quotations about revolution
Revolutions are messy--even revolutions driven by the haves versus the have-nots; even revolutions fighting for change in board rooms and institutions versus in the streets. Revolutions are messy even if the intentions of the revolutionaries are noble and positive. How can we prepare ourselves for the messiness? What changes should we brace ourselves for? And what unintended consequences or unforeseen pitfalls should we look out for?
SHARNA GOLDSEKER & MICHAEL MOODY
"Show Me the Impact", Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 13, 2017
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
MAO ZEDONG
Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan, March 1927
Revolutions aren't led by well-meaning wimps. Revolutions are about seizing power. They are about righting wrongs. Revolutions demand fierce confrontation and, as Robespierre might say, sharply-administered accountability.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
"When Chivalry Fails: St. Bernard and the Machine", Counterpunch, February 5, 2016
The new revolutions are signalling an end of a long era equivalent to thousands of years. They are beyond just a merry-go-round of political personalities, they will become the new politics.
JOSE MA. MONTELIBANO
"The New Revolutions", Inquirer, February 12, 2016
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
THOMAS PAINE
Common Sense
Failed revolutions are better than no revolutions.
RICHARD SCHECHNER
"Authorities want to inoculate people against art", Times of India, February 6, 2016
But the people did get it. They had lost something -- not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable to go on accepting these systems, these portly little idiots in their blue suits, for another year, and then for another day, another hour. That special sort of impatience is the power-surge of revolution.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"1989: how it ended", Open Democracy, November 4, 2009
Weak men, indeed, are prejudiced towards rules and systems in life and government; and think if these are gone all is gone: but a man of a great soul and free spirit delights in the noble experiment of blowing up systems and dissolving governments, to mould them anew upon other principles and in another shape.
GEORGE BERKELEY
Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher in Seven Dialogues
We live in troubled times
From the ghettos to an empty suburban home
We live in troubled times
And I'm 99 percent sure that something's wrong
It's all wrong
It's 99 revolutions tonight
GREEN DAY
"99 Revolutions"
Revolutions are not a rosy affair, no matter where. You can't cut out just one thing.
YURY FILATOV
"Allegations of Russian interference are ludicrous, says new ambassador", Irish Times, November 20, 2017
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up.
HANNAH ARENDT
"Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary", Crises of the Republic
The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.
MAO ZEDONG
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
It is far more easy to pull down, than to build up, and to destroy, than to preserve. Revolutions have on this account been falsely supposed to be fertile of great talent; as the dregs rise to the top, during a fermentation, and the lightest things are carried highest by the whirlwind. And the practice of this proposition bears out the theory; for demagogues have succeeded tolerably well in making ruins; but the moment they begin to build anew from the materials that they have overthrown, they have often been uselessly employed with regard to others, and more often dangerously with regard to themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.
WILLIAM BEVERIDGE
Social Insurance and Allied Services
I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democracy, or whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities; but, whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Adams, November 27, 1775
Revolutions are sometimes necessary, even sometimes glorious, but only rarely successful in effecting essential permanent change. Anarchy, a culture without a government, without an established order, is never safe or productive for the general populace.
RICHARD DELONG
"Is establishment a poison pill", Chillicothe Gazette, February 12, 2016
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.
EMMA GOLDMAN
My Disillusionment with Russia
The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.
C. S. LEWIS
The World's Last Night