“There has been a revolution, then, but a silent one. It has taken place with such stealth, and so gradually, that people have become accustomed to it little by little. I am reminded of the famous Chinese executioner whose ambition it was to be able to cut off a head so that the victim would not realize what had happened. For years he worked on his skill, and one day he cut off a head so perfectly that the victim said: "Well, when are you going to do it?"”

Violence and the Labor Movement (1914)
Context: No one sees more clearly than the socialist that nothing could prove more disastrous to the democratic cause than to have the present class conflict break into a civil war. If such a war becomes necessary, it will be in spite of the organized socialists, who, in every country of the world, not only seek to avoid, but actually condemn, riotous, tempestuous, and violent measures. Such measures do not fit into their philosophy, which sees, as the cause of our present intolerable social wrongs, not the malevolence of individuals or of classes, but the workings of certain economic laws. One can cut off the head of an individual, but it is not possible to cut off the head of an economic law. From the beginning of the modern socialist movement, this has been perfectly clear to the socialist, whose philosophy has taught him that appeals to violence tend, as Engels has pointed out, to obscure the understanding of the real development of things.

p.xi

Sermon of July 28, 1495, which historian Ludwig Pastor calls Savonarola's "sermon against the tumultuous assemblies, misnamed parliaments, which the Medici encouraged to serve their own ends", as quoted in History of the Popes (1898) by Ludwig Pastor, vol. 5, p. 209. http://books.google.com/books?id=MZ4YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA209&dq=%22let+his+head+be+cut+off%22+savonarola&hl=en&sa=X&ei=H-ElT-DWOLGpsAKxqP2MAg&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22let%20his%20head%20be%20cut%20off%22%20savonarola&f=false
Context: If he that would summon a Parliament be of the Signoria, let his head be cut off; if he be not of it, let him be proclaimed a rebel and all his goods confiscated; … should the Signoria seek to call a Parliament … all may cut them to pieces without sin.

Source: Revolution

Source: もののけ姫 [Mononoke hime]

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Source: Paris France (1940), p. 28

To Algernon Sidney, one of the judges at the trial of Charles I (December 1648)

Speech (10 November 1995), quoted in "Las frases para el bronce de Pinochet."
1990s