A Quote by John Stuart Mill

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

John Stuart Mill

Quote Topics

Affected Conquest Consequence Established Foreign Institutions Merely Moral Opinions Political Political Revolution Previous Revolutions Subversion

Quote Author

John Stuart Mill
English - Philosopher
May 20, 1806 - May 8, 1873

Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favor of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all

Thomas Kuhn

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

Blaise Pascal

Before, revolutions used to have ideological names. They could be communist, they could be liberal, they could be fascist or Islamic. Now, the revolutions are called under the medium which is most used. You have Facebook revolutions, Twitter revolutions. The content doesn't matter anymore - the problem is the media.

Ivan Krastev

To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"... On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.

Peter Drucker

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

Edmund Burke

The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit.

Henrik Ibsen

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Humanity has experienced many revolutionary changes over the course of history: revolutions in agriculture, in science, industrial production, as well as numerous political revolutions. But these have all been limited to the external aspects of our individual and collective lives.

Daisaku Ikeda

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

Gunnar Myrdal

At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.

Herbert Marcuse

Revolutions are never waged singing "We Shall Overcome." Revolutions are based upon bloodshed.

Malcolm X

Revolutions are not exportable: revolutions are created by oppressive conditions which Latin American countries exercise against their peoples.

Che Guevara

Revolutions are not made with literature. Revolutions equal gunfire.

Francois Duvalier

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Blaise Pascal

But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.