Revolution

“ 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. ”

“ Civil war, again, is distinguished from revolution, and we distinguish between revolution from above and revolution from below. Reaction is a form of revolution, for reaction is the counter-revolution. ”

“ The official orators of the Sesquicentennial will portray the revolutionary fathers as demigods, the revolution as a glorious vindication of the eternal rights of man, the institutions created as classless and eternal and unimprovable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In silence, in darkness, but under the feet of each one of us, the revolution lives and works. It’s a wonderful, immeasurable trap, on the lid of which society performs its antics. When once the machinery is complete there will be a great rehearsal. ”

“ "THE times that tried men's souls,"* are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. ”

“ Since a revolution implies a change in the ideas of the masses and not of a minority, be this of the elect or merely of turbulent spirits, revolutions are rare occurrences in history and their effects are lasting. ”

“ So great a change of condition would have involved a thorough and radical revolution, both socially and politically — a revolution much more radical, indeed, than that which followed the Declaration of Independence. ”

“ Revolution by the initiative of the masses is revolution by the concert of citizens, by the experience of workers, for progress and the dissemination of knowledge, revolution for liberty. Condorcet, Turgot, Robespierre, sought revolution from below, true democracy. ”

“ The only thing that is legitimate, now, and holy, and sacred, is the Revolution. By this article, the government was declared revolutionary; power put under the feet of the people; authority subordinated, not to its own principles, but to the judgment of opinion. ”

“ There is a wide diversity in social situations, from rock-ribbed stability, to entire communities teetering on the brink or plunging over the brink into the maelstrom of revolution. Such diverse situations have existed again and again during the 1750-1970 revolutionary epoch. 4. When a revolutionary situation develops, a revolutionary leader well-established in a community trembling on the brink of a revolutionary overturn may seize the reins of power and establish a regime founded on opposition principles, dedicated to another set of principles and practices. ”

“ Revolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. ”

“ The revolution, I feel convinced, will spread from these shores, and effect, more or less, every part of Europe. You will everywhere see your chosen society changing around you, and increasing its distance from your sympathies. ”

“ The supreme condition for the seizure of State power by a revolutionary organization - a condition which has come to be regarded as self evident, as a sine qua non is a revolutionary situation, a revolution. ”

“ Just so does a revolution, or any great civic precedent, become a deflecting influence, whose operations widen with the course of time. Communities obey their ideals; and an accidental success fixes an ideal, as an accidental failure blights it. ”

“ Now and now only, after half a century of revolutions, engrossing one after another our whole attention, now and now only after five complete changes in the form and the tendencies of our government, does the revolution just begin to show itself in our way of living. ”

“ It was here that I proposed, for the first time, and in an affirmative manner, to carry out the Revolution from below, by making an appeal to the reason and to the interest of each citizen, and by demanding of power only the notoriety and the impulse which it alone, today, is capable of giving to an idea. ”

“ The revolution then of the great year of the world is that space of time in which, through the most diverse customs and effects, and by the most opposite and contrary means, it returns to the same again. ”

“ Consider that those immortal characters, who first planned the event of the revolution, and with arms in their hands stepped forth in the glorious cause of human nature, have now devised a plan for supporting your freedom, and increasing your strength, your power and happiness. ”

“ If you wish to understand what revolution is, call it progress; and if you wish to understand what progress is, call it to-morrow. ”

“ Casting a glance around the world, the Civiltá showed that everywhere what it calls the revolution, what we call representative government, was becoming ruinous, and the old Catholic ideal of government regaining its place in the mind of the thoughtful. ”

“ But you say we are revolutionists. Well, if we are, who made us such? Are not the labor exploiters, the monopolists, the mine, factory and workshop czars creating a revolution? They are the revolutionists. ”

“ Little remains for it but to wail as it passes into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic. The fight is on. The revolution is here now, and it is the world’s workers that are in revolt. ”

“ You are counselling revolution, some may say. Revolution indeed! O, my fellow-citizens, blood has been flowing, not in battle-fields, but from the backs of our enslaved countrymen ever since 1776, and is flowing now. ”

“ These are the parts of the Revolution which the politicians of whom we speak, love to contemplate, and which seem to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the good which it has produced. ”

“ What is the object of Revolution? Surely to make people happy. Revolution having brought its foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counter-revolution from setting in except by making people happy? ”

“ And we will defend ourselves with our own right arm; and if in the heat of strife we shall spill blood, or rend asunder the Realm—of a surety this is not 'Disunion or civil war,' but it is that which is called glorious revolution. ”

“ You must not fail to bear in mind that the great Revolution, as it came in America, was not a revolution at all in the political sense in which all former revolutions in the popular interest had been. ”

“ Ah well, the revolution—I refer of course to the intelligent revolution—is on the way; is perhaps nearer than some think, is possibly knocking at the front doors of The Great Mister Harold Bell Wright and The Great Little Miss Pollyanna. ”

“ To them the vague reports and swelling waves of the Revolution, which each day gained ground, brought neither fear nor apprehension; they little dreamed that the violence of political strife could ever reach their quiet valleys. ”

“ The intensity and the direction of the social changes which radiate out from the climax of a revolutionary situation and the consequent, subsequent attempts at counter-revolution, are the outcome of active, purposive intervention by all of the social groups present at the center of revolutionary activity. ”

“ The aim of the Revolution was to abolish privileges and establish rights,— to give every man lot and part in shaping the government under which he lives. These republican ideas and principles have, on the whole, notwithstanding repeated reverses, gained ground; for revolutions never move backward. ”

“ The Revolution represents the conflict of psychological forces liberated from the bonds whose function it is to restrain them. Popular instincts, Jacobin beliefs, ancestral influences, appetites, and passions unloosed, all these various influences engaged in a furious mutual conflict for the space of ten years, during which time they soaked France in blood and covered the land with ruins. ”

“ But I meant all those, who fully understanding and appreciating the tendency of the revolution in which we are engaged, intend to aid and sustain you honestly in the execution of the tremendous task which has fallen to your lot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those of us who have craved unsuccessfully for permission to do what the Maker of us all has fitted us to do alone understand how revolutions are generated. Talk about the atrocities of the Revolution! ”

“ According to our definition of the term, as stated in our statement in the Assembly Bomb Case, revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order. ”

“ The Revolution is the accession of the people, and at bottom the people is man. ”

“ You see, as we look back upon the Revolution, one of its most impressive features seems to be the vast magnanimity of the people at the moment of their complete triumph in according a free quittance to their former oppressors. ”

“ They have accordingly tried to describe a revolution in which all scholarly, refined and conservative persons might have unhesitatingly taken part; but such revolutions have never been known to happen. ”

“ Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. ”

“ For, you must know that revolution means action. It means a change brought about deliberately by an organized and systematic work, as opposed to sudden and unorganised or spontaneous change or breakdown. ”

“ For, with the fall of the ancient governments which rested like an incubus upon the people of the central empires, has come political change not merely, but revolution; and revolution which seems as yet to assume no final and ordered form. ”

“ Any country could have a Revolution—every country had had one. A Restoration was merely what a revolution involved, and the Empire had been for the French but a revolutionary incident, in addition to being by good luck for the novelist an immensely pictorial one. ”

“ For a very long time the Revolution appeared to be essentially a succession of glorious wars, which a people famished for liberty and carried away by the noblest passions had maintained against a coalition of all the powers of oppression and error. ”

“ But farther, what could be more consistent with the whiggish notion of a revolution principle, than to bring in the pretender? A revolution principle, as their writings and dscourses have taught us to define it, is a principle perpetually disposing men to revolutions; and this is suitable to the famous saying of a great whig, that the more revolutions the better; which, how odd a maxim soever in appearance, I take to be the true characteristick of the party. ”