Political Upheaval Quotes

Every revolution has its counter-revolution.

Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen. So it is a shocking experience to them that he came in to office.

I think Donald Trump was successful in capturing "drain the swamp, change Washington, a big screw-you to the status quo" - which has already been ironic since election night. But it was one of his big messages, and there's a broader sense of how to address the feelings of so many people left behind by the economy.

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.

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.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

I saw the crown of France laying on the ground, so I picked it up with my sword.

...the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.

The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.

How can you make a revolution without executions?

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

The generation which commences a revolution can rarely complete it

Revolutions are not improvised. They are not made at will by individuals, and not even by the most powerful associations. They come about through force of circumstances, and are independent of any deliberate will or conspiracy.

As many have noted, Donald Trump's presidency is an insurgency. Mr. Trump himself is the quintessential insurgent, doing battle with a disingenuous and entrenched establishment.

I am fully aware of the concept of political revolutions. After all, that is what we hoped might happen in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, but what actually happened was capitalist restoration.

The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.

I tell you, my fellow Americans, that if we learned anything from the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the governments in Eastern Europe, even a totally controlled society cannot resist the winds of change that economics and technology and information flow have imposed in this world of ours. That is not an option. Our only realistic option is to embrace these changes and create the jobs of tomorrow.

Toppling secular dictators in the Middle East has only led to chaos and the rise of radical Islam.

The Soviets, where ten percent of the population controls the entire public by dictatorship. This will certainly not last long, in light of the historical dialectic

It would serve the Americans right if we emptied the prisons and let the subversives take power. They'd soon show Washington just how much they appreciate good old American values.

We intend to try by every means in our power to seize the country and create a government without bloodshed.

If the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain in control, what was the point of the revolution?