Sunday, March 27, 2011 – You Say You Want a Revolution
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. ~ G. K. Chesterton
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. ~ George Orwell
Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. ~ Ambrose Bierce
A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal. ~ Daniel Berrigan
A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. ~ Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. ~ Abbie Hoffman
Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. ~ Germaine Greer
A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering. ~ Tom Stoppard
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. ~ Havelock Ellis
Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion. ~ Albert Camus
Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly. ~ Albert Camus
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. ~ Henry Ford
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. ~ Franz Kafka
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims. ~ Joseph Conrad
We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution. ~ Eric Hoffer
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth. ~ Raoul Vaneigem
Revolution is not a goal in itself. ~ Ernest Mandel
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business. ~ Ludwig von Mises
We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution. ~ Samuel P. Huntington
And if there’s any hope for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there’s any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara. ~ Phil Ochs
There are not fifty ways of fighting, there’s only one, and that’s to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases. ~ Andre Malraux
If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution. ~ Emma Goldman
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin
This is a revolution, damn it! We’re going to have to offend somebody! ~ Peter Stone
Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull. ~ Wyndham Lewis
Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place. ~ Ignazio Silone
The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible. ~ Toni Cade Bambara
With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution. ~ Kate Millett
Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives. ~ Italo Calvino
Do you think then that revolutions are made with rose water? [Voulez-vous donc qu’on vous fasse des revolutions a l’eau-rose?] ~ Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort
The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it. ~ Francois la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (to Louis XVI on July 14, 1789)
Revolutionary moments attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.” ~ George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her. ~ Oscar Wilde
The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution. ~ Paul Cezanne
Just Above Sunset 