Quotes About Revolutions

Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.

Unlike central Europe Muscovy had little exposure to the influence of the Renaissance or the Reformation. It took no part in the maritime discoveries or the scientific revolutions of the early modern era.

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.

But the revolutions and changes which are responsible for the present state of the earth are not limited to the upsetting of the ancient strata and to the ebbing of the sea after the formations of new layers.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die.

It is important to note that in spite of all the anarchist slogans the program of the Makhnovists in practice was not much different from that of later peasant revolutions (like the Chinese), namely: redistribution of the land, more or less voluntary collectivization, and expulsion of the imperialists (national independence).

misadventures. 'A family', Johnson would later write, 'is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.'4

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur—that is, as soon as history begins—that theory explains nothing.

The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Inequality among Mankind, Ch. 1, 20.

We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book.

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

Icon Books has a fine series called "Revolutions in Science." These works are succinct, highly readable, and authoritative. The series includes John Henry's Moving Heaven and Earth: Copernicus and the Solar System (Duxford, Cambridge: Icon Books, 2001). Henry's book can be read in an afternoon, and, while not as detailed as Kuhn's classic, it tells the story with verve and lucidity.

Thanks to Twitter, I learn about the revolutions in the Middle East via Arab activists and writers, not just from American foreign correspondents.

And is it not sects, bodies of definite, uncompromising principles, that lead us into revolutions?

Turning points in human consciousness occur when new energy regimes converge with new communications revolutions, creating new economic eras.

Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.

The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious. Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. Civilization will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking will never again be closed to the methods of modern man. The regeneration of the world, physical as well as moral, has begun, and revolutions never move backwards.

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.

As it is the invisible forces that are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions in human affairs.

History respects revolutions; and yet, if a revolution is progressive, support it; if it is reactionary, resist it!

If democratic people are naturally brought toward peace by their interests and instincts, they are constantly drawn to war and revolutions by their armies." I

The decay of power creates fertile soil for demagogic challengers who exploit disappointments with incumbents, promise change, and take advantage of the bewildering noise created by the proliferation of actors, voices, and proposals. The confusion created by changes that come too fast, that are too disruptive and undercut old certainties and ways of doing things—all by-products of the More, Mobility, and Mentality revolutions—offer great opportunities for leaders with bad ideas.