Revolutionary

“ A truly revolutionary movement, one which is founded on a really new principle of thought, has never failed, at least in the long run, as any one who thinks deeply may, to his comfort, prove to himself from history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No, the revolutionary ideal is the negation of all trammels, change for the sake of change, a constant bubbling of the social caldron, so that no unit may remain long at the top, or long at the bottom, or long anywhere. ”

“ “I mean, you can’t be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you? Didn’t we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn’t have to?” ”

“ The revolutionary character of this period, then, pertains principally to the rapid movement of public opinion, and its action upon and through the Government. It finds its parallel in nearly every revolutionary event of modern times. A dominant power, the slaveholding aristocracy, long submitted to, attempts a glaring encroachment upon the rights of the most active and progressive element of society. The popular mind gradually rises to a clear perception and appreciation of the true nature of the conflict. ”

“ Because the revolutionists shall have justly made you desolate and overrun you in every direction, so that you might be ruled over by pagan, fleshly-minded, infidel, revolutionary rulers, and because you shall be the subject of flippant discussion among the revolutionaries, and through your fall become infamous among all the heathen peoples of the world, in Europe, America and elsewhere.—Lam. ”

“ But this fact is not itself more peculiar than the fact that the main proponents of revolutionary theory are rulers, or the fact that the seizure of State power is the goal of revolutionary organizations, or the fact that leaders, officials, armies and States are revolutionary. ”

“ From about the beginning of the second phase of the revolutionary movement, the literature of the times begins to reflect in the most extraordinary manner a wholly new spirit of radical protest against the injustices of the social order. Not only in the serious journals and books of public discussion, but in fiction and in belles-lettres, the subject of social reform becomes prominent and almost commanding. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To know how to distinguish the agitation arising from covetousness, from the agitation arising from principles, to fight the one and aid the other, in this lies the genius and the power of great revolutionary leaders. ”

“ It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.— Such ought to be the revolutionary power. ”

“ The Revolution has come and destroyed scores of superstitions, and has manifested the power of the program which is founded on the revolutionary logic of the development of the masses.
The Revolution has come, and the period of our political infancy has passed. ”

“ Owing to the absence of political privilege and the comparative uniformity of social conditions, we do not as yet see any party, of sufficient importance to be taken into account, to which the term revolutionary could be applied. ”

“ According to the theory of class consciousness, individuals or social classes are revolutionary if they adhere to revolutionary ideas, to revolutionary thought, to revolutionary ideology, to the program of the revolutionary organization. ”

“ The leaven of revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the whole lump in France, was still working quietly and less passionately in this country, and being less repressed, displayed itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the form of a strong and brilliant opposition. ”

“ People born into a rapidly changing society are often tempted and sometimes compelled to play significant roles in the revolutionary process. Unconsciously or consciously, unwilling and unwitting or deliberately and purposefully they are revolutionaries. ”

“ I have had occasion often to point out that revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them. ”

“ Here, indeed, we arrive at the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty five years of independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of: 1) the essence of government itself; 2) the essence of human nature; 3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture. ”

“ That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. ”

“ But revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government. ”

“ The narrower his experience of men and affairs, the wider his flights of fancy; and revolutionary principles commonly find their most fruitful soil among hand-workers of sedentary occupation and straitened circumstances. ”

“ In practice the democratic ‘revolutionary’ type of discipline is more reliable than might be expected. ”

“ Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings. ”

“ From the standpoint of revolutionary leaders who today face the possibility of failure, it is critical to reexamine these key assumptions of the classical theory of revolution, because it is this theory and only this theory that educates the vanguard of the proletariat and makes it capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. ”

“ Let me announced with all the strength at my command, that I am not a terrorist and I never was, expected perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through those methods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness — on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; ”

“ Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them. ”

“ In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere bawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the Government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water. ”

“ He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, from the face of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Then came the Revolution, an event so great that I cannot hope to give the faintest, smallest image of it in this tiny frame. A world perished, and rose anew from its ashes, purified of many abuses, deprived of some valuable relics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This year incarnates the revolution. The revolution has an enemy, the old world, and to that it is pitiless, just as the surgeon has an enemy, gangrene, and is pitiless to that. The revolution extirpates kingship in the king, aristocracy in the noble, despotism in the soldier, superstition in the priest, barbarity in the judge, in a word whatever is tyranny in whatever is tyrant. The operation is frightful, the revolution performs it with a sure hand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where rumbled that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God; a strange majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai.
As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolution—what? The revolution. It—that barricade, chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown—had facing it the Constituent Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic; and it was the Carmagnole bidding defiance to the Marseillaise. ”