Top 600 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Revolutionaries - Page 4

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches.

The first duty of a government is to give education to the people.

If I or my soldiers have plundered or done injury to the houses or ministers of religion, I repent me of my sin; but it is not of Edward of England I shall ask pardon.

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

Republican democracy is overperfect and demands political virtues and talents far superior to our own.

As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!

Military action without politics is like a tree without a root.

As set forth by theologians, the idea of 'God' is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing.

Do not let us despair of the cause of liberty: it is still dear to the hearts of Frenchmen, and we shall one day have the felicity of seeing it established in our beloved country.

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I think, and out of all that I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.

As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture.

The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.

Whatever may be my feelings of personal gratitude to the Navy of the United States, I feel myself under still greater obligations to them for the honor they have done to the American name in every part of the globe.

It is unacceptable, it is forbidden, to harm the innocent.

In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

We still are pestered by two parties: the aristocratic, which is panting for a counter revolution, and the factious, which aims at the division of the empire and destruction of the authority - and perhaps of the lives - of the reigning branch, both of which parties are fomenting troubles.

I gave my heart to the Americans and thought of nothing else but raising my banner and adding my colors to theirs.

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

While we have entertained the contention that a deed may make more propaganda than hundreds of speeches, thousands of articles, and tens of thousands of pamphlets, we have held that an arbitrary act of violence will not necessarily have such an effect.

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.

Colonial atrocities have prepared the soil; it is for socialists to sow the seeds of revolution.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

The urge to destroy is a creative urge.

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.

The guerrilla fighters should be required to go to bed and get up at fixed hours. Games that have no social function and that hurt the morale of the troops and the consumption of alcoholic drinks should both be prohibited.

It behooves every American to encourage home manufactures, that our oppressors may feel through their pockets the effects of their blind folly.

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

It was by a Maryland colonel in the year 1777 that the British received, in the gallant defense of an important fort, one of the first lessons of what they were to expect from American valor and patriotism.

True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.

The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.

We are ready to end fascism once and for all, even in spite of the Republican government.

Every person has the truth in his heart. No matter how complicated his circumstances, no matter how others look at him from the outside, and no matter how deep or shallow the truth dwells in his heart, once his heart is pieced with a crystal needle, the truth will gush forth like a geyser.

The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

During my last voyage to America, I enjoyed the happiness of seeing that revolution completed, and, thinking of the one that would probably occur in France, I said in a speech to Congress, published everywhere except in the 'French Gazette,' 'May this revolution serve as a lesson to oppressors and as an example to the oppressed!'

I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claim to perform that service are imperious.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth... I look at everything from this point of view.

In order to conquer, what we need is to dare, still to dare, and always to dare.

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!

As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.

As governor of my country, I have been an enemy to its enemies.

There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Let not ambition take possession of you; love the friends of the people, but reserve blind submission for the law and enthusiasm for liberty.

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions.

A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

However, they did not treat the reasons that led to this condition. I believe that the conditions in the Palestinian territories are alway capable of explosion because the same circumstances are there.

In every State, the government is nothing but a permanent conspiracy on the part of the minority against the majority, which it enslaves and fleeces.

All men die, but not all men really live.

All the evils of France have been produced less by the perversity of the wicked and the violence of fools than by the hesitation of the weak, the compromises of conscience, and the tardiness of patriotism. Let every deputy, every Frenchman show what he feels, what he thinks, and we are saved!

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.

The real danger to the world's resistance movements is the attempt to distort reality and to place the blame on the resistance groups' actions without allowing them to portray their perspective, thus ignoring the reality of the occupation and the siege, like the situation in occupied Palestine.

There should be resolutions adopted in top international institutions, which are binding on all states and governments in the world, to forbid the defamation of religions.

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.