“However much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history — the early phase on Republican virtue, the later on Imperial grandeur — the fact remains that classicism depended on a fixed and rational philosophy; whereas the spirit of the Revolution was one of change and of emotion.”

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 1: David

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

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Kenneth Clark47

Art historian, broadcaster and museum director 1903–1983

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“In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class. The marshals, diplomats, and financiers of the Revolution may be discerned again in the Republic of Augustus as the ministers and agents of power, the same men but in different garb. They are the government of the New State.”

Ronald Syme book The Roman Revolution

Introduction: Augustus and History
The Roman Revolution (1939)

“The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877), p.2

“In the Napoleonic Museum in Arenenberg I was rather impressed just how richly clad in the costume of Antiquity the First Empire in fact was - dressed up even comically with its laurels and eagles and togas. Return to Rome wherever you look, though of course not to the Holy Roman Empire - to Caesar's Rome. But the French Revolution itself had fallen back on more or less genuine or imaginary classical models: Brutus and Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, the Gracchi, consuls and Roman virtues - even these revolutionaries couldn't resolve to start from scratch with something really new.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1957-59.

“The Iranian revolution was a real revolution, not just a coup d'etat or a putsch or whatever. It was a genuine revolution in the sense that the French and the Russian revolutions were revolutions. It brought a massive change, social, economic, ideological not just a change of regime. Like for the French and Russian revolutions in their day, Khomeini had had a tremendous impact everywhere they had a shared universe of discourse, that is to say, the Muslim world. Just as the French and Russian revolutions in their day, and for some time after, had such an impact, so did the Iranian revolution, and it was not limited to the Shi'a world.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

“I see a sequence of seven main phases: creation, revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Five, p. 106

“System costs can be considered in many different ways. For example, the cost for making the system and the cost for operating it may be used as a basic for judging the total cost. The total cost may also be arrived at in another fashion, as, for example, the sum of the fixed cost, variable cost, past investment and other charges. Furthermore, in many cases where systems engineering is required several time phases are involved for which the cost factors may be significant, such as the study phase, the breadboard phase, the prototype phase, and the production phase.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 13

“It (i. e., agriculture) was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future—even genetic engineering—were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 14 “The Swarming People” section II (p. 456)

“The control of the remnants of the State by a party (‘the Party commands the State’) may be regarded as a phase in the process of the dissolution of the old forces of order by the revolution. This process ends with the absorption of the State and its functions by the ‘organization for rule by violent means.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West (1939), p. 27

“I want to say something about Picasso as a revolutionary. A revolution in the history of art is a reflection of the history of society. Art cannot revolutionize society. It is a reflection of that revolution.. You [= Joseph Beuys ] talking in the same interview] have revolutionized art. But I do not see that you have revolutionized society directly. You have depicted what has not yet existed.... art and life are not two separate realms, but they have shifted out of phase with each other.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

“But to understand the great drama of the Russian Revolution and the inner forces that shaped and brought the great change about, a study of cold theory is of little use. The October Revolution was undoubtedly one of the great events of world history, the greatest since the first French Revolution, and its story is more absorbing, from the human and the dramatic point of view, than any We or phantasy.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (1949)

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Kenneth Clark47

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