Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [21-40] of 104 Revolution quotesRevolution QuotesRevolution Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes [A]fter unleashing the Red Guards … to serve his political purposes, Mao Zedong was no longer able to control them.~ Nien Cheng The newspaper announced that the mission of the Red Guards was to rid the country of the ‘Four Olds’: old culture, old customs, old habits, and old ways of thinking. There was no clear definition of ‘old’; it was left to the Red Guards to decide. First of all, they changed street names.~ Nien Cheng In the end it will not matter to us whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero This is revolution in reaction, as well as in radicalism, and Toryism speaking a jargon of law and order may often be a graver menace to liberty than radicalism bellowing the empty phrases of the soapbox demagogue.~ Frank I. Cobb Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past while we silence the rebels of the present.~ Henry Steele Commager Communist Rules for Revolution...~ Communist Rules for Revolution The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.~ Clarence S. Darrow The revolution is ... the blow dealt ... against the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty.~ Voltairine de Cleyre The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.~ Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.~ Alexis de Tocqueville But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.~ Declaration of Independence The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.— Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world...~ Declaration of Independence The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.~ William O. Douglas Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. ~ Frederick Douglass He who would be free must strike the first blow.~ Frederick Douglass Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.~ Dwight D. Eisenhower They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith.~ Dwight D. Eisenhower Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our revolution. They existed before.~ Millard Fillmore Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print