Revolutionist

“ But if be seeks to pervert these principles, or to change this character, be is a Revolutionist, whether his schemes are designed to be perfected by the arts of persuasion, the strong hand of force, or by any other means. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Excepting only, perhaps, military schools, none were good in France at this period; the thunders of the Revolution still roared over the land, the Revolutionists covered the earth with the blood of man, woman, and child. ”

“ For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist. ”

“ I know well enough that revolutionists in neutral countries are writing and proclaiming the ideas of the old International of the workers, protesting against this stand of which I write, and are dreaming of revolution after the war. ”

“ EVERYTHING BREATHES THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT.
You, gentlemen, are the revolutionists! You rebel against the effects of social conditions which have tossed you, by the fair hand of Fortune, into a magnificent paradise. Without inquiring, you imagine that no one else has a right in that place. You insist that you are the chosen ones, the sole proprietors. The forces that tossed you into the paradise, the industrial forces, are still at work. They are growing more active and intense from day to day. ”

“ The revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive. They offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom - the things that sting awake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts with the fervor that arises out of the impulse toward good and which is essentially religious in its nature. ”

“ The fanaticism of the French revolutionists had reached its height; the excitable population, intoxicated with power, and maddened by the vague dread of the retribution of despair, goaded on by profligate, ferocious, or insane leaders, was plunging into the most revolting and sanguinary excesses. ”

“ The recent revolution in France, the democratic spirit rising in Europe, tend to throw back the cause of a proscribed rebel. England swarms with revolutionists; my cousin’s residence in this country is in itself suspicious. ”

“ He has said there are a million and a half of revolutionists in the United States. That is a fact. He has said that it is their intention to take away from us our governments, our palaces, and all our purpled ease. That, also, is a fact. A change, a great change, is coming in society ”

“ For this reason the places of slain and imprisoned Revolutionists [7] are constantly taken by individuals who come forth from among the people in ever-increasing numbers, and who are still more embittered, still more energetic. ”

“ We must urge these on and draw them incessantly into practical and perilous manifestations, which will result in making the majority of them disappear, while making some of them genuine revolutionists. ”

“ If it be a fact that men of revolutionary aims in politics or religion, are commonly revolutionists in custom also, it is not less a fact that those whose office it is to uphold established arrangements in State and Church, are also those who most adhere to the social forms and observances bequeathed to us by past generations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the moment we must forget that was are anarchists-when the work is accomplished we may forget that we were revolutionists-hence most anarchists believe the coming change can only come through a revolution, because the possessing class will not allow a peaceful change to take place; ”

“ The revolutionists also undertook to invent new mores, that is, new codes and standards, new conceptions of things socially desirable, a new religion, and new notions of civil duty and responsibility. ”

“ In roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched.* We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word. It is the king of words—Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. ”

“ The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness and fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You do not believe in revolution, and therefore you want to prevent it. Good, do that which is your duty. But I do believe in revolution, and, because I believe in it, I wish, not to precipitate it—for I have already told you that according to my view of history the efforts of a tribune are in this respect necessarily as impotent as the breath of my mouth would be to unfetter the storm upon the sea—but in case it should come, and from below, I will humanize it, civilize it beforehand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE most important question of all revolution is undoubtedly that of political power. In the hands of which class does power lie? There is the whole question on which depends the destiny of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 last thing I want to tell you is this: in a real revolution--not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions--in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is important to bear in mind that the statesmen of our Revolution were inaugurating a political and not a social revolution, and that the gravamen of their protest was against the authority of a distant crown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our revolution was the work of the great bourgeois, of the men whose race is now extinct. They had their rude vices and their rude virtues. Contemporary civilisation has inherited their vices alone, their fanaticism and their greed. It is our hope that your revolution will be the uprising of a great people, hale, brotherly, humane, avoiding the excesses into which we fell. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ Justice and necessity of the Revolution.—The great event however of what has been emphatically denominated in the language of our public acts the Glorious Revolution stands in need of no vulgar credulity, no mistaken prejudice, for its support. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”