Haitian Revolution Quotes

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

Nia learned that our self-identity and connection to our roots is so powerful it can impact not only the course of our lives but also that of generations to come. ~ Jenny Delacruz

The first big dramatic push in the Haitian Revolution was to overthrow the slave regime and we have to remember this was really the first place where there was a large scale emancipation experiment. ~ Laurent Dubois

The rich are only defeated when running for their lives. ~ C.L.R. James

It's a marriage of convenience. Temporarily, so long as our interests coincide, however long it takes to dispose of that mob of petit blancs at Port-au-Prince. Afterward,' he waved his sticky fingers airily, 'everything will return to the way it was before. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

Before the Haitian Revolution, Africans toiling in the sugar fields of Saint-Domingue spread the story of the zombi. This was a living-dead person who had been captured by white wizards. Intellect and personality fled home, but the ghost-spirit and body remained in the land of the dead, working at the will of the sorcerers-planters. Any slave could be a zombi..." - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism ~ Edward E. Baptist

The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world. ~ Michel-Rolph Trouillot

It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves. ~ C.L.R. James

That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep. ~ Isabel Allende

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

The sooner our society admits that the Negro Revolution is no momentary outburst soon to subside into placid passivity, the easier the future will be for us all. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It sounded like walls tumbling, liberty bells chiming, government buildings being stormed.
It sounded like a revolution.
It sounded like hope. ~ Alex Scarrow

Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep. ~ Howard Zinn

Sister Aziza told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous: they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they stuck right out of their faces like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims. I ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up they'll see the real world and say, 'Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.' And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's book illustrator. ~ Tony Millionaire

It was the first female-style revolution: no violence and we all went shopping. ~ Gloria Steinem

Woe to the Revolution when the day comes, when the people, overburdened by contributions and consumed by abuses, turn to their enemies for salvation! ~ Apolinario Mabini

Yes, it was possible that the little world, on its voyage among all the stars, might become like that; a boat on which one could travel no longer, from which one could no longer look up and confront those bright rings of revolution. ~ Willa Cather

What role did the Internet play in the Egyptian Revolution? People will be arguing about the answer to that question for decades if not centuries. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

He wondered vaguely how many others like here there might be in the younger generation, people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog. ~ George Orwell

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle. ~ James Otis

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution. ~ Huey Newton

The moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject slavery, it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood. ~ James Henry Hammond

The Immovable Object can also be construed as an idea whose
time has come. It's an idea of proportions that the human mind can
only grasp a small portion. Like the idea of freedom during the days
of revolution - only a handful understand what it means for the long
term, but it's the idea that cause people to take up arms, revolt
against the ruling class and fight for what they perceive to be
freedom. ~ Carla R. Herrera

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. ~ John Paul Jones

Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place. ~ Ignazio Silone

At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history. ~ Alison Weir

Trotsky's assault on Kronstadt in March 1921 marked a point of no return. There was no longer even a whiff of pretense that the Communist government had the support of the people over whom it ruled. The Red Terror had been aimed at "class enemies"; the Civil War was a struggle against "imperialists and White Guards." Even the peasant wars had pitted, in theory at least, proletarians against "capitalist farmers." But now the world's first "proletarian" government had begun slaughtering urban proletarians, too. It is no wonder that "Kronstadt" became, in addition to a black mark on Trotsky's record, a byword of Bolshevik betrayal for European socialists who refused to bow to Moscow. ~ Sean McMeekin

It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk. ~ Nina Simone

So long as woman sat with bandaged eyes and manacled hands, fast bound in the clamps of ignorance and inaction, the world of thought moved in its orbit like the revolutions of the moon; with one face (the man's face) always out, so that the spectator could not distinguish whether it was disc or sphere. ~ Anna Julia Cooper

She had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different. ~ Mervyn Peake

Brewing is mentioned rarely in accounts of the Industrial Revolution. Temperance pressures meant it was impolitic for brewers to boast of their achievements and innovations, and few accurate records exist of exactly how it performed in the 19th Century compared to those glamorous, sexy industries like coal mining and steel making. ~ Peter Brown

You poor, patient man, you think you have time? The best thing you can do for yourself is to stop waiting for something and refuse to be patient! Waiting is nonsense! Patience is rubbish! Get rid of these cultural and religious baloneys, throw away these turtle strategies! No waiting! No patience! Do whatever you want to do now! You have only 'now' in your hand to do something! You poor, slow man; you poor turtle man! Speed up! To speed up is the greatest revolution man needs! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. ~ Marc Andreessen

In the future no one will kill anyone, the earth will shine, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, the day when all will be peace, harmony, light, joy, and life, it will come. And it is so that it comes that we are going to die. ~ Victor Hugo

There's a whisper of revolution whenever people really speak to one another and really listen. ~ David Dark

It is a proof of the divergence of the tendencies of the socialist and the bourgeois pictures of history - and from now on there will be two distinct historical cultures running side by side without ever really fusing - that people who have been brought up on the conventional version of history and know all about the Robespierrist Terror during the Great French Revolution, should find it an unfamiliar fact that the Terror of the government of Thiers executed, imprisoned or exiled more people - the number has been estimated at a hundred thousand - in that one week of the suppression of the [Paris] Commune [of 1871] than the revolutionary Terror of Robespierre had done in three years. ~ Edmund Wilson

For God's sake, take care of your men. If they fire, they die! ~ Henry Knox

Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

We had quitters during the Revolution too ... we called them 'Kentuckians.' ~ George Washington

Use the head, use the heart, and if you can use both a tremendous revolution will happen. If you can use both you will become aware that you are the third force - neither; you are neither head nor heart; because if you can move so easily from one to another you cannot be either; you must be separate from both - then the witnessing arises; then the identification is broken. And that witnessing is what meditation is all about. ~ Rajneesh

If you just look at the fact that a woman was central in twittering the Cairo revolution, and women were central to the Tunisian uprising. Women are at the center of everything right now and moving everything forward. And I do think in the next year or two, we are going to see such a woman spring, such a rising. ~ Eve Ensler

In fact, if there had ever been one real revolution, there would be no more history. Unity
would have been achieved, and death would have been satiated. That is why all revolutionaries finally
aspire to world unity and act as though they believed that history was concluded. ~ Albert Camus

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example and France has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history and the most consoling presage of its happiness. ~ James Madison

On the heels of the Enlightenment came the French Revolution: a brief promise of democracy followed by a train of regicides, putsches, fanatics, mobs, terrors, and preemptive wars, culminating in a megalomaniacal emperor and an insane war of conquest. More than a quarter of a million people were killed in the Revolution and its aftermath, and another 2 to 4 million were killed in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In reflecting on this catastrophe, it was natural for people to reason, "After this, therefore because of this," and for intellectuals on the right and the left to blame the Enlightenment. This is what you get, they say, when you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, ~ Steven Pinker