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

— William Powell (author) , book The Anarchist Cookbook

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

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 "A government creates its own revolution. There can be no revolt without it." by William Powell (author)?

William Powell (author) 31

author of The Anarchist Cookbook 1949

Related quotes

“Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

Aristotle book Politics

Book V, 1302a.29
Politics

“The revolt was the sepoy; the revolution would have been the people; the revolt was revenge; the revolution would have been the Idea; the revolt was the cruel Vishnu; the revolution would have been the mild Shiva.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Os Brâmanes, p. 147
Os Brâmanes (1866)

“Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Context: Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

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

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

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

“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.