“Ideas are more powerful than guns.”

—  Tony Benn

Wikinews interview with Tony Benn (8 August 2007), quote from approx 24min45 sec into interview.
2000s

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Tony Benn 69
British Labour Party politician 1925–2014

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“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?”

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“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

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Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée.
There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come and hour struck.
Translated into English as The Freebooters : A Story of the Texan War (1861) https://archive.org/details/freebootersstory00aima, p. 57, Ward & Lock edition
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In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/157/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 157.

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