Revolution

"The wind of revolutions is not tractable."

"Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow."

"One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth."

"History does not relate any true revolution which came from power. All began with education and meant in essence a moral summons."

"Revolutionary change means the seizure of all that is held by the 1 percent, and the transference of these holdings into the hands of the remaining 99 percent. If the 1 percent are simply replaced by another 1 percent, revolutionary change has not taken place."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

"If this avenue [of democratic political revolution] be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation."

"The last will be first, and the first will be last."

"For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

"Proti proudu nemožná plavati."

"Revolution always unforlds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations."

"Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass."

"The warrior generations to which the remilitarisations gave birth in Algeria, China, Vietnam, and what was once Yugoslavia, are growing old today. The revolutions for which they and millions of unwilling participants paid such a terrible price in blood and anguish have withered at the roots. South Vietnam, the prize of Ho Chi Minh’s long war, has refused to abandon its capitalist habits. The Chinese greybeards of the Long March have preserved the authority of the party only by conceding economic freedoms wholly at variance with Marxist doctrine. In Algeria a sprawling population looks for a solution to economic hardship either in Islamic fundamentalism or in emigration to the richer world on the other side of the Mediterranean. The peoples of former Yugoslavia whom Tito sought to unite by bloodying their lands in a common struggle against the Axis now bloody their hands against each other in a struggle reminiscent of nothing so much as the ‘territorial displacement’ anthropologists identify as the underlying logic of much ‘primitive’ warfare in tribal society. In the borderlands of the dissolved Soviet Union, from which the revolutionaries took their inspiration, a similar pattern discloses itself, as newly independent ‘minorities’ use their freedom from Russian control to revive ancient tribal hatreds and to re-fight wars, sometimes within rather than between tribes, which to outsiders appears to have no political point whatsoever."

"The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free."

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

"A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all."

"A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability."

"A Revolution is nothing other than the replacement of one given type of Authority with another."

"The spirit of rebellion is a spirit of desperation-a desperate rejection of whatever exists, a desperate aspiration toward some kind of utopia. ...It is governed by a blind momentum... and its so-called leaders are... its captives, and ultimately its victims. ...The so-called "betrayal" is... the necessary conclusion... [I]ts impossible intentions are unrealizable... [T]he end result is... a regime which pretends to embody these intentions and... enforces such false pretentions by terror. A revolution... is a... practical exercise in political philosophy. ...It requires an attentive prudence, a careful calculation of means and ends, a spirit of sobriety... [A] successful revolution cannot be governed by the spirit of the mob. ...[I]f ...revolution is not to degenerate into a rebellion, mob actions must be marginal... [O]nly a self-disciplined people can... undertake... a revolution. ...[A] successful revolution is best accomplished by a people who do not really want it at all, but find themselves reluctantly making it."

"You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere."

"Ce n'est pas une révolte, c'est une révolution."

"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

"Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect. We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable. We know what it is to be lied to. The 60s should teach us how important it is not to lie to ourselves. Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event, or something that happens around us rather than inside of us. Not to believe that freedom can belong to any one group of us without the others also being free. How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to ourselves, or to define our sources of power to us."

"Men do not lead the revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men."

"Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

"Revolution entails evolution."

"Revolution der Frische."

"Drive The Revolution."

"Wir haben nicht die Revolution, die Revolution hat uns gemacht."

"Wenn die Untertanen aus Prinzip rebellieren, wird die Politik der Könige tyrannisch."

"Von oben herab muss reformiert werden, wenn nicht von unten hinauf revolutioniert werden soll."

"Vielleicht werden Frauen in der Revolution unserer Gesellschaft eine so tragende Rolle spielen, wie die Geschichte zuvor kein Beispiel kennt."

"Selbst im Fall einer Revolution würden die Deutschen sich nur Steuerfreiheit, nie Gedankenfreiheit erkämpfen."

"Revolution? Der Besitz wechselt die Taschen."

"Natürlich wollen wir grundlegende Veränderungen. Wenn das Revolution ist, dann bin ich ein Revolutionär. Selbst Jesus war das, er wollte Güte, Gerechtigkeit und Vergebung."

"Mögen die herrschenden Klassen vor einer kommunistischen Revolution zittern. Die Proletarier haben nichts in ihr zu verlieren als ihre Ketten. Sie haben eine Welt zu gewinnen. Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!"

"Keine Revolution und kein Krieg kann uns retten, sondern nur ein neues Bewußtsein."

"Jede Revolution ist viel weniger Bauplatz der Zukunft als Auktion der Vergangenheit."

""Eure „Ordnung” ist auf Sand gebaut. Die Revolution wird sich morgen schon „rasselnd wieder in die Höh' richten” und zu eurem Schrecken mit Posaunenklang verkünden: ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein!" – Rosa Luxemburg, Die Ordnung herrscht in Berlin, letzter Abschnitt. In: Die Rote Fahne, Nr. 14"

"Es lohnt sich in jeder Hinsicht, das, was von Jesus Christus im menschlichen Leben ausgelöst wird, als eine Revolution zu sehen, mit der sich keine andere Bewegung der Geschichte vergleichen oder messen kann."

"Es kann keine Revolution ohne radikale Veränderungen im Erziehungswesen geben."

"Es is so ein beruhjendes Jefiehl. Man tut wat for de Revolutzjon, aber man weeß janz jenau: mit diese Pachtei kommt se nich."

"Es gibt Revolutionen, die machen die Welt komplizierter, und es gibt Revolutionen, die machen die Welt einfacher. Und des gibt Revolutionen, die machen die Welt auf komplizierte Art einfacher. Dazu gehört das Telefon."

"Eine Revolution ist gewiß das autoritärste Ding, das es gibt; sie ist der Akt, durch den ein Teil der Bevölkerung dem anderen Teil seinen Willen vermittels Gewehren, Bajonetten und Kanonen, also mit denkbar autoritärsten Mitteln aufzwingt; und die siegreiche Partei muß, wenn sie nicht umsonst gekämpft haben will, dieser Herrschaft Dauer verleihen durch den Schrecken, den ihre Waffen den Reaktionären einflößen."

"Ein Nihilist ist ein Mensch, der sich vor keiner Autorität beugt, keinen Grundsatz anerkennt, und sollte derselbe auch noch so verbreitet sein."

"Ein neuer geistiger Stil ist nur nach einer Revolution möglich, die abgeänderte soziale Tatsachen schafft und andere menschliche Typen hervorbrachte."

""Diese Revolution wird sich erst dann vollziehen, wenn sämtliche Frauen von ihrem beklagenswerten Los durchdrungen und sich des Verlustes ihrer Rechte in dieser Gesellschaft bewußt sind."

"[...] die Revolution ist wie Saturn, sie frißt ihre eigenen Kinder."

"Die Revolution ist die Notwehr des Volkes, das in seinen heiligsten Rechten gekränkt ist."