Revolution Quotes

If it's necessary to form a Black Nationalist army, we'll form a Black Nationalist army. It'll be ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.

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.

If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.

In a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people. Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country alarmed at one common danger came forth to meet it.

Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English.

I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution - but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time as come.

The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

How do you expect the Germans to revolt when they don't even dare walk on the grass?

In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.

yeah me see myself as a revolutionary, would wouldn't want no help and imma take no bribe from no one and fight it single handed with music

There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order.

In revolution there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them.

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Washington is dead! This great man fought against Tyranny; he established the liberty of his country. His memory will always be dear to the French people, as it will be to all free men of the two worlds; and especially to French soldiers, who, like him and the American soldiers, have combated for liberty and equality.

With the exception of capitalism, there is nothing so revolting as revolution.

I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution.

To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected

Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part.

We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

Revolution means democracy in today's world, not the enslavement of peoples to the corrupt and degrading horrors of totalitarianism

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.

A revolutionist is one who desires to discard the existing social order and try another.

Revolutionary war is an antitoxin which not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.

The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class.

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.

Revolutions are like the most noxious dungheaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables.

The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to see that in revolutionary times vital issues are settled not by statutes, decrees and authorities, but in spite if them.

In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"... On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.

Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.

Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something, it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

By revolution we become more ourselves, not less.

The arrow of Marxist-Leninism must be used to hit the target of the Chinese Revolution.

War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is.Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.

One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions

Variety made the Revolution. Liberty was just a pretext.

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

At certain times in the revolutionary struggle, the difficulties outweigh the favorable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction and the favorable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favorable new situation, thus a difficult situation yields place to a favorable one.

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.

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.

America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.

Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society.

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created immediately.

Well I am always interested my people's right. But I will push myself to a revolution without arms.

It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.