“In terms of political geography, The French Revolution ended the European Middle Ages.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer
Source: The Age of Revolution (1962), Chapter 4, War
Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 195
“In terms of political geography, The French Revolution ended the European Middle Ages.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer
Source: The Age of Revolution (1962), Chapter 4, War
Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary
Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch. 8
Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian
Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)
Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
“This is not a Budget, but a revolution; a social and political revolution of the first magnitude.”
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician
Letter to the The Times attacking the "People's Budget" (22 June 1909), p. 8.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)
Source: Aesthetics and Politics
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1871/feb/09/address-to-her-majesty-on-her-most in the House of Commons (9 February 1871) on the Franco-Prussian War which led to German unification.
“This is not a visible revolution and it is not political.”
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist
From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: This is not a visible revolution and it is not political. You’re dealing with the invisible world of technology.
Politics is absolutely hopeless. That’s why everything has gone wrong. You have ninety-nine percent of the people thinking “politics,” and hollering and yelling. And that won’t get you anywhere. Hollering and yelling won’t get you across the English Channel. It won’t reach from continent to continent; you need electronics for that, and you have to know what you’re doing. Evolution has been at work doing all these things so it is now possible. Nobody has consciously been doing it. The universe is a lot bigger than you and me. We didn’t invent it. If you take all the machinery in the world and dump it in the ocean, within months more than half of all humanity will die and within another six months they’d almost all be gone; if you took all the politicians in the world, put them in a rocket, and sent them to the moon, everyone would get along fine.