Revolution Quotes

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We have a president who apparently loves instability and revolution, and that is the antithesis [pointing at blackboard] of those two words, "Social Security".

It is equally obvious and it became clear... that no ruler can legislate a social revolution. He can implement the outward form of social change, but he cannot legislate change in the minds of the people. Stable and lasting change has to evolve slowly and gradually over a period of many generations. What signaled the beginning of the end... was the radical modernization program, which virtually affected every aspect of Iranian life... [including] the sweeping emancipation of women, which moved as it were 13 centuries in the course of three decades.

The July Revolution took place; with one bound I became a revolutionist, and acquired the conviction that every decently active being ought to occupy himself with politics exclusively. I was only happy in the company of political writers, and I commenced an Overture upon a political theme. Thus was I minded, when I left school and went to the university: not, indeed, to devote myself to studying for any profession — for my musical career was now resolved on — but to attend lectures on philosophy and aesthetics. By this opportunity of improving my mind I profited as good as nothing, but gave myself up to all the excesses of student life; and that with such reckless levity, that they very soon revolted me.

If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution.

Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Hitler and others promised that as soon as the National Socialist revolution had removed Jewry, economic exploitation would be overcome and a socially just utopia would be nigh.

I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.

Stephen Jay Gould

Unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family — the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled — the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated.

Shulamith Firestone

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

Buddhism … is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.

The experience of the irrationality of the world has been the driving force of all religious revolution.

Our Constitution has raised certain barriers against too hasty change. I believe such provision is wise. I doubt if there has been any change that has ever really been desired by the people which they have not been able to secure. Stability of government is a very important asset. If amendment be made easy, both revolution and reaction, as well as orderly progress, also become easy. The nation has lost little, but has gained much, through the necessity of due deliberation. The pressing need of the present day is not to change our constitutional rights, but to observe our constitutional rights.

Calvin Coolidge

Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element in the world which continually destroys and recreates.

Charles Dudley Warner

In Venezuela, nobody dares to mount a coup d'etat. Here, the people defend the revolution, democracy, sovereignty and the constitution.

Nicolás Maduro

Revolution is the most dramatic appearance of a conscious people.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?

Never was any such event [the French Revolution], stemming from factors so far back in the past, so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.

Alexis de Tocqueville

I take this opportunity to reiterate my thanks and my appreciation to my dear Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi, Leader of the Libyan revolution, for his honourable initiative that our people have received with great satisfaction and of facilitating the movement and activities of Tunisian Libya sister and treat them just like the Libyans. This confirms a sincere brotherhood and the strong support we have always received from him and to the brotherly Libyan people.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.

Nicolae Ceaușescu

The social revolution has been slow in reaching our country. We have been exempt, not because we had solved the problems, but because we had not yet confronted them.

Walter Rauschenbusch

We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.

Heinrich Himmler

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming.

Abraham Polonsky

In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises.