Overthrow of Power Quotes

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Those carried away by power are soon carried away.

A storm is coming; our storm. Emperor - we come for you!

I am the signet which marks the page where the revolution has been stopped; but when I die it will turn the page and resume its course.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.

A successful revolution establishes a new community. A missed revolution makes irrelevant the community that persists. And a compromised revolution tends to shatter the community that was, without an adequate substitute.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom.

Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?

Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.

Revolution, the substitution of one social system for another, has always been a struggle, a painful and a cruel struggle, a life and death struggle.

If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions.

It's not a revolution if nobody loses

A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing “We Shall Overcome”? Just tell me. You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you’re too busy swinging.

You don't have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don't have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait! Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, They mock the air with idle state.

A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way.