A Quote by Shirley Williams

The saddest illusion of the revolutionary is that revolution itself will transform the nature of human beings.

Shirley Williams

Quote Topics

Beings Human Human Being Human Beings Illusion Itself Nature Revolution Revolutionary Saddest Self Will Transform Will

Quote Author

Shirley Williams
British - Politician
Born: July 27, 1930

To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves.

Grace Lee Boggs

This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings.

Aldous Huxley

It is critical to realize that underlying the extermination of nature is the marginalization of human beings. If we are to save what is wild, what is irreparable and majestic in nature, then we will ironically have to turn to each other and take care of all the human beings here on Earth. There is no boundary that will protect an environment from a suffering humanity.

Paul Hawken

The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day

Che Guevara

Even in a jungle, lovely flowers will spring up here and there, such being the fecundity of nature, and however badly our pastors and masters run our society, however much they pull to pieces that which they claim to be keeping intact, nature remains fecund, human beings are born with human traits, sometimes human strength outweighs human weakness, and human grace shows itself amid human ugliness. ‘In the bloodiest times,’ as our play has it, ‘there are kind people.’

Eric Bentley

Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.

Achim Steiner

If it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings.

Paulo Freire

Human beings are not on earth to be citizens, or taxpayers, or socially engineered pawns of other human beings; rather they are here in order to grow, to transform, to become their authentic selves.

Stephan A. Hoeller

And people who believe in God think God has put human beings on earth because they think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.

Mark Haddon

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

Ben Hecht

The theater itself is not revolutionary: it is a rehearsal for the revolution.

Augusto Boal

Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution. The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!

Fidel Castro

Just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, ... not just the elimination of the male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself; genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

Shulamith Firestone

Whether or not LSD research and therapy will return to society, the discoveries that psychedelics made possible have revolutionary implications for our understanding of the psyche, human nature, and the nature of reality.

Stanislav Grof

Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary... Humanity will, of course, change; human society will, of course, continue to develop - in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.

Fidel Castro

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.