“A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
Chapter 2 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch02.htm, originally published in Report on an investigation of the peasant movement in Hunan http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm (March 1927), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 28.
https://www.marxists.org/chinese/big5/nonmarxists/mao/19270300.htm.湖南農民運動考察報告
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)
Context: A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
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Mao Zedong 181
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of… 1893–1976Related quotes

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 22–27.
Collected Works
Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter I : The Coming American Revolution, p. 4
Context: There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land.
This is the revolution of the new generation.
Source: Modern Italy: A Political History, 1959, p. 284

Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 42–54.
Collected Works