“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”

— Vladimir Lenin

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

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Vladimir Lenin 336

Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924

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“Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors (1907) Introduction. Revolutionary Song https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm

“Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Concluding Paragraph
On Practice (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 通过实践而发现真理，又通过实践而证实真理和发展真理。从感性认识而能动地发展到理性认识，又从理性认识而能动地指导革命实践，改造主观世界和客观世界。实践、认识、再实践、再认识，这种形式，循环往复以至无穷，而实践和认识之每一循环的内容，都比较地进到了高一级的程度。这就是辩证唯物论的全部认识论，这就是辩证唯物论的知行统一观。

“The revolutionary red guards and revolutionary student organizations must form a grand alliance. As long as they are revolutionary mass organizations, they must form a great alliance according to revolutionary principles.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Directives on the Cultural Revolution (1966-1972)

“The behavior and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the oppressor to practice cultural invasion, should evoke from the revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their objectives, but their procedures.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, Cultural Invasion

“Himmler is the practical, working revolutionary. Instead of speaking, he organizes revolutionary cadres, forms terrorist groups, uses for political purposes the methods of the world of international crime extortion, maltreatment, theft, murder.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 24

“Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders--in their communion, in their praxis--can this theory be built.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, Cultural Synthesis

“It seems that it was the Jews who had entered the revolutionary movement who are primarily responsible for the terroristic measures blamed upon the bolsheviks.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Source: Reflections on Violence (1908), p. 290
Context: This hypothesis appears to me to be all the more reasonable given that the intervention of the Jews in the Hungarian Soviet Republic has not been a happy one.

“Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1910s, Androcles and the Lion (1913)

“I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

Schoenberg, Arnold. 1975, in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. Edited by Leonard Stein, with translations by Leo Black. p. 137
after 1930

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”

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Vladimir Lenin 336

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