94 Inspiring Revolution Quotes

In the tapestry of history, revolutions stand out as pivotal moments of change, fueled by the relentless spirit of those who dare to demand better. Whether set against the backdrop of political upheaval, social transformation, or personal growth, revolutions ignite the spark of progress. Quotes from these historic periods capture not only the fervor and resolve of the revolutionaries but also offer timeless inspiration for those seeking to instigate change. In this collection, we delve into 94 inspiring revolution quotes, each offering wisdom, courage, and motivation to challenge the status quo and envision a brighter, more equitable future. These words resonate beyond their original contexts, reminding us that the power of change often begins with a single, determined voice.

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

2. “I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.” - Gary Snyder

3. “HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE” - Ernesto Che Guevara

4. “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

5. “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” - Aristotle

6. “You are hard at work madam ," said the man near her.Yes," Answered Madam Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do."What do you make, Madam ?"Many things."For instance ---"For instance," returned Madam Defarge , composedly ,Shrouds."The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, feeling it mightily close and oppressive .” - Charles Dickens

7. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]” - John F. Kennedy

8. “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.” - Vladimir Lenin

9. “The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!” - Albert Einstein

10. “The first duty of a man is to think for himself” - Jose Marti

11. “The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” - Leon Trotsky

12. “But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.” - Jose Marti

13. “A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.” - Jose Marti

14. “There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.” - Warren Ellis

15. “You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.” - Tennessee Williams

16. “What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?” - Robert Hughes

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

18. “Reform as such is inherently reactionary and perpetuates psychological dependence onthe enemy,while confusingthe true class contradictionsbetween ourselves and the enemy.” - Black Liberation Army Co-Ordinating Committee

19. “Revolution is a spectators sport. The majority will sit in the stands and watch the factions fight. At the end they will choose side with the team that is winning. ” - George Lincoln Rockwell

20. “Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.” - Jennifer Donnelly

21. “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

22. “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” - Thomas Jefferson

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

24. “The degeneration of the revolution in Russia does not pass from the revolution for communism to the revolution for a developed kind of capitalism, but to a pure capitalist revo­lution. It runs in parallel with world-wide capitalist domination which, by successive steps, eliminates old feudal and Asiatic forms in various zones. While the historical situation in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused the capitalist revolution to take liberal forms, in the twentieth century it must have totalitarian and bureaucratic ones.” - Amadeo Bordiga

25. “You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrasing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was as authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at León and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that you own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight.” - Ernest Hemingway

26. “For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say!” - Wilhelm Reich

27. “To call the population of strangers in the midst of which we live "society" is such a usurpation that even the sociologists wonder if they should abandon a concept that was, for a century, their bread and butter. Now they prefer the metaphor of a network to describe the connection of cybernetic solitudes, the intermeshing of weak interactions under names like "colleague," "contact," "buddy," acquaintance," or "date." Such networks sometimes condense into a milieu, where nothing is shared but codes, and where nothing is played out except the incessant recomposition of identity.” - The Invisible Committee

28. “The situation is like this: they hired our parents to destroy this world, and now they'd like to put us to work rebuilding it, and -- to add insult to injury -- at a profit.” - The Invisible Committee

29. “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.” - Patrick Henry

30. “Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.” - Victor Serge

31. “This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.” - Doris Lessing

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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “With its grace and carelessness, it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though [all] could be swept into a nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.” - George Orwell

36. “We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs. Liberation that raises a cry against others is no true liberation. Liberation that means revolutions of hate and violence and takes away lives of others or abases the dignity of others cannot be true liberty. True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others.” - Oscar A. Romero

37. “Every man who has in his soul a secret feeling of revolt against any act of the State, of life, or of destiny, is on the verge of riot; and so soon as it appears, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away by the whirlwind.” - Victor Hugo

38. “There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.” - Victor Hugo

39. “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

40. “We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource.' This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.” - Karen Armstrong

41. “Organized Christianity that fails to make a disturbance is dead.” - G. Campbell Morgan

42. “Gods have become like us, ergo, we have become like gods. And to you, my unknown planetary readers, we will come to you, to make your life as divinely rational and exact as ours.” - Yavgeny Zamyatin -We

43. “Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.” - Fredric Jameson

44. “In that moment, I understand the way that the noblest yearning for duty and sacrifice can be mixed up with all that is savage and shameful, like in the Bible, where a just and merciful God tells you to kill everyone, kill the children, kill the livestock, kill John Polling, leave nothing alive to sully this pure and just world. Except when it's all done you find out that wasn't really God after all, just some politician, or maybe it was God, but he taps you on the shoulder and says, 'No, dude, that isn't what I meant,' and leaves you sitting in a Dairy Queen in Bothell with blood on your hands and no further orders...” - Stuart Archer Cohen

45. “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

46. “Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.” - Tom Robbins

47. “Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

48. “We cannot prevail by our own might or strength, we need to plug on to the source of our strength so that we will remain resourceful always.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

49. “When we are connected to the source, we will not be afraid of any task set before us.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

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

51. “You may not attain the highest height with one leap but my dear; you will reach your destination.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

52. “God rewards every act of obedience to His Will.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

53. “God is never tired of bringing the sun out every morning, taking it in the evenings and bringing out the moon.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

54. “Worship is the marriage of two Spirits - the Spirit of God and the Spirit of man.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

55. “Dominate in your domain; You can do it.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

56. “The revolution lasted six minutes and covered one hundred an twelve meters.” - Cordwainer Smith

57. “We will remember the way things used to be, and teach our children to be better than us. The generations that follow will remember with us. In that day, we will all be free” - Rachel Higginson

58. “He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. 'Of course there will be a revolution,' he said. 'You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell, I hope. In fifteen years you tyrants and parasites will be gone. We shall have set up a republic, on the purest Roman model.” - Hilary Mantel

59. “We can fight fire with water provided we can get it there soon enough. But often we act when it's too late. The result is splattered in the pages of our history: bloodbaths, uprisings, revolutions, you name. And on it goes. We learn so slowly. After so many centuries, we're still a people who eat fire and drink water.' 'Why bother,then?' 'Because we have to believe that one day we'll learn.” - Arlene J. Chai

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

61. “FAITES L'AMOUR ET RECOMMENCEZ (make love and make it again)” - Anouk Markovits

62. “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.

63. “You can change any status quo, stand out, walk by faith and not by sight and things will definitely go well with you.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

64. “Each of us lives with a sword over his head.There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are the creators of the special myth of their time, because any myth is the creation of the very few who cannot bear reality.” - Murray Kempton

65. “this is the 21st century and we need to redefine r/evolution. this planet needs a people’s r/evolution. a humanist r/evolution. r/evolution is not about bloodshed or about going to the mountains and fighting. we will fight if we are forced to but the fundamental goal of r/evolution must be peace.we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit. the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves. we have got to make this world user friendly. user friendly.are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger. to sacrifice to end colonialism. to end neo-colonialism. to end racism. to end sexism.r/evolution means the end of exploitation. r/evolution means respecting people from other cultures. r/evolution is creative.r/evolution means treating your mate as a friend and an equal. r/evolution is sexy.r/evolution means respecting and learning from your children. r/evolution is beautiful.r/evolution means protecting the people. the plants. the animals. the air. the water. r/evolution means saving this planet.r/evolution is love.” - Assata Shakur

66. “The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.” - Benjamin Rush

67. “Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg!” - Terry Pratchett

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. “I want to make a difference, I want to make a change, inspire a revolution, to create, reinvent, and rearrange.” - Meagan Earls

71. “What greater flood can there be than the flood of ideas? How quickly they submerge all that they set out to destroy, how rapidly do they create terrifying depths?” - Victor Hugo

72. “Lenin only believes in the revolution and in the virtue of expediency.'One must be prepared for every sacrifice, to use, if necessary, every stratagem, ruse, illegal method, to be determined to conceal the truth, for the sole purpose of accomplishing, despite everything, the communist task'.” - Albert Camus

73. “Ok I'm not so smart I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running and it's the working class that get exploited. What kind revolution is it that just throws out big words that working class people can't understand.Revolution or not the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholesI'm not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I'm going to believe in. -- Midori” - Haruki Murakami

74. “Pioneering is never done in front of cheerleaders urging on a roaring grandstand of popular approval.” - George Takei

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

76. “By creating a society in which all people, of all colors, were granted freedom and citizenship, the Haitian Revolution forever transformed the world. It was a central part of the destruction of slavery in the Americas, and therefore a crucial moment in the history of democracy, one that laid the foundation for the continuing struggles for human rights everywhere. In this sense we are all descendents of the Haitain Revolution, and responsible to these ancestors.” - Laurent Dubois

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

78. “Courage is the ability to execute tasks and assignments without fear or intimidation.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

79. “A responsible woman doesn’t see opportunities and needs and look the other way pretending not to see them rather she gets to work to ensure things are done properly and her man succeeds in his endeavours.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

80. “Literature should be a kind of revolutionary manifesto against established morality and established society.” - Guo Moruo

81. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].” - Ernesto Che Guevara

82. “We are the generation of Social Media, Our biggest Revolution is a Tweet of 141 Characters.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

83. “[O]ne cannot separate violence from the very exist­ ence of the state (as the apparatus of class domination): from the standpoint of the'subordinated and oppressed, the very existence of a state is a fact of violence (in the same sense in which, for example, Robespierre said, in his justification of the regicide, that one does not have to prove that the king committed any specific crimes, since the very existence of the king is a crime, an offence against the freedom of the people). In this strict sense, every violence of the oppressed against the ruling class and its state is ultimately ‘defensive’. If we do not concede this point, we volens nolens ‘normalize’ the state and accept that its violence is merely a matter of contin­ gent excesses (to be dealt with through democratic reforms).” - Slavoj Žižek

84. “The revolutionary Terror, which is attacked for its revolutionary tribunal, its law of suspects and its guillotine, was a process welded to a regime of popular sovereignty in which the object was to conquer tyranny or die for liberty. This Terror was willed by those who, having won sovereign power by dint of insurrection, refused to let this be destroyed by counter-revolutionary enemies” - Sophie Wahnich

85. “Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action. I don't disagree with their concern about media concentration, but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, "propaganda machines" and "weapons of mass deception". Again and again, this version of the media reform movement has ignored the complexity of the public's relationship to popular culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more empowered, not when they are at their weakest.” - Henry Jenkins

86. “Passando fra gli insorti che si scostavano con religioso rispetto, [papà Mabeuf] continuò dritto verso Enjolras che indietreggiava impietrito, gli strappò la bandiera, e senza che nessuno osasse trattenerlo né aiutarlo, quel vecchio ottuagenario col capo vacillante, ma col piede fermo, salì lentamente la scala di pietre costruita nella barricata. Lo spettacolo era così serio che tutto all'intorno dissero: «Giù il cappello!». A ogni gradino che saliva diventava sempre più terribile: i suoi capelli canuti, il volto decrepito, l'ampia fronte calma e rugosa, gli occhi incavati, la bocca attonita e semiaperta, il vecchio braccio che sosteneva la bandiera rossa, uscivano dall'ombra e ingigantivano nel sanguinoso chiarore della torcia, e sembrava di vedere lo spettro del 1793 sorgere dalla terra inalberando la bandiera del terrore.Quando fu all'ultimo gradino, quando quel fantasma tremante e terribile, ritto su quel mucchio di rovine dinanzi a milleduecento fucili invisibili, si drizzò in faccia alla morte come se fosse più forte di essa, tutta la barricata assunse nelle tenebre un aspetto colossale e soprannaturale. Vi fu uno di quegli istanti di silenzio che accompagnano i prodigi. In mezzo a quel silenzio il vegliardo sventolò la bandiera rossa e gridò:«Viva la Rivoluzione! Viva la Repubblica! Fratellanza! Uguaglianza! E morte!».” - Victor Hugo

87. “La historia es una increíble cantidad de manotazos por todos lados, algunos agarran la manija y otros se quedan con los dedos en el aire, pero cuando sumás el todo por ahí te da la revolución francesa o el Moncada.” - Julio Cortazar

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

89. “God takes us through life`s journey. Always nudging our Spirits to go for plus and shun the minus.” - Agu Jaachynma N E

90. “Sow the right words! Think the good thought.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

91. “Stand out tall amidst challenges! Dwarf all irrelevant voices.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

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

93. “Shun darkness and evil vices for they that embrace them wear off with time!” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

94. “Desire to impact lives! Change destinies and make dreams come true.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu