92 Revolution-Inspiring Quotes

In every era, words have had the power to ignite change, stirring individuals and masses alike to challenge the status quo and envision new possibilities. Whether spoken by influential leaders or found within the lines of timeless literature, certain quotes resonate profoundly, leaving an indelible mark on the pursuit of freedom, justice, and innovation. Our curated collection of the top 92 revolution-inspiring quotes brings together these sparks of wisdom, hope, and motivation. As you delve into these powerful statements, be prepared to feel uplifted, thoughtful, and ready to embrace the revolutionary spirit within you.

1. “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

2. “No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time. ” - Emma Goldman

3. “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” - Dorothy Day

4. “The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” - Thomas Jefferson

5. “We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.” - Subcomandante Marcos

6. “A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.” - Daisaku Ikeda

7. “Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.” - Anais Nin

8. “Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” - Emma Goldman

9. “It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view. Much later, I recognized it in "Revolution," the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman — and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze — as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. "All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people," Kapuscinski writes. "They should begin with a psychological chapter — one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process — sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock — demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feel free. Without that, there would be no revolution.” - Gloria Steinem

10. “An army of the people is invincible!” - Mao Zedong

11. “By being natural and sincere, one often can create revolutions without having sought them.” - Christian Dior

12. “Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.” - Abbie Hoffman

13. “Wenn die Menschen um ihre Freiheit kämpfen, erhalten sie durch ihren Sieg selten neue Herren.” - Lord Halifax

14. “Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.” - Vladimir Lenin

15. “I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.” - Michael Collins

16. “Everyone ate as a group, and a huge cauldron of dumpster-dived gruel bubbled over a campfire, tended by a grubby-handed group of chefs dicing potatoes and onions on a piece of cardboard on the ground. Huck [Finn] may have been right that a 'barrel of odds and ends' where the 'juice kind of swaps around' makes for better victuals, but it occurred to me that the revolution may well get dysentery.” - Matthew Power

17. “Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent...""Yes," said Rubashov. "So consequent, that in the interests of a just distribution of land we deliberately let die of starvation about five million farmers and their families in one year. So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Artic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China. ...” - Arthur Koestler

18. “It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? "We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.” - Arthur Koestler

19. “Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.” - Robert Hughes

20. “It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or sculptures. The difference between us and the artists of the 1920's is that they they thought such a work of art could be made. Perhaps it was a certain naivete that made them think so. But it is certainly our loss that we cannot.” - Robert Hughes

21. “We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest.” - John Adams

22. “With the single exception of the American Revolution, the aftermath of all revolutions from 1789 on only worsened the human condition.” - Arnold Beichman

23. “...this protracted war will pass through three stages. The first stage covers the period of the enemy's strategic offensive and our strategic defensive. The second stage will be the period of the enemy's strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counter-offensive. The third stage will be the period of our strategic counter-offensive and the enemy's strategic retreat.” - Mao Zedong

24. “The German experience brings us face to face with the major problem of the revolution in Western Europe. In these countries, the old bourgeois mode of production and the centuries-old civilisation which has developed with it have completely impressed themselves upon the thoughts and feelings of the popular masses. Hence, the mentality and inner character of the masses here is quite different from that in the countries of the East, who have not experienced the rule of bourgeois culture; and this is what distinguishes the different courses that the revolution has taken in the East and the West.” - Anton Pannekoek

25. “Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” - Bertrand Russell

26. “On the Russian revolutionaries:To leave your parents, faithful and loyal subjects of the Emperor, to leave your profession, to desist from having children, to lose your fortune, and to give up your civil honor, all for revolutionary conviction, makes for a league of more practical proof than any religious order.” - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

27. “Warfare is now an interlocking system of actions—political, economic,psychological, military—that aims at the overthrow of the establishedauthority in a country and its replacement by another regime.” - Roger Trinquier

28. “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” - Emiliano Zapata

29. “Basically, if you're not a utopianist, you're a schmuck.” - Jonathan Feldman

30. “You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant.” - Ernest Hemingway

31. “Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.” - Bob Marley

32. “When you have half of Caironese in slums, when you don't have clean water, when you don't have a sewer system, when you don't have electricity, and on top of that you live under one of the most repressive regimes right now... Well, put all that together, and it's a ticking bomb. It's not of a question of threat; it is question of looking around at the present environment and making a rational prognosis.” - Mohamed ElBaradei

33. “Revolution is everywhere, in everything. There is no final revolution, no final number.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

34. “I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” - Audre Lorde

35. “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” - Arundhati Roy

36. “Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.” - Terry Eagleton

37. “What a revolution in her ideas!” - Jane Austen

38. “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.” - Huey P. Newton

39. “If we don't make earnest moves toward real solutions, then each day we move one day closer to revolution and anarchy in this country. This is the sad, and yet potentially joyous, state of America.” - Louis Farrakhan

40. “To attempt, to brave, to persist, and persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to wrestle with destiny, to astound the catastrophe by the slight fear which is causes us, now to confront unjust power, again to insult intoxicated victory, to hold firm and withstand -- such is the example which nations need and the light which electrifies them.” - Victor Hugo

41. “What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull.” - Alain De Botton

42. “The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius - a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is invariably ignored as a lunatic."The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find; a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shaped should be."The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.” - Kurt Vonnegut

43. “Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.” - Victor Hugo

44. “But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out.” - Beatles

45. “الكارثة الحقيقية هنا هي انهيار القيم والمبادئ والأخلاق، فكيف تكون الجهة المسؤولة عن الأمن وحماية المواطن هي ذاتها الجهةالتي أدارت لسنوات الجريمة المنظمة ومليشيات البلطجة وأطفال الشوارع والسرقة والنهب والاغتصاب؟ كيف تكون عربات الإسعاف والمطافئ وحتى الشرطة أدوات لسحق البشر؟ كيف يمتلك عناصر الشرطة القدرة النفسية على خلع رداء الأمن في لحظات وارتداء رداء البلطجية واللصوص؟؟ إننا نتحدث عن فعل شيزوفريني بحت، انقسام في رؤية الشخص إلى المجتمع وإلى نفسه وإلى طبيعة عمله ودوره في المجتمع.” - Ihab Omar

46. “The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of jihadism when most people were half-asleep.And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the Weekly Standard and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you read their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is—as I wrote in my book A Long Short War—often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all.” - Christopher Hitchens

47. “Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.” - Alaa Al Aswany

48. “In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption.” - Tom Robbins

49. “The boldest plans for the future invoke the authority of the past; and that even a revolutionary seeks to satisfy himself that he is also a reactionary.” - G.K. Chesterton

50. “Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.” - Alan Moore

51. “Everyone that enters through Him is secured and the person shall find pastures for himself. Jesus really cares!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

52. “Are you the fruit of redemption? If yes, then make a delightful noise unto Him.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

53. “You don't need to go running from pillar to post looking for what God looks like.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

54. “Man is like a bride unto God. God is jealous when man veers away from Him.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

55. “Your decision not to join the crowd may be what God is waiting for to grant you revelation on how to deliver your family, your country, business, profession or even your church!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

56. “Your mouth is not given to you for feeding alone; it is given to you to programme events and circumstance around you.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

57. “Your words are powerful so what you say goes a long way to either establish or destroy you; this is why you should say things that God has said concerning you, not things that situations or circumstances say.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

58. “Don't say negative things about your spouse and children.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

59. “Create your world with God's Word in your mouth just say it and it will be accomplished!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

60. “Let your words glorify God and edify your hearers and then beautify your life.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

61. “Be a King. Dare to be Different, dare to manifest your greatness.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

62. “How many shots had to be fired to turn this child back to his home and anxious mother?” - Maaza Mengiste

63. “The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social classes are encouraged to wage a kind of war with each other. The result is that all over Trantor it is impossible for the people to take united action. Everywhere, the people would rather fight each other than make a common stand against the central tyranny and the Empire rules without having to exert force.” - Isaac Asimov

64. “Each of you must decide where you stand. All we ask is that you refuse to kneel. You are the people. You have the power. Open your eyes. Open your minds. Then close the fingers on your hand.” - Jay Kristoff

65. “A conscience is easier to swallow on an empty belly, simpler to swing with a broken wrist” - Jay Kristoff

66. “remember when God has answered you, it no longer matters who has been against you but for Him to answer you and change your story, you have to make up your mind to disobey the wrong order, change the status quo and BE DIFFERENT!” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

67. “[R]evolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of argument and reasoning;” - David Hume

68. “His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don't know life without exploitation, they don't even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will rvolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud - and then spring up and grab an ax. He'll grab an ax, my gracious sir, not because he simply can't sustain this new burden - he could carry it - he will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn't see, feel, or understand. A man doesn't seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity, and that, dear sir, is why His Majesty scolded the clerks. For their own convenience and vanity, instead of adding the burden bit by bit, in little bags, they tried to heave a whole big sack on at once.” - Ryszard Kapuściński

69. “Revolution does have to be violent precisely because the Pharaoh won't let you go. If the Pharaoh would let you go, the revolution won't have to be violent.” - Michael Hardt

70. “The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” - Bill Mollison

71. “The creators of the Constitution were not purple-robed scholars, sitting in their ivory towers attempting to put abstract theories into play, but men who had come to realize that their system of government was broken. These men desired desperately to repair it.” - C.L. Gammon

72. “Preparation for the future was necessary, and he was willing to admit that the great change would perhaps come in the upheaval of a revolution. But he argued that revolutionary propaganda was a delicate work of high conscience. It was the education of the masters of the world. It should be as careful as the education given to kings.” - Joseph Conrad

73. “I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.” - Anne Lamott

74. “Revolution must take place within one's own mind.” - Lionel Suggs

75. “The Earth was singing her revolution. She was calling her brave men and women to her defense.” - Rivera Sun

76. “An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

77. “Ladies, get confident about yourselves, build up your self-worth and esteem, love yourself and be proud of your achievements and your man will adore you for life.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

78. “Dona Laura, ao ver a casa encher-se de bocas - e pressentido que isso de golpes de Estado era coisa para levar o seu tempo -, apressou-se, de faca e alguidar, em direcção às capoeiras, donde regressou com as duas primeiras vítimas da revolução. E ainda não tinha soado as duas da tarde quando, num exercício ostensivo de poder, como se quisesse deixar bem claro o que quer que estivesse a acontecer no País, ali em casa tudo permanecia na mesma, desligou o rádio e a televisão, abriu as portadas que davam para o jardim e anunciou que a canja estava na mesa.” - João Ricardo Pedro

79. “Revolutions are infinite.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

80. “A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

81. “Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.” - Hannah Arendt

82. “Options abound world over, Options to choose from and be the best.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

83. “There is a ladder to Success! Choose to climb it.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

84. “In your emotions: exercise Joy over sadness.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

85. “Ride higher in life unto the higher life.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

86. “Don`t turn around in circles for making circles do not equate making progress.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

87. “Have the best course for all your actions.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

88. “Light is life and always wins.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

89. “The giver is the blessed! The receiver stands still.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

90. “You are created with a mandate! You have all you need to fulfill it.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

91. “History respects revolutions; and yet, if a revolution is progressive, support it; if it is reactionary, resist it!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

92. “Anyaele Sam Chiyson Leadership Law of Responsibility: Great leaders greet their geniuses through their greatest power of choice, principle-based living and highest means of expressing their voice.” - Anyaele Sam Chiyson