Quotes About Revolution

Nothing man has discovered or imagined is to be named with the steam engine. It has no fellow. Franklin capturing the lightning, Morse annihilating space with the telegraph, Bell transmitting speech through the air by the telephone, are not less mysterious—being more ethereal, perhaps in one sense they are even more so—still, the labor of the world performed by heating cold water places Watt and his steam engine in a class apart by itself.

Yes, even old American writers are dancing like it is still the eighties in San Francisco, like the sexual revolution has been won, like the war is over and Berlin has been liberated, one's own self has been liberated; and what the Bavarian in his arms is whispering is true, and everyone, everyone—even Arthur Less—is loved.

The amount of improvement that has occurred in computer technology in the past half century is truly staggering and unprecedented in other industries. ... If cars had improved at this rate in the same time period, a Rolls Royce would now cost 10 dollars and get a billion miles per gallon. (Unfortunately, it would probably also have a 200-page manual telling how to open the door.)

The theories of the French revolutionaries, as summarized by historian Roger Hancock, were founded on respect for no humanity except that which they proposed to create. In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to make him altogether the creature of a new society, to reconstruct his very humanity to meet the demands of the general will.

With dozens of course offerings, UCLA's history department doesn't have a single course on the French Revolution, or even a course that would seem to cover Western Europe during that period. There are courses on European history in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as from 1450 to 1660. And there's a Western Civilization class covering the period up to 1715. But if you want to know what was happening outside of the United States circa 1750 to 1800

This was a revolution waged by thinkers and debaters constantly prattling about the reasons for the war. Although they were "rebels," the Americans were very chatty about their revolution. By contrast, mob uprisings like the French Revolution are sparked by tumult, pandemonium, and violence, not thoughtful sermons and pamphlets. There

The French Revolution was a revolt of the mob. It was the primogenitor of the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler's Nazi Party, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's slaughter, and America's periodic mob uprisings, from Shays' Rebellion to today's dirty waifs smashing Starbucks windows whenever bankers come to town. The French Revolution is the godless antithesis to the founding of America. And

France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen led to bestial savagery, followed by Napoleon's dictatorship, followed by another monarchy, and then finally something resembling an actual republic eighty years later. In

On the eve of the French Revolution, Burke cautioned that "criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred.

Great scientists and mathematicians were sent to the guillotine, too, on the grounds that the republic "does not need scientists."52

Liberals hate the idea of a revolution by gentlemen, which is why they celebrate hairy, foul-smelling revolutionaries like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Susan Sarandon.

The spectacular operations of the PFLP, meanwhile, began to attract legions of young Europeans, who saw in the airline hijackings a willingness to risk everything to achieve liberation. This was a time not only of cold war, but of revolution, inspired in part by massive and worldwide street protests against

With her final poem, "Bless This Land," she declared: "Luminous forests, oceans, and rock cliff sold for the trash glut of gold, uranium, or oil bust rush yet there are new stories to be made, little ones coming up over the horizon." Harjo did this revolutionary thing under the great greened dome of the Library of Congress

Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.

It takes so little to change everything.

one word could change the whole world

Anti-violence politics, along with other revolutionary impulses, changed from a focus on working to transform patriarchy, racism, and poverty to cooperation and integration with the police. This has proven to be a significant turn because the police are, ironically, the embodiment of patriarchy, racism, and the enforcement of the US class system.

The newly dubbed General Lafayette was only nineteen years old. Considering Independence Hall was also where the founders calculated that a slave equals three-fifths of a person and cooked up an electoral college that lets Florida and Ohio pick our presidents, making an adolescent who barely spoke English a major general at the age I got hired to run the cash register at a Portland pizza joint was not the worst decision ever made there.

Of course Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy? Who wants to twirl sparklers and dwell on how the French government's expenditures in America contributed to the bankruptcy that sparked the French Revolution that would send Rochambeau to prison, Lafayette into exile (then prison), and our benefactor His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI to the guillotine.

A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts.

As Beaumarchais gathered blankets and grenades in France, William Howe's redcoats came ashore and slaughtered Washington's forces on Long Island, in Brooklyn, and then in Manhattan. A humiliated Washington could do nothing to stop his troops' shoddy retreat from Kips Bay, swatting at them with his horsewhip and howling, "Are these the men with which I am to defend America?

Jefferson's pretty phrases were incomplete without the punctuation of French gunpowder. That

In other words, ideas, when implemented, turn into precedents with unpredictable and potentially disturbing consequences. As the British historian and politician Lord Acton described the effect that our Revolutionary War had on our French allies, "What the French took from the Americans was their theory of revolution, not their theory of government—their cutting, not their sewing.

Wall Comes Down, No Big Whoop.