Quotes about revolution
page 7

“It has become clear from the rumblings and soul-searching in the field of competitive strategy that a revolution is brewing. Managers and strategy researchers are discovering that existing models of strategy are nearly obsolete in the intensity of today's fast-paced competition. Some have called for a more dynamic approach, even questioning the sustainability of competitive advantage in this new environment. But so far, this revolution-waiting-to-happen has had no leader. Now it has.”

Richard D’Aveni (1953) American economist

Foreword
Hypercompetitive rivalries, 1994

Soul, Search, Question, Waiting

“We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.”

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) Soviet politician

Programme of the World Revolution (1918), Ch. VII http://marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1918/worldrev/ch07.html

People, Freedom, Time

“From the days of Anne Hutchinson, Boston never lacked clubs; and the Caulkers' Club was the prototype of many, rather more secular and political than religious or transcendental, which flourished in the years preceding the Revolution. John Adams, in that Diary which tells us so much that we wish to know, gives us a peep inside one of these clubs, the "Caucus Club,"… "There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fire-wards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

Drink, Question

“All machinery is derived from nature, and is founded on the teaching and instruction of the revolution of the firmament.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book X, Chapter I, Sec. 4

Nature

“The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lye from one end to the other. The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklins electrical Rod, smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Benjamin Rush, 4 April 1790. Alexander Biddle, Old Family Letters, Series A (Philadelphia: 1892), p. 55 http://books.google.com/books?id=5d8hAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55 1790s

War, History

“If they (the ASME) had not been (aware of human problems involved) — and Taylor either failed to encounter, or to recognize the significance of, the early work in industrial psychology contributed by Walter Dill Scott, Hugo Munsterberg, and others — there was the amazing fact that one of them, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, happened to fall in love with a girl who was a psychologist by education, a teacher by profession, and a mother by vocation. I know of no occurrence in the whole history of human thought more worthy of the epithet "providential" than that fact. Here were three engineers — Taylor, Gantt, and Gilbreth — struggling to realize the wider implications of their technique, in travail with a "mental revolution," their great danger that they might not appreciate the difference between applying scientific thinking to material things and to human beings, and one of them married Lillian Moller, a woman who by training, by instinct, and by experience was deeply aware of human beings, the perfect mental complement in the work to which they had set their hands.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Cited in: Harold F. Smiddy and Lionel Naum. " Evolution of a "Science of Managing" in America https://archive.org/details/selectedreadings00shul," in: Selected readings in management, Fremont A. Shull (edd), 1957. p. 16-17 1950s, "Management's Debt to the Engineers", 1952

Love, Education, History, Girl

“Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is not tenable? Just think this over. Sooner or later it ends with one's standing frankly either to the right or to the left.
It is no ditch, and I repeat, then it was '48 [the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, ] now it is '84 [1884]; then there was a barricade of paving stones - now it is not of stones, but a barricade as to the incompatibility of old and new.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Autumn 1884; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 381) p. 38 1880s, 1884

Thinking

“The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

"Buddhism and the Coming Revolution" (1961, 1969)

“This is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers. It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the revolution. Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution, because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to develop, and the right to be victorious.”

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

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

Law, Victory

“Reform is a word you always ought to watch out for. Like, when Mao started the Cultural Revolution it wasn't called a reform. Reform is a change that you're supposed to like. So as soon as you hear the word reform you can reach for your wallet and see who's lifting it. […] Subsidy is another interesting word, kind of like reform. It's a subsidy if public funds are used for public purposes. That's called a subsidy. It's not called a subsidy when it goes to private wealth. That's reform or something.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Free Market Fantasies" at Harvard University, April 13, 1996 https://chomsky.info/19960413/. Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Change, Wealth

“Hitler and others promised that as soon as the National Socialist revolution had removed Jewry, economic exploitation would be overcome and a socially just utopia would be nigh.”

Götz Aly (1947) German journalist, historian and social scientist

Source: Why the Germans? Why the Jews?: Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust (2011), p. 89

“The American Revolution was ignited by the slogan ‘no taxation without representation’, a slogan suggested by democratic ideals… Ought not the present day version of the old slogan be ‘No annihilation without representation?”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

1960s, "The Study of Conflict," 1968

“The Myth is the Myth of the Blood, which, under the sign of the Swastika, released the World Revolution. It is the Awakening of the Soul of the Race, which, after a period of long slumber, victoriously put an End to Racial Chaos.”

Alfred Rosenberg book The Myth of the Twentieth Century

Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - 1930 (in front of the actual text, not by Rosenberg himself)
Misattributed

World, Soul, Victory

“the radical feminist revolution is nothing less than a destruction of our civilization…We are no longer what were were. The West has collapsed.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

How Civilizations Fall

“It seems acceptable today to scream for revolution, without any concept of what will follow it. This is just what the forces at large want, for who will follow a man who doesn't know where he's going?”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Two: "Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance", p. 62.

“[The Conservatives' Industry Act contains] the most comprehensive armoury of government control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought necessary by the last Labour government…Heath has performed a very important historical role in preparing for the fundamental and irreversible transfer in the balance of power and wealth which has to take place…The whole nature of the mixed economy operating on market forces has been transformed by this quiet revolution in a way that is not yet fully appreciated.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

'Heath's spadework for socialism', The Sunday Times (25 March 1973), p. 61
1970s

Way, Nature, Wealth

“We are in a new era. The Almighty has destined us to serve this country and helped to succeed in our Revolution, which aimed at destroying injustice and tyranny, from which we suffered for many long years.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College (1959)

Suffering, Help, Country

“We can say to the other revolutionaries: you are right to be dissatisfied with this society with its erroneous and unjust ways, but how can you change everything straightaway with your own hands? Do you want to destroy the persons whom you see as adversaries, and even those who you suspect of not being revolutionary?
Do you want the revolution to go forward with massacres, torture, the absolute power of a group, which prevents other people from speaking, informing themselves or criticizing or even living? We want a society founded on love and shall we start with cultivating and stimulating hatred? We want a free society and should we increase tyranny and absolutism? We want a good and clean end and should we use dirty and terrible means?”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Love, People, Way, Change

“Yo, I heard it's said the revolution won't be televised
But in the land of milk and honey there's a date you gotta sell it by
Otherwise it just expires and spoils
and these folks jump out the pot when the water too hot”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

Beautiful Struggle (track 13)
Albums, The Beautiful Struggle (2004)

Water

“You don't know old Charles as I know him. He's got into a queer set, and there's no knowing what mischief he's up to. He's perfectly capable of starting a revolution in Armenia or somewhere merely to see how it feels like to be a revolutionary. That's the damned thing about the artistic temperament.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 1 "Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase"

Feeling

“We are sleeping on a volcano… A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Original text: Nous dormons sur un volcan… Ne voyez-vous pas que la terre commence à trembler. Le vent de la révolte souffle, la tempête est à l’horizon.
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
1840s

Sleep

“You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

As quoted in Marianne Sinclair's !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (1968)

Age, Drawing, Personality

“Lenin was the contemporary politician whom [Mussolini] most admired and he studied the Russian revolution closely to see what lessons it offered. Lenin seemed to him ‘the very negation of socialism’ because he had not created a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the socialist party, but only of a few intellectuals who had found the secret of winning power. Mussolini was, in truth, envious.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 41

Truth, Secret, Study

“Our Being is Becoming, not stasis. Our Science is Utopia, our Reality is Eros, our Desire is Revolution.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

Desire and Need (1967).

Reality, Science

“Ichthyophils imagine that human beings want a life in which they can make their own choices. But what if they can be fulfilled only by a life in which they follow each other? The majority who obey the fashion of the day may be acting on a secret awareness that they lack the potential for a truly individual existence. Liberalism – the ichthyophil variety, at any rate – teaches that everyone yearns to be free. Herzen’s experience of the abortive European revolutions of 1848 led him to doubt that this was so. It was because of his disillusionment that he criticized Mill so sharply. But if it is true that Mill was deluded in thinking that everyone loves freedom, it may also be true that without this illusion there would be still less freedom in the world. The charm of a liberal way of life is that it enables most people to renounce their freedom unknowingly.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Ichthyophils and Liberals (p. 62)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Love, Life, People, Secret

“For Leopardi evil is integral to the way the world works; but when he talks of evil he does not mean any kind of malign agency of the sort that Gnostics imagined. Evil is the suffering that is built into the scheme of things. ‘What hope is there when evil is ordinary?’ he asks. ‘I mean, in an order where evil is necessary?’ These rhetorical questions show why Leopardi had no interest in projects of revolution and reform. No type of human action – least of all the harlequinade of politics – could fundamentally alter a world in which evil was ordinary.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.35-6)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

World, Hope, Way, Imagination

“Gary Kildall was one of the original pioneers of the PC revolution. He was a very creative computer scientist who did excellent work. Although we were competitors, I always had tremendous respect for his contributions to the PC industry. His untimely death was very unfortunate and he and his work will be missed.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Bill Gates, quoted in The Computer Chronicles. "Special Edition: Gary Kildall." (1995)
1990s

Death

“And for me, it's pretty clear-cut that until we learn some better explanation for how life began, there is a God who always existed and created the heavens and the earth. And until somebody gives me a better explanation, I'll go for it. And it doesn't scare me at all when scientists say, "Oh, but that can't be proved," because neither can any of the Darwinian hypotheses about how life began be proved. Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Interviews: Ben Stein is Expelled! Christianity Today Movies, Christianity Today Movies: Interview with Ben Stein, 15 April 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/benstein.html,

Life, God, People, Idea

“Although, therefore, the theory of nationality is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism, it has an important mission in the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom, — the absolute monarchy and the revolution.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

"Nationality" (1862)

World, Freedom

“Any person and any element who harms the friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union will be considered the enemy of the country, enemy of our people and enemy of our revolution. We will not allow anybody in Afghanistan to act against the friendship of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.”

Hafizullah Amin (1929–1979) politician, former Afghan head of state (1979)

As quoted in Beverley Male (1982) Revolutionary Afghanistan: A Reappraisal, page 183

Friendship, People, Personality, Country

“Mao Zedong was a great leader of the Chinese Revolution and as a result enjoyed an enormous amount of prestige among he ordinary Chinese people. However, Mao, as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist, had always worked with and relied upon other Party leaders as well had always worked with and relied upon either Party leaders as well as the grass-roots Part members and masses to accomplish political, economic and social goals. Mao never relied upon and never believed in a command hierarchy imposed form above. Within the Chinese Communist Party, Mao had never gained that kind of absolute control that Stalin had over the Soviet Communist Party (and even Stalin could not simply impose his will without the cooperation of much of the Party and state bureaucracy). ON the contrary, on many historical occasions, Mao often found himself in the minority (as Lenin did within the Part leadership. If Mai's intention had eventually become the will of the Party, that took place only after patient and sustained persuasion, difficult and sometimes intense intra-Party struggle, criticism and self-criticisms, and most importantly, after the Party leaders and members had learnt from practice themselves.”

Li Minqi (1969) Chinese economist

Source: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (2008), Chapter Two, "Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: the Rise of Modern China"

People, Grass, Parting

“A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Robert F. Kennedy, in a speech in the US Senate (9 May 1966)
Misattributed

Peace, Success

“What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art — but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“How could liberty ever have established itself amongst us? Apart from several tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes… But it is in the nation’s senate that the most grotesque parades have taken place.”

Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) politician and journalist during the French Revolution

L'Ami du peuple, no.672 (1792-07-14)

“The social revolution has been slow in reaching our country. We have been exempt, not because we had solved the problems, but because we had not yet confronted them.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p. xi

Problem, Country

“Who is it who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served a poor pension of eightpence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of that law come from? Whose finger inscribed it? These are the questions that will be asked. The answers are charged with peril for the order of things the Peers represent; but they are fraught with rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark ages which are now merging into the light.”

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

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 174-175.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life, People, Age, Law

“We have a president who apparently loves instability and revolution, and that is the antithesis [pointing at blackboard] of those two words, "Social Security."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2011-02-23
Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2011-02-24
Beck: "We Have A President Who Apparently Loves Instability and Revolution"
2011-02-23
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102230041
2011-02-24
2010s, 2011

Love

“The Industrial Revolution was well under way and people were looking for some way to justify the cruelty that accompanied this revolution. (Child labor, sweat houses, etc. ) Darwin’s book was just what the world needed to justify the cruel ruthless tactics of the industrial revolution. Darwin had a theology degree. He became a deist, and later, very proudly an atheist. There are many stories of him repenting on his death bed, but there still is much confusion on the issue.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

Death, People, Books, World

“We took the Bible and prayer out of public schools. Now we're having weekly shootings. We had the '60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

1998-08
Television series
Politically Incorrect
ABC
Politically Incorrect August 1998 Part 1 of 2 Eddie Izzard Christine O'Donnell
YouTube
2009-06-21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFisw16di3w
2010-10-20
Scott
Keyes
O’Donnell So Fervently Pro-Truth That She Wouldn’t Lie To Nazis Asking If She Were Hiding Jews In Her Home
Think Progress
2010-09-15
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/15/odonnell-lie-jews/
2010-10-20
TV appearances

People, School

“Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Nations and Internationalism http://leninist.biz/en/1979/NI302/0-Introduction.005

People, Question

“It (i. e., agriculture) was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future—even genetic engineering—were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 14 “The Swarming People” section II (p. 456)

Change, Future

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom, People, Books, Age

“The Republic of South Africa has a new formula under the National Party's leadership: black nations can get freedom without firing shots or revolution.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As prime minister, Graaff-Reinet, 26 May 1984, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 35

Freedom

“To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Coda" from Smart Set (December 1920)
1920s

Religion, Flying

“The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on the surface.”

James P. Cannon (1890–1974) American politician

Theses on the American Revolution

Appearance

“We are moving towards another type of society than that to which we have become accustomed. This is sometimes referred to as a new service society, the society of the second industrial revolution or the post-industrial society. There is no guarantee of our safe arrival. Not only are the interdependencies greater – they are differently structured… The changes in the policy field [housing, health care, urban rehabilitation, education, etc. ] demand a new mobilization of the sciences.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Eric Trist (1969) cited in: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld ed. (2011) INNOVATION SUMMIT April 13 & 14, 2011 http://summit.research.illinois.edu/files/posters/CutcherGershenfeldWorkshopPoster.pdf.

Health, Education, Science, Change

“The Bolsheviks will do everything to secure this peaceful development of the revolution.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"The Russian Revolution And Civil War" (29 September 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/29.htm; in Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 28-42. 1910s

Peace

“In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Lincoln and the Priests of Academe"
1990s, United States - Essays 1952-1992 (1992)

Reading

“After a few years of private retirement he emerged to pay a visit to this country, one hundred years ago. Congress bestowed upon him citizenship and treasure and he was received everywhere with reverence and acclaim. When the Revolution of July occurred in 1830 he once more became Commander of the National Guard, where his influence saved his people from horrible excesses. Again there was an effort to establish a republic and make him President. But he thought a constitutional monarchy best adapted to the needs of his nation. So he refused this most appealing of all honors and returned to his country home. His long career was ended.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People, Home, Effort, Country

“When I am with old friends… We recount what we have seen what we have felt the good and the evil that the Revolution has done all the assaults the days the nights the punishments and the fate of our unfortunate friends who perished in the time of Terror when good men feared for their lives We are beginning to see the twilight of the times in which our families were happy.”

Jacques-Louis Ménétra (1738–1812) glazier, tradesman

quoted in Warren Roberts (2000). Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Louis Prieur, Revolutionary. p. 321.

Men, Fate, Happiness, Fear

“Nehru's great passion was to change our society — the congealed society which we inherited from our own past, and from the static past of the British period. And, social change he connected with economic change. We could not change our society without changing our economic system and economic relations in society. His whole dream was that, his whole effort was in that direction. But the march of society, of social change has not been fast enough, nor fundamental enough so far. And, our inherited caste system remains with us, but it has been very badly battered. And, the conceptions behind the caste system have also been very badly damaged by policies, by the march of technology and economics, all these things. To some extent while this progressive movement was taking place, there was also, concurrently, some sort of counter-revolution, resisting it. But the overwhelming force of the progressive movement has been winning by and large. But now we have to specifically deal with many of the social ills and backwardness.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Dreams, Effort, Passion, Change

“It is unprecedented for the men who made a revolution to remain in power after it is over. Yet one still finds revolutionaries: that proves how badly history is taught.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Men, History

“There is a widespread impression today that the history of economics is a sequence of revolutions and counter-revolutions, successive schools rising to dominance just to be deposed in a crisis by another school. According to this view, paraphrasing Marx, all history of economics is a history of school struggles, punctuated by revolutions.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Jürg Niehans, " Revolution and evolution in economic theory https://ecompapers.biz.uwa.edu.au/paper/PDF%20of%20Discussion%20Papers/1992/92-20%20Niehans,%20J.pdf." The Australian Quarterly (1993): 498-515.

School, History, Success

“The Russian revolution was not a socialist revolution… but a managerial revolution… Today Russia is the nation which has, in its structural aspects, advanced furthest along the managerial road.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 220–221; As cited in Marcel van der Linden (2007, p. 83)

“I'm reading a biography of St John Baptist de la Salle - Extraordinary what educational insights and experiments have existed already - and what has been forgotten!. That reformatory, for instance, which he founded on the most amazing principles somewhere around 1680…The young delinquents were detained in solitary confinement to begin with, being promoted later.. to community life.. But in their single cells they were given flowers and plants to cultivate and singing birds to breed! The prisoners took their meals together with the Brothers, and each of the boys in solitary confinement was entrusted to one particular Brother…The Jansenists were bitter opponents of the Brothers, for in all his schools de la Salle laid great stress on frequent Communion.. They did their best to oppose him personally and to hinder his work. The French Revolution wrecked his Institute, some of the Brothers were executed, others emigrated.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Life, Education, School, Boy

“Sacredness is the essence of religion. You know, a great river may become polluted as it flows past a town, but if the pollution isn’t too great, the river cleanses itself as it goes along, and within a few miles it is again clean, fresh, pure. Similarly, when once the mind comes upon this sacredness, then every act is a cleansing act. Through its very movement the mind is making itself innocent, and therefore it is not accumulating. A mind that has discovered this sacredness is in constant revolution — not economic or social revolution, but an inner revolution through which it is endlessly purifying itself. Its action is not based on some idea or formula. As the river, with a tremendous volume of water behind it, cleanses itself as it flows, so does the mind cleanse itself when once it has come upon this religious sacredness.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XV, p. 244
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works

Religion, Idea, Water, Past

“I want to take as the canvas for my next picture the entire surface of France. This picture will be called 'The Blue Revolution'. It isn’t the fact of my taking power in France that interests me, but rather the possibility of creating a monochrome picture in my new manner: ‘The Refinement of Sensibility’.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 43
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“I want to say something about Picasso as a revolutionary. A revolution in the history of art is a reflection of the history of society. Art cannot revolutionize society. It is a reflection of that revolution.. You [= Joseph Beuys ] talking in the same interview] have revolutionized art. But I do not see that you have revolutionized society directly. You have depicted what has not yet existed.... art and life are not two separate realms, but they have shifted out of phase with each other.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Life, Art, History

“Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”

Ignazio Silone (1900–1978) Italian author and politician

The School for Dictators http://books.google.com/books?id=9scdAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Fascism+was+a+counter-revolution+against+a+revolution+that+never+took+place%22&pg=PA42#v=onepage (1938)

“You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Statement to the South London Press in 1977 on moving constituencies away from Norwood in the 1977 GLC election. Quoted in Citizen Ken (1984) by John Carvel, p. 61

“First, the physicists in the persons of Faraday and Maxwell, proposed the "electromagnetic field" in contradistinction to matter, as a reality of a different category. Then, during the last century, the mathematicians, … secretly undermined belief in the evidence of Euclidean Geometry. And now, in our time, there has been unloosed a cataclysm which has swept away space, time, and matter hitherto regarded as the firmest pillars of natural science, but only to make place for a view of things of wider scope and entailing a deeper vision. This revolution was promoted essentially by the thought of one man, Albert Einstein.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Introduction
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

Nature, Reality, Science, Time

“He [Hitler] had learned much from Leon Trotzky, whose slogan of the permanent revolution he now adopted: ‘The German Revolution will not be concluded until the whole of the German nation is given a new form, a new organization, and a new structure.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Der Fuehrer, Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944), p. 499

Learning

“In their broad Augustan day, Scottish miners were legally still serfs, just as miners in Greece had always been slaves; and neither civilization thought anything amiss. …It was the engine, it was the horsepower which created consideration for the horse; and the Industrial Revolution which created our sensibility.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Horse

“Nilus: This is a program of Jewish world conquest…proof of who is behind this revolution!
Palace official 2: Hmm!
Nilus: It must be shown to the tsar at once. …Rebellion is filled with Jewish influence.
Palace official 1: Where did you get this document Nilus?
Nilus: It was given to me by Sukhotin, who secured it from our Okhrana' in Paris…beyond that I cannot tell you!
Palace official 2: Yes indeed. …This will be of great interest to the tsar.
Nilus: The sanctity of our monarchy is the will of God…Christians must defend it!
Palace official 2: Get him out of here!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.64

God, World

“When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

As quoted in The School as a Home for the Mind : Creating Mindful Curriculum, Instruction, and Dialogue (2007) by Arthur L. Costa, p. 91

Life, Business, Training

“What's the point of a revolution
without general
copulation copulation copulation”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Chorus, act 2, scene 30 (p. 92)
Marat/Sade (1963)

“The war which is being waged today by the German armed forces under the highest command of Adolf Hitler is a war of an immense reform. It does not only overcome the world of ideas of the French Revolution, but it also exterminates directly all those racially infecting germs of Jewry and its bastards, which now since over a hundred years could develop without check among the European nations. The Jew question, which for 2000 years was a problem for the European nations which was not solved, will now find its solution through the national socialistic revolution for Germany and whole Europe.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

“The Jewish Question as a World Problem,”, Radio Broadcast, 28 March 1941. Quoted in Roderick Stackelberg, Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts. Routledge, 2013 (pp. 337-8).

War, World, Idea, Question

“Now, there were many reasons why the south did not appeal to the right of revolution. One reason was that there were no abuses that they had been subject to, comparable to the ones enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, said that there was not a single constitutional right which anybody could point to, to say that that had been violated. They were exercising this right as something that was to their pleasure, for their own purposes, but that had nothing to do with the Constitution, and yet they were claiming it as a Constitutional right to withdraw from the Union.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Pleasure, Exercises

“The revolution in scientific ideas just mentioned is primarily logical. It is due to recognition that the very method of physical science, with its primary standard units of mass, space, and time, is concerned with measurements of relations of change, not with individuals as such.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea, Science, Change, Time

“We venture to say a few words in explanation of the plan of this work. Its object is not to force upon the public the personal views or theories of its author; nor has it the pretensions of a scientific work, which aims at creating a revolution in some department of thought. It is rather a brief summary of the religions, philosophies, and universal traditions of human kind, and the exegesis of the same, in the spirit of those secret doctrines, of which none — thanks to prejudice and bigotry — have reached Christendom in so unmutilated a form, as to secure it a fair judgment. Since the days of the unlucky mediaeval philosophers, the last to write upon these secret doctrines of which they were the depositories, few men have dared to brave persecution and prejudice by placing their knowledge upon record. And these few have never, as a rule, written for the public, but only for those of their own and succeeding times who possessed the key to their jargon. The multitude, not understanding them or their doctrines, have been accustomed to regard them en masse as either charlatans or dreamers. Hence the unmerited contempt into which the study of the noblest of sciences — that of the spiritual man — has gradually fallen.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Introduction
Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I

Men, Secret, Religion, Understanding

“The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience.
…The ancients knew a few numerical laws… But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. …the new science …not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)

Law, Birth, Nature, Study

“[T]he effects of general change [in literature] are most tellingly recorded not in alteration of the best products, but in the transformation of the most ordinary workaday books; for when potboilers adopt the new style, then the revolution is complete.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Good Sports & Bad", p. 335; originally published in The New York Review of Books (1995-03-02)
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville (2003)

Books, Literature, Change

“I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 5 (The Fourth Hussars).

“Every revolution has its counterrevolution — that is a sign the revolution is for real. And every revolution must defend itself against this counterrevolution, or the revolution will fail.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Listen Yankee (1960), pp. 54.
1960s

“Camera-Phones are at the root of the Citizen-Journalism revolution.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

NPR Interview January 2007, regarding the use of camera phones in citizen-journalism http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/06/father_of_the_camera.html.

“In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Fragment 13 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

“People are terrified of changing their minds. Changing your mind is a door you don’t want to open because you don’t know what’s behind it. Changing your mind means losing all your friends. Changing your mind means a complete revolution in your life. Changing your mind means publicly admitting you’ve been wrong. […] People don’t want to change their minds.”

Peter Hitchens book The Rage Against God

2016
Peter Hitchens: The Rage Against God
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEJ_dtN0QO8
On Changing One's Mind

Life, People, Change

“When closed societies collapse but fail to make the transition to openness the reason need not be that they languish in anarchy or suffer a return to dictatorship. It may be that they adopt an illiberal form of democracy. Along with the liberal democratic tradition that goes back to Locke and the English civil war there is a tradition, originating in the French Revolution and formulated theoretically by Rousseau, which understands democracy as the expression of popular will. The elective theocracy that is emerging in much of post-Saddam Iraq is a democratic polity in the latter sense, as is the current regime in Iran; so is the Hamas government in Palestine… To be sure, these regimes often lack freedom of information and expression and legal limitations on government power, which are essential features of democracy in the liberal tradition. In these respects they are closed societies, but they are not dictatorships. It is often forgotten that democracy, defined chiefly by elections and the exercise of power in the name of the majority, can be as repressive of individual freedom and minority rights as dictatorship - sometimes more so.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

'George Soros and the Open Society' (p.116-7)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)

War, Exercises, Democracy, Understanding

“Europe is to be turned into a banana republic by taxing labor – not finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE). Governments are to impose heavier employment and sales taxes while cutting back pensions and other public spending. … The financial privatization and credit-creation monopoly that governments have relinquished to banks is now to really pay off – at the price of breaking up Europe. … The unelected members of the European Central Bank have taken over planning power from elected governments. Beholden to its financial constituency, the ECB has convinced the EU commission to back the new oligarchic power grab. … In sum, the Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what the United States has achieved since real wages stopped rising in 1979: doubling the share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1%. This involves reducing the middle class to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Who Wins? http://michael-hudson.com/2010/10/who-wins/ (October 3, 2010) Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-

Wealth

“I see a sequence of seven main phases: creation, revolution or exodus (Israel in Egypt), law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Five, p. 106

Wisdom, Law

“We in Yemen are no less thirsty for freedom and dignity than our brothers and sisters in Tunis…It was feared that the revolution would descend into violence and distort the image of the other Arab uprisings. But the Yemeni revolution surprised everyone with its astonishingly peaceful nature…What is truly regrettable, though, is that the world has not shown the least interest in what the Saleh regime does with Yemen and its revolutionaries…We in Yemen look forward to a clear stand from the UN, world governments and civil society organisations in condemning the violence of Saleh's regime.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, The world must not forsake Yemen's struggle for freedom (2011)

World, Fear, Peace, Nature

“There is no field of activity for great men without the coming of great wars, great struggles and great revolutions.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

Rival Caesars (1903)

Men, War

“All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Quoted by dissident cleric Hossein-Ali Montazeri, once in line to be Iran's supreme leader. ShiaNews.com (17 December 2000) http://www.shianews.com/hi/asia/news_id/0000573.php. This statement is said to have been made after the Mojahedin-e Khalgh militant organization launched an offensive against Iranian troops from bases in Iraq. Attributed Variant: Variant: All those against the revolution, that insist on their position, must disappear and quickly be executed.

“They knew that women were very effective and very strong in this revolution, but they think that now, the role is for the man.”

Salwa Bugaighis (1963–2014) Libyan activist

Salwa Bugaighis after resigning here position at the Libya’s National Transitional Council, quoted in: Salwa Bugaighis http://www.vitalvoices.org/node/2680 at vitalvoices.org, 2014

Women, Thinking, Strong

“The revolution which Black Theology advocates … [means] confronting white racists and saying: 'If it's a fight you want, I am prepared to oblige you.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

This is what the black revolution means.
Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 136

Fight

“The last two years show that what Enoch [Powell] says today Edward [Heath] will be proclaiming as Tory policy anything from three to six months later…Selsdon Man is not just a lurch to the right, it is an atavistic desire to reverse the course of twenty-five years of social revolution. What they are planning is a wanton, calculated and deliberate return to greater inequality…The message to the British people would be simple and brutal. It would say, "You're out on your own."”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Nottingham (6 February 1970), quoted in The Times (7 February 1970), p. 1 and Philip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), p. 40
Prime Minister

People

“Although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905-07 displayed no such “brilliant” successes as at time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions, it was undoubtedly a "real people's" revolution, since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped on the entire course of the revolution the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Ch. 3 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch03.htm (1917)

People, Way, Time, Success

“The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over what one columnist called the “cooling of America.” But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"Yes, the System Is Rigged" http://buchanan.org/blog/yes-system-rigged-125529 (August 11, 2016), Patrick J. Buchanan 2010s

War, Time

“There was very little that prevented the vandalism of 1793 from suddenly producing a second revolution as marvelous as the first was horrible. The whole human race was approaching its release; the civilized, barbarian, and savage order would have disappeared forever if the Convention, which trampled down all prejudices, had not bowed down before the only one that had to be destroyed, the institution of marriage.”

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) French utopian socialist and philosopher

Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 304-5
New Amorous World

Marriage

“Every play which is produced—and for that matter, every book that is published, every picture which is exhibited, every film which is turned—is subjected to the Board of Censors… Romantic love in even its purest phases is not thought to be a fitting subject for consideration of citizens of a communist state;... the sex play is unknown in modern Russia… There remains as the ubiquitous theme for plays: revolution, with all the patriotic and nationalistic connotations which have grown up around it; heroism, sacrifice for the nation and class; consciousness of solidarity with one’s fellow proletarians; common suffering; great adventures with new ideas; great prospects for future machine age which is to be a sort of Russian-communist Americanism.”

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

Source: "The New Russia" 1928, pp. 27-28

Love, Books, Age, Sex

“In arguing against Zionism's designation of the Palestinian revolution as "terrorism," Arafat likened the Palestinian resistance to the American Revolution, the European anti-Nazi resistance, and the anticolonial struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. After reviewing the British and Zionist outrages against the Palestinian people, Arafat emphasized that "all this has made our people neither vindictive nor vengeful. Nor has it caused us to resort to the racism of our enemies… For we deplore all those crimes committed against the Jews, we also deplore all the real discrimination suffered by them because of their faith." Arafat concluded by calling on Jews to oppose racism and desist from supporting the racist Israeli state, enjoining them to live as equals with Palestinians in a democratic Palestine.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
On the PLO

People, Faith, Support, Suffering

“On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Way, Game, Intelligence, Communication

“Whoever finishes a revolution only halfway, digs his own grave.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

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

“The American Revolution and the Civil War were not merely discrete events. They constitute the first and last acts of a single drama. The fourscore and seven years between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address comprehended the action of a tremendous world-historical tragedy.”

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

How to Think about the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration https://books.google.com/books?id=iKGGAAAAMAAJ (1978) p. 53 Also quoted in Vindicating the Founders https://books.google.com/books?id=DjlpSl-x1gMC, by Thomas G. West, p. 32 1970s

War, World

“And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of military government in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries. Now let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945, after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little known fact, these people declared themselves independent in 1945, they quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom. And yet our government refused to recognize, President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we failed victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years, trying to reconquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America, it came to the point that we were meeting more than 80% of the war cost. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that and even after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought in a real sense to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem, who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition, people were brutally murdered merely because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence, and then by increasing numbers of United States troops, who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of General Ky, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we're supporting in Vietnam today. Oh, our government, and the press generally, won't tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Life, God, War, Happiness

“The most powerful figure in French politics after the retirement of Clemenceau was ex-President Poincaré. He disliked the Treaty [of Versailles] intensely. For several years after the withdrawal of Clemenceau, the policy of France was dominated by this rather sinister little man. He represented the vindictive and arrogant mood of the governing classes in France immediately after her terrible sacrifices and her astounding victory. He directly and indirectly governed France for years. All the Premiers who followed after Clemenceau feared Poincaré. Millerand was his creature. Briand, who was all for the League and a policy of appeasement, was thwarted at every turn by the intrigues of Poincaré. Under his influence, which continued for years after his death, the League became not an instrument of peace and goodwill amongst all men, including Germans; it was converted into an organisation for establishing on a permanent footing the military and thereby the diplomatic supremacy of France. That policy completely discredited the League as a body whose decisions on disputes between nations might be trusted to be as impartial as those of any ordinary tribunal in any civilised country. The obligations entered into by the Allies as to disarmament were not fulfilled. British Ministers put up no fight against the betrayal of the League and the pledges as to disarmament. Hence the Nazi Revolution, which has for the time—maybe for a long time—destroyed the hopes of a new era of peaceful co-operation amongst free nations.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume II (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 1410.
About

Death, Men, Fear, Peace

“The Hebrew race are my most inveterate enemies at home and abroad; they remain what they are and always were: the forgers of lies and the masterminds governing unrest, revolution, upheaval by spreading infamy with the help of their poisoned, caustic, satyrical spirit. If the world once wakes up it should mete out to them the punishment in store for them, which they deserve.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to Poultney Bigelow (14 April 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 210
1920s

World, Home, Help

“I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA

War, World, Family, Hope