Quotes about revolution (1732 quotes, page 17)

“All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

“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)

Democracy , Age , History , Men

“When the people of St-Domingue first tasted the fruit of liberty that they hold from the equity of France; when to the violent upheavals of the revolution that announced it succeeded the pleasures of tranquility; when finally the rule of law took the place of anarchy under which the unfortunate colony had too long suffered, what fatality can have led the greatest enemy of its prosperity and of our happiness still to dare to threaten us with the return of slavery?”

Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) Leader of the Haitian Revolution

Letter to the French Directory, November 1792

Pleasure , Suffering , People , Law

“We are living although the majority of the people do not realize it, in the midst of an immense revolution. What is radically wrong with our condition lies in the harsh contrast between rich and poor. This cannot go on forever, as we are human beings with human differences. No use is being made of religion, the only way towards alleviation and compensation; on the contrary, attempts are being deliberately made to excite the masses into asserting their equality with the middle and upper classes. The State contents itself with attempts to improve the material circumstances of the workers, with the only result that their covetousness has been intensified. The possibility of acquiring great sums of money by speculation has developed a fondness for luxury and enjoyment which has taken hold of wide circles. German family life is going to the dogs. Unfortunate marriages, divorces, youthful corruption, pleasure-seeking, the anxiety to seem richer than one is–all this is increasing terribly. In the lower classes of the great cities the demoralization has already reached a high degree … The unequal distribution of wealth with all its consequences must lead in the end to a catastrophe.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 9 November 1890

Money , Family , Religion , Marriage

“I see a future for us only in a Great War in which we lastingly cripple an opponent, France or Russia. Unless there should be a great war, the only way out of our dilemma will be through internal commotion, preferably revolutions in France or Russia.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 15 October 1885, quoted in Scott A. Silverstone, From Hitler's Germany to Saddam's Iraq

Way , War , Future

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

Sense , Wisdom , Law , Success

“When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 409

Family

“I considerd a general War against Jacobins and Jacobinism, as the only possible chance of saving Europe, (and England as included in Europe) from a truly frightful revolution. … It is my Protest against the delusion, by which some have been taught to look upon this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place or Patronage; and to regard this Jacobin War abroad as a common War about Trade, or Territorial Boundaries, or about a political Balance of power among Rival or jealous States.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Duke of Portland (29 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 437-438
1790s

War , Home , Chance

“Fascism is used by the bourgeoisie when the latter consider itself no longer able to fight off the peril of a socialist revolution. Fascism is, therefore, organic to the logics of capitalism and represents a more authoritarian handling that bosses temporary use, when necessary, in order to maintain their rule.”

Marco Rizzo (1959) Italian politician

Corteo a Reggio Emilia in memoria della strage del 1960 http://www.lariscossa.com/2019/07/07/corteo-reggio-emilia-memoria-della-strage-del-1960, 7 July 2019

Fight

“I sincerely believe revolution to be the source of legal right; but the nocturnal armed assault of March 10 could never be considered a revolution.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

ibid, p 92
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Sincerity

“In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution … The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union.”

Aleksandr Dugin (1962) Russian political scientist

Aleksandr Dugin — The Basics of Geopolitics (1997)

“The so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in the Arab world started in hopeful online communities, but once they emerged into the messy offline world, they were commandeered by religious fanatics and military juntas.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

World , Hope , Communication

“Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and in-discriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Personality , Death , People , Making love

“We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are: (1) Popular forces can win a war against the army. (2) It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. (3) In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Fight , War , Making love , Waiting

“Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign conspiracy for a new human agenda has triggered the most rapid cultural realignment in history. The great shuddering, irrevocable shift overtaking us is not a new political, religious, or philosophical system. It is a new mind — the ascendance of a startling worldview that gathers into its framework breakthrough science and insights from earliest recorded thought. The Aquarian Conspirators range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. The Aquarian Conspirators range across all levels of income and education, from the humblest to the highest. There are schoolteachers and office workers, famous scientists, government officials and lawmakers, artists and millionaires, taxi drivers and celebrities, leaders in medicine, education, law, psychology. Some are open in their advocacy, and their names may be familiar. Others are quiet about their involvement, believing they can be more effective if they are not identified with ideas that have all too often been misunderstood.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Science , History , Law , Education

“In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a thus try to deprive the French Revolution of its status as the founding event of modern democracy, relegating it to a historical anomaly: there was a historical necessity to assert the modern principles of personal freedom, etc.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Robespierre: Virtue and Terror (2007)

Democracy , Personality , Freedom

“All the trouble that had arisen in Europe had come from a flagrant breach of the undertaking to disarm by all the victors except one. … He knew that there had been horrible atrocities in Germany, and they all deplored and condemned them, but a country passing through a revolution was always liable to ghastly episodes owing to the administration of justice being seized here and there by an infuriated rebel. He was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist nor a Communist. If the Powers succeeded in overthrowing Nazism in Germany, what would follow? Not a Conservative, Socialist or Liberal régime, but extreme Communism. Surely that could not be their objective.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Barmouth (22 September 1933), quoted in The Times (23 September 1933), p. 7
Later life

Justice , Country , Communication

“We won and saved our liberties in this land on more than one occasion by compulsory service. France saved the liberty she had won in the great Revolution from the fangs of tyrannical military empires purely by compulsory service; the great Republic of the West won its independence and saved its national existence by compulsory service, and two of the greatest countries of Europe to-day—France and Italy—are defending their national existence and liberties by means of compulsory service. It has been the greatest weapon in the hands of Democracy many a time for the winning and preservation of freedom.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Manchester (3 June 1915), quoted in The Times (4 June 1915), p. 9
Minister of Munitions

Democracy , Time , Country , Freedom

“We are a poor country that wants to take the efforts and resources now being invested in defense of the revolution and invest it in tractors and plows. And we support general and complete disarmament, under strict international control. We are for an end to the arms race and we salute the SALT II accords as an important step in this direction. We demand respect for the territorial integrity of states and renunciation of the use of force in international relations. We condemn the existence of military bases.”

Daniel Ortega (1945) President of Nicaragua

Nothing Will Hold Back Our Struggle for Liberation (1979)

Support , Effort , Relation ships , Country

“There were two French Revolutions—the first stage instigated by free-Left elements imbued with toleration, anti-authoritarianism, secularism, individualism, liberty and the revolutionary individualism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. The second stage of the French Revolution devolved into a bloody, terroristic dictatorship, an all-powerful state amidst a cult of personality, such as the so-called incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre, in a counter-revolution that was anti-liberal and antithetical to the Lumières movement, which became the Age of Enlightenment.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 33

Personality , Pain , Age

“Rather, the license to institute compulsory practices leads to legalized and institutionalized aggression and robbery. Enabling political structures to plunder one in the name of others perverts the meaning of individual human rights. Positive rights grant governmental agencies the invasive authority to force citizens to surrender their earnings and property so that others may indulge in free or subsidized food, education, housing, medical care and so forth. Positive rights imposed obligations, a duty that must be fulfilled, or the violator would be arrested and jailed, thus nullifying the role of individual autonomy that was the inspiration for the American Revolution. In other words, positive rights make society sovereign, rather than the individual.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 4

Education , Making love , Housing , Food

“Revolution in India and Egypt, and also in the Caucuses…is of the highest importance. The treaty with Turkey will make it possible for the Foreign Office to realise this idea and to awaken the fanaticism of Islam.”

Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848–1916) Chief of the German General Staff

Memorandum (5 August 1914), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 126

Idea , Making love

“The revolution of the proletariat - the war of the poor against the rich, is the only way from oppression to deliverance.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

Way , War

“The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Letter to Philipp Van Patten http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_04_18.htm (18 April 1883)

Victory , Communication

“Otto Strasser’s socialism was much more durable and much more carefully thought out. No doubt Marx would have called him a petit-bourgeois socialist. In his best-known publication on his program he spoke of a Reich corporative chamber and the guilds, of hereditary fiefs and the reagrarianization of Germany. Strasser called for autarky and domestic currency, the war of revolution against Versailles, and a military aristocracy. But there was more than mere demagogy in his demands for splitting up of large estates, for profit participation, for a people’s state of Germanic democracy. On the whole it was a genuinely socialist program, at least to the extent to which it was imbued with the emotional appeal of the expansion and attainment of freedom.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), p. 336

Democracy , War , People , Freedom

“The most personal and intense instance of Mussolini’s coming to grips with Marxism is his confrontation with Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution. During his stay in Switzerland, Mussolini had had contact, if not with Lenin himself, with men around him; he had read some of Lenin’s writings; Angelica Balabanov, Mussolini’s former tutor, was now with Lenin in Russia… But it is typical of Mussolini’s prevailing interests of the moment that, like his dialogue with Marxism, even the duel with Lenin appears at first as merely one further aspect of the struggle against Germany.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), p. 176

Personality , Appearance , Reading , Men

“What other paths were there? His studies had shown him that revolution and evolution were the only ways that societies ever truly changed. Revolution and evolution, built of a mix of education and violence and politics and compromise and self-interest and self-preservation. Certainly, history showed that rigid societies, like ancient dinosaurs, always died. The Confed was the biggest dinosaur ever, and while it was already dying and had been doing so for a long time, it would take many years before it finally fell. Any empire which had to hold its citizens in check with military force was far down the road to destruction. Which brought up another thought: what would replace the dead beast when it began to rot? What parasite would emerge from the corpse to try and breed itself into superiority?”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 15 (p. 132)

Study , Time , History , Dead

“We cannot fuck our way to freedom. Sexuality alone, and heterosexuality in particular, is never enough to destabilise complex architectures of money and power. Without political agitation, sex can always be co-opted, calcifying gender revolution into another weary parade of saleable binary stereotypes.”

Laurie Penny book Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

Conclusion
Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2010)

Money , Sex , Way , Freedom

“We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’ve stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like this and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.”

Fred Hampton (1948–1969) African-American activist

Excerpt from Fred Hampton - "Political Prisoner" video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1gveC3GVs.

People , Water , Thinking , Fight

“Bobby Seale is going through all types of physical and mental torture. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you can’t murder freedom fighting, and if you do, you’ll come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, you’ll come up with conclusions that don’t conclude, and you’ll come up with people that you thought should be acting like pigs that’s acting like people and moving on pigs. And that’s what we’ve got to do. So we’re going to see about Bobby regardless of what these people think we should do, because school is not important and work is not important. Nothing’s more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

Fred Hampton (1948–1969) African-American activist

Excerpt from Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton.

School , Country , Freedom , People

“Slavery in the British colonies of North America was more than a century-and-a-half old before independence. It was roundly condemned, at one time or another, by nearly all the important political personages of the Revolution. I know of no instance in which any of these personages contradicted the doctrine of the Declaration, or maintained that slavery was a positive good. We must recognize, however, that slavery next to the family was perhaps the oldest institution of civilized mankind. Its origin in the ancient world came with the discovery that it was more profitable to enslave an enemy defeated in war than to kill him. The ancient law of the ancient city may be seen in the Bible. When the Israelites conquered Jericho, they put to the sword everyone in the city—men and women, young and old, sheep, oxen, and asses. Only Rahab the harlot and her family were spared, since they had given shelter to the Israelite spies. Later, in the custom of ancient warfare, the males of a defeated people would all be killed, but the women and children would be carried into slavery. Eventually the entire population of a defeated people would be enslaved. Such are the steps in the human story. That defeat in war meant slavery was the rule for many thousands of years.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), Slavery and the Human Story

Family , Time , Law , War

“He and a large number of prominent Congress leaders had deserted Indira Gandhi to join the second freedom movement launched by Jayaprakash Narayan on his call for a total revolution.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.136

Freedom

“It is quite a revolution, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look. They are quite wonderful you know.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Carmel Snow in Harper’s Bazar office, in p. 135
This news and the show was hailed by the American and other foreign press as French press was on strike.
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

“We were witness to a revolution in fashion and a revolution in showing fashion as well.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazar office, in p. 135
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

Fashion

“Mengistu seemed to symbolize the revolution. He was the baria, the slave who overthrew the master, the member of the conquered tribe who got even with the conquerors, the poorly educated son of a servant who rose against the intellectual elite.”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

David Ottaway (1978) Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution, Africana Publishing Company, p. 135
About Mengistu

Education

“Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Idea , Making love

“Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear *fucking* weapons.”

Ken MacLeod (1954) Scottish science fiction writer

USENET posting to rec.sf.arts.fandom http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/browse_frm/thread/303b0da0ab25aee/b12adceacd343279 28 September 2000, in the discussion of Robert A. Heinlein's quote "The cowards never started and the weaklings died on the way." (Expanded Universe, How to be a Survivor in the Atomic Age)
Other sources

War , Fear , Children , Past

“The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Give Me Liberty (1936)

Question , Freedom , Falseness , Mathematics

“We are going through a crucial historical crisis in which each year poses more acutely the global problem of rationally mastering the new productive forces and creating a new civilization. Yet the international working-class movement, on which depends the prerequisite overthrow of the economic infrastructure of exploitation, has registered only a few partial local successes. Capitalism has invented new forms of struggle (state intervention in the economy, expansion of the consumer sector, fascist governments) while camouflaging class oppositions through various reformist tactics and exploiting the degenerations of working-class leaderships. In this way it has succeeded in maintaining the old social relations in the great majority of the highly industrialized countries, thereby depriving a socialist society of its indispensable material base. In contrast, the underdeveloped or colonized countries, which over the last decade have engaged in the most direct and massive battles against imperialism, have begun to win some very significant victories. These victories are aggravating the contradictions of the capitalist economy and (particularly in the case of the Chinese revolution) could be a contributing factor toward a renewal of the whole revolutionary movement. Such a renewal cannot limit itself to reforms within the capitalist or anticapitalist countries, but must develop conflicts posing the question of power everywhere.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

About the Situationist International movement
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

Dependency , Question , Country , Success

“The Keynesian Revolution was, in the form in which it succeeded in the United States, a revolution in method.”

Robert Lucas Jr. (1937) American economist

This was not Keynes’s intent, nor is it the view of all of his most eminent followers. Yet if one does not view the revolution in this way, it is impossible to account for some of its most important features.
"After Keynesian macroeconomics" 1978

“Man alone, of all the creatures on earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives … It is too bad that most people will not accept this tremendous discovery and begin living it.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny." Actually said by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his Miracle of Forgiveness (1969), p. 114. This predates any of the misquotations.
Other forms: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." This is also misattributed to Albert Schweitzer.
James did say: "As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness."
Misattributed

Bad luck , People , Change

“The enormous privileges given to Brahmins by the Vedas were sacrosanct only as long as they went unchallenged. The challenge rose in the Tamil country like a whirlwind spearheaded by an iconoclast who questioned the Vedas and the gods as well. He took apparently extremist positions on some issues, but the fundamental nature of the social revolution he wrought was clear even to its victims. The political perspectives of Tamil Nadu and with it much of India, were altered with as seeming finality by Ramaswamy Naicker.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quoted from "Makers of Millennium India" in Express Publications in Fuzzy and Neutrosophic Analysis of Periyar's Views on Untouchability by W. B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Florentin Smarandache, K. Kandasamy http://books.google.co.in/books?id=hgb-MKcsSR0C&pg=PA380, p. 103.
About Periyar

Question , God , Country , Nature

“For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Chance , Question , Heart , Way

“Sometimes the changes that are generated in a revolutionary period are rather trivial and do not last past the cycle. But sometimes, from a strong crisis, a revolution forges something new that lasts for centuries and represents progress toward values that are more rational and empathetic. In seeing this historical pattern, we must recognize what seems to be an overall human spirit that transcends any particular time and that keeps us evolving. If for any reason the cycle stopped, we would be doomed.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 17 : Seize the Historical Moment
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Strong , Time , Past , Change

“The social subjugation of woman was the vilest counter-revolution ever carried out.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Liberating Life: Women's Revolution

“It's very beneficial to Mexico that these workers [come to the U. S.]. It relieves a lot of social tension. It empties out the countryside of the poor and the needy. It stops revolution from happening. And it's sending back a tidal wave of money. The remittance money from the United States is the second or third largest source of income in Mexico now. I guess you could argue that we have an extremely generous foreign policy…”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On how migrant workers benefit Mexico in some way in “INTERVIEWS: Luis Alberto Urrea” https://bookpage.com/interviews/8248-luis-alberto-urrea-nonfiction#.XcMKh7lKjcs in BookPage (April 2004)

Money

“We realized at a very early point in our development that revolution is a process. It is not a particular action, nor is it a conclusion. It is a process.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community
To Die For The People

“The revolution itself originates from a dream of the future or from the craving for a new life.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 8

Future , Life , Dreams

“We are not seeking revolution. We just want democracy!”

Joshua Wong (1996) Hong Kong activist, Secretary-general of Demosistō

October 5, 2014 Hong Kong’s students want you to stop calling their protest a ‘revolution’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/04/hong-kongs-students-want-you-to-stop-calling-their-protest-a-revolution/

Democracy

“It's extremely dangerous trying to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law — first the ‘Rose Revolution', then they'll think up something like blue.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

word play here: "rose" having the colloquial sense of "lesbian" in modern Russian, and "blue" meaning "gay"
On the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, News conference http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/russia/article405454.ece, (23 December 2004).
2000 - 2005

Problem , Thinking , Law

“The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Dharma Punx: A Memoir (2003)

Heart

“When the structures and values of Salvadoran society exemplify a democratic system, then the revolution I have worked for will have taken place. This is my dream.”

José Napoleón Duarte (1925–1990) President of El Salvador

Duarte: My Story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-399-13202-3 (1986), G.P. Putnam's Sons
1980s

Dreams

“The United States is the only country where these revolutions are simultaneously in progress and organically linked in such a way as to constitute a single revolution.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun https://archive.org/details/withoutmarxorjes00reverich (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson (1980)
1970s

Way , Country

“Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time... and offers the only possible escape for mankind today.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, Chapter 5 (1980)
1970s

Time

“There is... always, in a large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour. In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other, the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of human destiny,—self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often succumbs.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part First, III
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Law , Light , Suffering , Self-confidence

“The perturbation would come from the privileged classes, he said, because that is the way of revolutions. They are launched by those disenchanted with the culture's ultimate reward system.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Way

“Like Transcendentalism, Revel's revolution would encompass "the liberation of the creative personality and the awakening of personal initiative" as opposed to the closed horizons of more repressive societies.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Personality

“If that happened, and if one political civilization were exchanged for another, as seemed to be happening, the impact might be felt worldwide by osmosis. This radical transformation would need the simultaneous occurrence of smaller revolutions—in politics, society, international and interracial relations, cultural values, and technology and science.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Science , Relation ships

“The stuff of revolution, and its first success, must be the ability to innovate. In that sense, there is more revolutionary spirit in the United States today, even on the Right, than elsewhere on the Left. The relative freedom in the United States would make it possible for such a revolution to occur bloodlessly, Revel said.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Sense , Freedom , Making love , Success

“Although it is rarely noted in histories of the American Revolution, many of the arch-Revolutionaries came from a tradition of mystical fraternity. Except for such traces as the symbols on the reverse side of the Great Seal and the dollar bill, little evidence remains of this esoteric influence (Rosicrucian, Masonic, and Hermetic). That sense of fraternity and spiritual chisement played an important role in the intensity of the Revolutionaries and their commitment to the realization of a democracy.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Sense , Democracy , History

“The revolution was in the minds of the people. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. Long before the first shot is fired, the revolution begins. Long after truce is declared, it continues to overturn lives.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

People , Change

“The new political awareness has little to do with parties or ideologies. Its constituents don't come in blocs. Power that is never surrendered by the individual cannot be brokered. Not by revolution or protest but by autonomy, the old slogan becomes a surprising fact: Power to the people. One by one by one.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power, p. 240

People

“We must no longer have a pacific conception of peace. In the Middle Ages it was otherwise. The existence of the individual had no exaggerated importance. Pacifist literature depicts death on the field of battle as an unnatural death because it does not understand the ancient Germanic horror of death on a bed, and arteriosclerosis appears to it more virile than a bullet. Pacifists dwell on the horrors of the war dead as if a peace corpse were more aesthetic. The representatives of the national revolution are men and soldiers who are physically and morally warriors.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

Speech to the Stalhelm in Münster (13 May 1933), quoted in Frederick Schuman, Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship (London: Hale, 1936), pp. 345-346
1930s

Peace , Dead , Understanding , War

“Since the industrial revolution, we have been plagued with periodic recessions and depressions, described as the "lows" of the business cycle. It should be made perfectly clear that these recessions, unlike famines, are not Acts of God, but simply attributable to the folly and inflexibility of man.”

Paul Hellyer (1923–2021) engineer, politician, writer

Inflation vs. Unemployment, An Address by the Honourable Paul T. Hellyer, Curran Hall Limited, Toronto, February 20th, 1958

Business , God

“All over the world, children and young people are being exposed, via the communications revolution, to such ideas. They are not limited to the parochial beliefs of a single culture.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn, p. 321

Children , People , Communication , World

“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency.'”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.

p. 357
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929-1941 (1952)

Horse

“The progress of the human mind, the revolutions which occur in the development of knowledge, give each century its special character.”

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) French early socialist theorist

Preface
The Reorganization of the European Community (1814)

Knowledge

“Government violence is not the result of violent revolutions, but the product of government itself. Any movement that leaves the State intact will fail in ending the oppressions we are fighting against. A nonviolent movement that replaces one government with another—and this is the greatest victory a nonviolent movement has ever achieved in the history of the world—ends up betraying itself, allowing Power to change its masks without addressing the fundamental problems of society. Nonviolence as an analytical tool has no means of understanding this kind of defeat—the kind that looks like victory.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 2. Recuperation is How We Lose

Understanding , History , Victory , Problem

“The totality of the crisis has given manifold forms to the counter-revolution. The most deadly, the most insidious, the most dangerous is the Stalinist counter-revolution because it springs from the proletariat and cloaks itself in Marxist terminology.”

C. L. R. James (1901–1989) Trinidadian writer

State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950)

Spring

“The example of a revolution and the lessons it applies for Latin America have destroyed all coffee house theories; we have demonstrated that a small group of men supported by the people without fear of dying can overcome a disciplined regular army and defeat it.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in It Has Been 50 Years Since Che Guevara Was Murdered http://www.thenation.com/article/archive/it-has-been-50-years-since-che-guevara-was-murdered/, by Bill Ayers and Michael Steven Smith

Housing , Support , People , Coffee

“The truth is that after the experiences of my wanderings across all of Latin America, and to top it off, in Guatemala, it didn’t take much to incite me to join any revolution against a tyrant, but Castro impressed me as an extraordinary man. He faced and overcame the most impossible things. He had an exceptional faith that once he left for Cuba, he would arrive. And that once he arrives, he would fight. And that fighting, he would win. I shared his optimism.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in It Has Been 50 Years Since Che Guevara Was Murdered http://www.thenation.com/article/archive/it-has-been-50-years-since-che-guevara-was-murdered/, by Bill Ayers and Michael Steven Smith

Fight , Truth , Optimism , Faith

“A question for those who mix racism and freedom with the veil debate: who is the racist? he who defends the values of equality, of modernity, as well as the values of the French revolution or the one that advocates a return to medieval values and a dark period in which no equality existed?”

Waleed Al-Husseini (1989) Palestinian essayist and writer

The Islamic veil

Freedom , Question

“From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

"The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege" (2011)

“The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every claim for protection given by citizenship — on the issue. Victory, or the conditions imposed by the conqueror — must be the result.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Source: 1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 16

Strong , Victory , People , Nature

“Shall it be said of us in after years that we studied the history of the rise and fall of empires, republics, revolutions , and Caesar's for naught? Shall men say of us we missed our opportunity?.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

Rival Caesars (1903)

Study , History , Men

“The proletarian army must be exclusively composed of persons belonging to the working class, of persons who do not expoloit labour and who are directly interested in the victory of the workers' revolution.”

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) Soviet politician

62. The Need For The Red Army; It's Class Composition
ABC's of Communism

Personality , Victory

“The enemy is at the gates of the city. The day is perhaps not far off when our breasts will be the last defence for our country. We are the children of the Revolution. Let us take inspiration from our fathers of 1792, and, like them, we will conquer.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Poster (23 September 1870) during the Franco-Prussian War, quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 38

Children , Country

“C'mon everybody, yeah, this is your life
I'm talking about a revolution we gotta organize
We don't need no segregation, we don't need no race
New age revelation, I think we got a case.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Song lyrics, Controversy (1981)

Life , Thinking , Age

“All my life, U have served the fatherland, the revolution and the people with all my heart and strength. If I should now depart from this world, I would have nothing to regret, except not being able to serve longer and more.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

Testament (1969)
1960's

World , Life , People , Heart

“We now face the grim choice posed by revolutionaries over the last two centuries, which involved "revolution or barbarism."”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Our situation has deteriorated so dramatically that we must choose between revolution or ecological collapse, mass extinction, and possibly our own demise. The twenty-first century is a time of reckoning.
Conclusion: "Reflections on Activism and Hope in a Dying World and Suicidal Culture" (p. 162)
The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014)

“Humanity is entirely responsible for being at the root of the problems arising from global warming. We need to rethink the way we live on earth in order to preserve life. Global warming is out of control…. Time is not on our side, which is why I am calling on all young millennials to hasten this radical revolution. You are a part of nature and compassion decrees that you take care of it as much as you do yourselves. It is only through mutual support and co-operation that you will be able to contain disasters that are fuelled by economic and social injustice and are fuelled by greed, selfishness, and other negative states of mind…. You are responsible for the wellbeing of billions of humans and all manner of living species sharing the adventure of life on earth. It is up to you to protect natural resources and guard over air, water, oceans, forests, fauna and flora. To do so it is essential that you realize your potential for love and compassion in order to care for the earth. Learn to love it through sharing it rather than striving to possess it and thereby destroying it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Selfishness , Time , Support , Learning

“By his theory of relativity Albert Einstein has provoked a revolution of thought in physical science. ...Physical space and time are found to be closely bound... with... motion of the observer; and only an amorphous combination of the two is left... It is my aim to give an account of this work without introducing anything very technical in... mathematics, physics, or philosophy. ...[T]he task is one of interpreting a clear-cut theory... although perhaps not everyone would accept the author's views of its meaning.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

Science , Time , Mathematics

“I wanted to start an artistic revolution to empower our neighborhood and people.”

Mónica Esmeralda León (1991) actress

ABC Eyewitness News Chicago 2016: Award-winning Latino filmmakers thrive in Aurora https://abc7chicago.com/entertainment/award-winning-latino-filmmakers-thrive-in-aurora/1464700/

People

“The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that the Poles are une nation foutue [a fucked nation] who can only continue to serve a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have absolutely no raison d'étre any more. The Poles' sole contribution to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented progress or done anything of historical significance.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Letter https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1851/letters/51_05_23.htm to Karl Marx (23 May 1851)

Thinking , Time , History

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Democracy , Faith , Justice , Time

“...what I look to with seriousness is the Phalanx of Party which exists in the body of the dissenters, who are, at the very least, nine tenths of them entirely devoted, some with greater some with less zeal, to the principles of the French Revolution.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas (30 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 419
1790s

“Radicals and Conservatives are not at all unlike, temperamentally. They want order, organization, efficiency, perfection. The Conservative or Reactionary thinks these can be best obtained by putting and keeping the power in the hands of a small class. He is afraid that an extension of democracy will destroy form and tradition, which he believes are essential to holding any society together. The Radical is so obsessed by the obvious faults of society that he wants to pull everything up by the roots and start all over again, and build a perfect society according to a blueprint. It is interesting that when the extreme Radicals triumph—in a revolution, for instance, as in Russia—they immediately become rigidly conservative, and punish all deviation rigorously. The worst fundamentalists in the world today are the Russian communists.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 86

Perfection , Thinking , World , Democracy

“The rise of liberalism was accompanied by immense technological progress; by the industrial revolution; by the division of labor which ensued, and which suddenly, and prodigiously, accelerated the efficiency of production; and by the conception of economic life governed by the market. In other words, of economic life governed by the buyer, not the seller. This was a brand-new and wholly revolutionary idea.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 65-66

Idea , Life

“The American Revolution of 1776 was a great liberal revolution. The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, more than any documents on earth, embody the fundamentals of liberalism. These documents assert the essential equality of human beings. This does not mean, and never did, that one man is as talented, or wise, or good as another, or that each person is entitled to the same rewards. It does mean that every human being has a right to his own life; that no man may be forced to labor against his will, or to assert beliefs contrary to his conscience, or be relegated to one class of society.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 64-65

Personality , Life

“No one, I think, can deny that the depression of the agricultural interest is excessive. Though I can recall periods of suffering, none of them have ever equalled the present in its instances. ... [N]or is it open to doubt that foreign competition has exercised a most injurious influence on the agricultural interests of the country. The country, however, was perfectly warned that if we made a great revolution in our industrial system, that was one of the consequences that would accrue. I may mention that the great result of the returns we possess is this, that the immense importations of foreign agricultural produce have been vastly in excess of what the increased demands of our population actually require, and that is why the low prices are maintained...That is to a great degree the cause of this depression.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in the House of Lords on the agricultural depression (28 March 1879), reported in The Times (29 March 1879), p. 8

Country , Thinking , Suffering , Exercises

“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

Democracy , Faith , Friendship , War

“I alone bear the responsibility. But I am not a criminal because of that. If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution. There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

At his trial https://worldhistoryproject.org/1924/2/26/adolf-hitler-goes-on-trial-for-treason, 24 February 1924
1920s

“The rich don’t start revolutions.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“Both Stoicism and Epicureanism — the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure — were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Pleasure , Forgetting , Happiness , Effort

“Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 28, Part 5 (Footnote 2)

Future , Faith , Religion , Communication

“Let us, in particular, take care not to forget the principles of the Revolution. ... I will only take notice of the three following:
First; The right to liberty of conscience in religious matters.
Secondly; The right to resist power when abused.
And, Thirdly; The right to chuse our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to frame a government for ourselves.”

Richard Price (1721–1791) Welsh nonconformist preacher and radical

Source: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), p. 34

Forgetting

“I don’t want revolutions. Categorically, because innocent heads will fly into the revolution and into all these wars. I think this is wrong. No revolutions. Do everything that is possible, but to prevent this from happening. At both sides. I would choose North Korea. I don't want sacrifices. It means that some tactics, some experience, some wisdom are lacking for people who are against this regime. That's all.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

On why she supports Vladimir Putin in Чулпан Хаматова: «Я очень много чего боюсь» (7 June 2012) https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/sobchak_zhivem/chulpan_khamatova_ya_by_vybrala_severnuyu_koreyu_a_ne_revolyutsiyu-286479/

War , People , Flying , Thinking