Repression

“ Secondly, that if the environment through any of the conventional instruments of repression, such as religious orthodoxy, university mental discipline, economic inferiority, imprisonment, physical disfigurement,—such as short stature, hare-lip, etc.,—repress the full psychological expression in the field of these tendencies, then a psychic revolt, slipping into abnormal mental functioning, takes place, and society accuses the revolutionist of being either willfully inefficient, alcoholic, a syndicalist, supersensitive, an agnostic, or insane. ”

“ We should do nothing inconsistent with the spirit and genius of our institutions. We should do nothing for revenge, but everything for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and future.
There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of Repression and Expression. The one acts from without ”

“ His reaction against this repression of free action—a repression far more physical than mental—gives unnatural energy to the faculties and tends to lead into certain special channels, such as the falsity of human justice, the overpowering desire to be at liberty ”

“ The seed of revolution is repression. ”

“ All the experiences and excitements which prepare the way for, or occasion the outburst of, hysteria in the period of life after puberty evidently act through the fact that they awaken the memory remnants of those infantile traumas which do not become conscious but lead to the liberation of affect and repression. ”

“ Like the handwriting on the wall, it seems typical of misery, revolution, and death. Revolution and death, do we say? What revolution, in the common sense of the word—we mean in a political one—was ever productive of such deplorable effects, as that moral revolution to which the bottle bears the social man?—what death, viewed merely as a physical evil, can be compared to that moral and intellectual destruction to which the good fellow so often subjects himself? ”

“ The effects produced (many perhaps unavoidably) by a state of revolution—the strange remedies devised to obviate them—the alternate neglect and severity with which the laws are executed—the mixture of want and profusion that distinguish the lower classes of people—and the distress and humiliation of the higher; all offer scenes so new and unaccountable, as not to be imagined by a person who has lived only under a regular government, where the limits of authority are defined, the necessaries of life plentiful, and the people rational and subordinate. ”

“ I am with poor against rich, labour against employer, women against men; I fight beside all strikers, mutineers, and rebels.
I welcome foes; I desire criticism.
I loathe prejudice, either social or national; I repudiate all claims.
I demand freedom of action and leisure for reflection.
Facing Death, I would say: 'I have tasted all, tried all, dared all, suffered all, and I repent nothing.'
[2] Song of Revolt
Crowns are ashake,
The princes and the Kings are bending low,
And, round the world,
Before the blast of Freedom, thrones are hurled:
The People are awake! ”

“ When there crept into the world the first dull, unreasoning sense of injury,—when the underlings of humanity first began to assimilate from the common vein of intelligence that made them one with the body, a sensible desire for recognition on the ground of equality, they were promptly denied any part whatsoever in the material and spiritual accretions of generations of labor; and then was inaugurated the revolt that has been prolific through all past time, of war and misery, of violence, pillage and murder. ”

“ This Revolution has been defined, as "An open, violent rebellion and victory of unimprisoned anarchy, against corrupt worn-out authority; breaking prison, raging uncontrollable and enveloping a world in fever frenzy, until the mad forces are made to work toward their object, as sane and regulated ones." ”

“ We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. ”

“ In my ardour to attain the goal, I do not forget the nature of the ground where the race is to be run. The destruction of those institutions which I condemn, appears to me to be hastening on too rapidly. I abhor the very idea of a revolution. I am a determined enemy to every species of violence. ”

“ The Revolution exterminates royalty in the king, aristocracy in the noble, despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in the judge; in short, everything tyrannous in everything which tyrannies. ”

“ How happens it then, said PHILO, if vulgar superstition be so salutary to society, that all history abounds so much with accounts of its pernicious consequences on public affairs? Factions, civil wars, persecutions, subversions of government, oppression, slavery; these are the dismal consequences which always attend its prevalency over the minds of men. ”

“ In other countries when they perceived severity and persecution in such instances to be identical with stimulation and incitement, and saw that paying no attention was more effectual, they abated the fire of revolution. ”

“ The Reformation, the Revolution, the social anarchy of to-day are the direct offspring of a licentious Press. Permit a nation's mind to be poisoned, and that nation's heart must rot. Nihil volitum nisi cognitum. ”

“ But with a people who have once tasted the sweets of liberty, this kind of tranquillity is short. Maddened by wrongs, real or supposed, they are soon prepared again to rush into the death-dance of revolution. ”

“ It is unnecessary to multiply examples; from the earliest history of our race to the present generation, similar impulses have prevailed and have been followed by similar actions. Dissatisfaction with existing conditions has encouraged the spirit of rebellion; oppression has been followed by revolt; the employment of force in the support of injustice has been followed by force in the maintenance of justice. Everywhere appears the spirit of discontent with existing conditions, and constant effort for their improvement. ”

“ It is a dream of revolt—the revolt of the ‘joy of life’ against the gloom of hidebound, conventional morality, the revolt of the natural man and woman, the revolt of the individual against the oppression of social prejudice. ”

“ Then the people, as if inspired and guided by some soul-inspiring force outside their enslaved bodies, had risen in rebellion all over the world, thrown off their shackles, and annihilated their masters. ”

“ Otherwise, after the lapse of a certain time, the goddess of revolution will force an entrance into our social structure, amid all the convulsions of violence, with wild, streaming locks and brazen sandals on her feet. ”

“ In this recurrence to the past, and estimation of the present, however we may regret the persecution of wealth, the destruction of commerce, and the general oppression, the most important and irretrievable mischief of the revolution is, doubtless, the corruption of manners introduced among the middle and lower classes of the people. ”

“ Then leaps the sword of revolution from its scabbard, and a passage to reformation is hewn out through blood. But how blest is our condition, that such a resort can never be needed! 'Peace on earth, and good will among men,' are the natural fruits of our political system. ”

“ That is why a rebellion accomplished by individuals, without much idea of social reconstruction, comes much nearer being a vital action, it seems to me, than a revolution made by allied conspirators, of an organization with a well defined theory of communal happiness. ”

“ Thus, all the purposes for which this general demoralization was promoted, being at length attained, those who were rich having been pillaged, those who were feared massacred, and a croud of needy and desperate adventurers attached to the fate of the revolution, the expediency of a reform has lately been suggested. ”

“ Where could oppression hide itself? Where could the lusts of the flesh plot their treason against the sovereignty of the spirit, beyond the range of spirit vigilance—this new safeguard of human society, the eternal law of progress, which is now unfolding? ”

“ In these the Revolution is not only shown as having a character, a profile, but also is revealed as being a living thing, a vivid many-sided creature, betraying its character in a host of unexpected ways, flashing out in a thousand fresh surprises, in a multiplicity of manifestations. ”

“ So revolt followed cruelty and oppression. Great excesses were committed by both parties, and most horrible barbarities were exhibited. The atrocious nature of civil war is ever the same, and presents nearly the same undeviating picture of misery and crime. ”

“ They came, as in times of great social unrest they always come, in the form of wild theories and passionate claims, none of which was quite without a basis of reason, but which, taken together, called up a ghastly spectre that could bear no other name than Revolution. ”

“ Tyranny, conquest, militarism, lawlessness, mobmindedness, riot, persecution, oppression, rebellion—these are the words that describe the long-continued panorama of unsuccessful efforts and experimental failures in government for approximately seven thousand years. ”

“ All the world, as it seems, flying off to France, that land of deep corruption and wickedness, made hotter in sin by this long and dreadful Revolution. The very curates in our neighbourhood have been. ”

“ The term people was regarded as disgraceful and humiliating. "The nation," he wrote on this occasion, "is not ripe; the folly and frightful disorder of the government have forced the revolution as in a hotbed; it has outgrown our aptitude and knowledge. ”

“ It was the era of uncontroverted despotism, which, with sacrilegious arrogance, claimed the title of divine rank; and mankind advanced slowly in progress, because it was not conscious of its own aim. Oppression was taken for a gloomy fatality. ”

“ The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. ”

“ But the fever of the Revolution burned in her veins, the thirst for action consumed her, and, having once taken her share in that stimulating, all-absorbing centre of political action, she bitterly lamented sinking back into the nothingness of provincial life, and never again found repose in the green fields and shady thickets once so dear to her. ”

“ Through disgust and reaction, a revolution was at hand in literary feeling and moral habits, as well as in general beliefs and political institutions. Man was to change altogether, and to turn completely round at once. The same repugnance and the same experience were to detach him from every aspect of his old condition. ”

“ Disorder and treachery periodically arises, dictator succeeds dictator, revolution follows revolution, and the country's soil, whether in the streets of its capital, whether upon its desert plains or in its tropic valleys, is drenched with the blood of its own sons. ”

“ These passed away; but the present commotion and impending revolution and anarchy will not cease, but will spread and increase until this order of things is destroyed.
7:10. Behold the Day, behold it is come: the Morning is gone forth; the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded.—“Pride goeth before destruction.” (Prov. 16:18.) Human pride [among kaisers, clergy, labor leaders, and capitalists] , has budded, blossomed forth into acts that will bring destruction. The rod is a symbol of authority. ”

“ Here was no prodigy, no fabulous hero, no Trojan horse, no bloody war, but all was achieved by plain means of plain men, working not under a leader, but under a sentiment. Other revolutions have been the insurrection of the oppressed; this was the repentance of the tyrant. It was the masters revolting from their mastery. The slave-holder said, ‘I will not hold slaves.’ The end was noble and the means were pure. ”

“ Risen against the conceit of riches, and the hypocrisies of Society, against unimpassioned and unimaginative religion, against ignoble success and the complacent economics that hewed mankind into statistics to fit their abstractions—one and all, in spite of their variety or mutual hostility, they were rebels, and their personality expressed itself in rebellion. ”

“ In both lie dangers, difficulties, and troubles, which no human foresight can foreshadow or perceive; but they are not equal in magnitude. One is beset with humiliation, dishonor, emeutes, rebellion,—with submission in the beginning to all, and at all times, and confiscation and slavery in the end. ”

“ But since we cannot find in our Hearts One single Spot of Rebellion and Treason, or that we have in any manner aimed at the Subversion of the Settl’d Government, or attempting the Person of any, either Magistrate or Private Man,—notwithstanding the several Reproaches and Threats of some who for sinister Ends were disaffected to Us, and censure our Just and Honest Designs,—Let Truth be bold and all the World Know the Real Foundation of our Pretended Guilt. ”

“ On the other side, little less severity could be expected from a brave and highspirited people not softened by the highest refinements of civilization, warmed by the impulse of retaliation, driven almost to despair and under every painful apprehension for their lies, their property, their liberty and their country. ”

“ As there are times of sorrow or of peril which try men’s souls and lay bare the inner secrets of their characters, so there are times of revolution which act as fire in burning away all but the basic elements of constitutions. ”

“ It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. ”