“Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children.”

Act I.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children." by Georg Büchner?
Georg Büchner photo
Georg Büchner 43
German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose 1813–1837

Related quotes

Pierre Vergniaud photo

“Citizens, we have reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will successively devour all its children, and finally produce despotism, with the calamities that accompany it.”

Pierre Vergniaud (1753–1793) French politician

Citoyens, il est à craindre que la révolution, comme Saturne, ne dévore successivement tous ses enfants et n’engendre enfin le despotisme avec les calamités qui l’accompagnent.
Quoted by F.A.M. Mignet, Histoire de la révolution française (1824), ch. 7 http://perso.orange.fr/fdomi.fournier/H%20moderne/Mignet/P_04.htm original French] and [http://www.fullbooks.com/History-of-the-French-Revolution-from-17894.html English translation

Ernst Röhm photo

“All revolutions devour their own children.”

Ernst Röhm (1887–1934) German Nazi and military officer

Remark in prison to Hans Frank (30 June 1934) paraphrasing Pierre Vergniaud; quoted in The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (1999) by Joachim C. Fest

Walter Benjamin photo

“I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Aesthetics and Politics

Octave Mirbeau photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“The greatest threat of the Cuban revolution is its own example, its revolutionary ideas”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)
Context: The most submissive countries and consequently, the most cynical, talk about the threat of Cuban subversion, and they are right. The greatest threat of the Cuban revolution is its own example, its revolutionary ideas, the fact that the government has been able to increase the combativity of the people, led by a leader of world stature, to heights seldom equaled in history. Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice. We have demonstrated our firm stand, our own position, our decision to fight, even if alone, against all dangers and against the atomic menace of Yankee imperialism.

“A government creates its own revolution. There can be no revolt without it.”

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance".

Pierre Charron photo

“Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.”

Pierre Charron (1541–1603) French theologian and philosopher

As quoted in Treasury of Thought : Forming an encyclopædia of quotation from ancient and modern authors (1894) edited by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 123

Nicolae Ceaușescu photo

“Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 47

Related topics