forms, keep the old system. When I see changed men, I shall look for a changed world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1848-04)

Written in London.
 
Added on 25-Jun-13 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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The animosities of sovereigns are temporary, and may be allayed; but those which seize the whole body of people, and of a people too, dictate their own measures, produce calamities of long duration.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to C. W. F. Dumas (6 May 1786)
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Added on 22-May-13 | Last updated 8-Jul-22
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Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“A Conversation Between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton,” Knight’s Quarterly Journal (Aug 1824)
 
Added on 21-Mar-13 | Last updated 15-Jan-20
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If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“The New Nationalism,” speech, Osawatomie, Kansas (31 Aug 1910)
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Added on 12-Feb-13 | Last updated 17-Sep-15
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In fact, the French — who read and theorize the most — became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That’s what happens when you take writing too seriously.

Gore Vidal (1925-2012) American novelist, dramatist, critic
“Lincoln and the Priests of Academe”, United States (1993)
 
Added on 5-Feb-13 | Last updated 28-Jan-20
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Declaration of Independence” (4 Jul 1776)
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As modified and approved by the Continental Congress. Compare to Jefferson's original draft.
 
Added on 10-Jan-13 | Last updated 4-Jul-22
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The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Strength to Love, ch. 2 “Transformed Nonconformist,” sec. 3 (1963)
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Added on 24-Jan-12 | Last updated 16-Jan-23
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What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.

Vyacheslav Plehve
Vyacheslav von Pléhve (1846-1904) Russian Tsarist security director, Interior Minister [Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve, or Pleve; Вячесла́в Константи́нович фон Пле́ве]
Comment (1903) [tr. Walder (1974)]
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Regarding the impending Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Possibly apocryphal; the comment is quoted in the memoirs of Count Sergei Witte, an opponent of Plehve, several years later (and well after Plehve's 1904 assassination). Witte recounted it as a retort by Plehve to General Alexey Nikolayevich Kuropatkin, who accused Plehve of supporting the conflict for adventurist/expansionist reasons.

Russia, though considered much stronger than Japan militarily, ended up losing the war, destabilizing the government and ironically leading to revolutions in 1905 and 1917.

Alternate translations:
  • "We need a little victorious war to stem the tide of revolution." [tr. Yarmolinsky (1921)]
  • "We need a little, victorious war to stem the revolution." [tr. Harcave (1990)]
  • "To contain the revolution, we need a short victorious war." [tr Hodson (2017)]
 
Added on 23-Mar-11 | Last updated 28-Feb-22
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Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. Unlike those anywhere else, the masses in America have never despaired of the present and are not willing to sacrifice it for a new life and a new world.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“The Negro Revolution,” The Temper of Our Time (1967)
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Frequently misquoted as "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

Originally published in the New York Times Magazine (1964-11-29).
 
Added on 14-Dec-10 | Last updated 14-Jul-23
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The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur” (1859-1885)
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Added on 7-Oct-10 | Last updated 14-Jul-15
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All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
“The Individual and the Race,” Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
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In a passage describing the cost of population growth under the Biblical commandment of "Be ye fruitful and multiply." The above is only a fraction of the sentence, which reads in full:

It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul of things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man will I require the life of man."
 
Added on 26-Jun-09 | Last updated 14-Sep-22
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And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails,
For want of a rope, to strangle kings.

[Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.]

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French editor, philosopher
Poésies Diverses, “Les Éleuthéromanes” (1875)

Alt. trans. "His hands would plait the priest’s guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings."

Derived from a statement attributed (but not confirmed) to Jean Meslier: "I would like — and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes — I would like the last of the kings to be strangled by the guts of the last priest."

Variant: "Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest."
[Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre / Serrons le cou du dernier roi.]

This version was attributed to Diderot in Jean-François de La Harpe,  Cours de Littérature Ancienne et Moderne (1840)

Sometimes paraphrased as, ""Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest," etc.
 
Added on 20-Nov-08 | Last updated 24-Jul-20
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There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces — and that cure is freedom!

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Milton,” Edinburgh Review (Aug 1825)
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Review of John Milton, A Treatise on Christian Doctrine.
 
Added on 25-Apr-08 | Last updated 16-Jan-20
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As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.

John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter to Thomas Jefferson (24 Aug 1815)
 
Added on 22-Jan-08 | Last updated 10-Jul-16
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As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at home — and we aim to get it.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
“Remarks to College Students Employed by the Government During the Summer,” speech, White House (1965-08-04)
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Added on 21-Jan-08 | Last updated 19-Jan-24
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Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our government was not a perfect government, it was a good government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths’ shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
Speech on re-election to Parliament, Edinburgh (2 Nov 1852)
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On the various revolutions and counter-revolutions in Europe in 1848.
 
Added on 10-Oct-07 | Last updated 16-Jan-20
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It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“Dissertation on the First Principles of Government” (Jul 1795)

Source essay
 
Added on 29-Aug-07 | Last updated 14-Jan-20
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We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Declaration of Independence,” original rough draft (Jun 1776)
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Compare to the final version, as modified and adopted by the Continental Congress.
 
Added on 14-Aug-07 | Last updated 4-Jul-22
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The Revolution is like Saturn — it eats its own children.

Karl Georg Büchner (1813-1837) German dramatist
Danton’s Death, Act I (1835)

Also attributed to Pierre Vergniaud, Girondin politician, speaking at the French National Assembly (16 Mar 1793): "Citizens, we now have cause to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn successively devouring his children, has finally given way to despotism and all the calamities that despotism implies."
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 5-Nov-20
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All movements go too far.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“On Being Modern-Minded,” The Nation (1937-01-09)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“Atomic Education Urged by Einstein,” New York Times (25 May 1946)

This may be the source of some otherwise unsourced Einstein quotes:

  • "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
  • "The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them."
  • "The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
  • "This problem will not be solved by the same minds that created it."
  • "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
Einstein revisited this theme in "The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men," New York Times Magazine (23 Jun 1946): "Many persons have inquired concerning a recent message of mine that 'a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.' [...] Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars."
 
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We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a feather-bed.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Lafayette (2 Apr 1790)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Jul-22
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The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
“Civil Disobedience,” The New Yorker (12 Sep 1970)
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Reprinted in Crises of the Republic (1972).
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 11-Aug-22
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The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) American abolitionist, orator, writer
Speech on West India Emancipation (4 Aug 1857)

Also cited (in part) as a letter to a colleague in 1849. More background here.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 25-Aug-15
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