Permanent Revolution Quotes

I can't help feeling," says Howard, sticking his head forward ruefully, "now I know who you are, that I've been a bit outspoken in some of my remarks about the system."

"Not at all!" says Freddie.

"Not a bit!" says Caroline.

"But I must in all honesty say," says Howard very quickly, jutting his chin out and smilingly blinking his eyes, "that I still think there are a number of things in the universe which really need seriously looking into."

"Oh, the whole thing!" says Freddie with feeling.

"Ghastly mess," says Caroline.

"Absolute disaster area," says Freddie.

"Frightful," says Caroline.

"So far as one can understand it," says Freddie.

"Freddie feels frightfully strongly about it, you see," says Caroline.

Howard looks from one to the other in astonishment.

"Good heavens!" he says. "I should never have guessed...."

"Oh, Freddie's a terrific radical," says Caroline.

"Really?" says Howard.

"A terrible firebrand, really," says Caroline.

Freddie knots himself up.

"A bit firebrandish," he admits.

"A bit of a Maoist, to tell you the truth," says Caroline.

She looks sideways at Howard to see how he is taking this. So does Freddie.

"A Maoist?" says Howard, astonished.

"Permanent revolution," says Caroline.

"That style of thing," agrees Freddie.

"W ~ Michael Frayn

There can be only one permanent revolution- a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism. ~ Jean Baudrillard

This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.

But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the Communists changed their tactics and suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world the Christian finds himself, by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution. Even when the institutions, the laws, the reforms which he has advocated have been achieved, even if society be re-organized according to his suggestions, he still has to be in opposition, he still must exact more, for the claim of God is as infinite as His forgiveness. ~ Jacques Ellul

Hauriou, became a crown witness for us when he confirmed this connection in 1916, in the midst of WWI: The revolution of 1789 had no other goal than absolute access to the writing of legal statutes and the systematic destruction of customary institutions. It resulted in a state of permanent revolution because the mobility of the writing of laws did not provide for the stability of certain customary institutions, because the forces of change were stronger than the forces of stability. Social and political life in France was completely emptied of institutions and was only able to provisionally maintain itself by sudden jolts spurred by the heightened morality. ~ Carl Schmitt

You have to organize, organize, organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part. ~ Ralph E. Reed, Jr.

A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose. ~ Thomas Paine

In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system ... The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment. ~ Heinrich Himmler

God was not in the details for Jefferson; he was in the sky and stars. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. You must forgive me my 'thee's and 'thou's and 'he's and 'she's, my lack of modern words and modern objectivity. It will be hard at first, but whether you are my contemporary still awed by the new order, or an historian gazing back at my Twenty-Fifth Century as remotely as I gaze back on the Eighteenth, you will find yourself more fluent in the language of the past than you imagined; we all are. ~ Ada Palmer

The goal with teenagers is simply getting through it alive, with no permanent damage. ~ Mary Kubica

8 April 1891
The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.

This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews! ~ Jean Lorrain

Revolution starts in the mind. Question Everything! ~ Bryant McGill

The new course we're on at Interface ... is to pioneer the next Industrial Revolution: one that is kinder and gentler to the earth. ~ Ray Anderson

The heated debates about Homo sapiens' 'natural way of life' miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn't been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Momentary happiness is worse than permanent misery. ~ Ahmed Mostafa

Maximilien R. Peters! Incorruptible, ineluctable, and indestructable! It's time to start a revolution, baby ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Nothing in the world is permanent. The only permanent thing is impermanence. ~ Lisa See

Remember that the past fifty years has been the age of the Big Bang cosmology. We have learnt to see all reality as a slow-motion explosion, as pouring itself out and passing away, as dissemination. We live in a postmodern epoch in which there is nothing absolute, nothing permanent and nothing substantial. ~ Don Cupitt

revolution was just a short step away from counterrevolution. ~ Yu Hua

Ransack the history of revolutions, and it will be found that every fall of a regime has been presaged by a defiance which went unpunished. It is as true today as it was ten thousand years ago that a Power from which the magic virtue has gone out, falls. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!"

We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in.

"Get down! Get down!" he barked.

"Some Amer ~ Jung Chang

Revolution comes when human beings set out to correct decadent institutions. ~ H. Rap Brown

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded. ~ Karl Marx

When the views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or when analogous views are generally admitted, we can dimly forsee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. ~ Charles Darwin

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others. ~ Sinclair Lewis

I worry about kids today - because of the sexual revolution, they're going to grow up and never know what "dirty" means. ~ Lily Tomlin

Do you like books, Lady Murray?' Lavinia asked.
'Just to read,' Violet said.
'A mistake. A very big mistake. A poorly bound book disintegrates. Where would our learning be then? We need something permanent, solid. We need to treat words with the respect they are due. Treasure them. Adorn the books that contain these words with leather bindings, illuminate their words with gold. We shouldn't treat learning lightly.'
'But I would treat a word scrawled on a scrap of paper with the same respect as one written on an illuminated manuscript. ~ Alice Thompson

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose
the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution,
but more usually
we must do battle where we are standing. ~ Audre Lorde

Most of all, I love graduations. They are individual and communal, an end and a beginning, more permanent than weddings, more inclusive than religions, and possibly the most moving ceremonies on earth. ~ Gloria Steinem

Only one American has given his life for Iranian democracy. He was a young idealist from Nebraska named Howard Baskerville. In 1907, fresh out of Princeton, Baskerville went to Iran as a schoolteacher. He found himself in the midst of a revolution against tyranny, and was carried away with passion for the democratic cause. ~ Stephen Kinzer

That's one reason wildlife films matter: they're a set of permanent memories we can all share, making real those things we have not seen for ourselves, such as the plight of the albatrosses. In time perhaps this will make us wiser about protecting what we still have, by making it harder for anyone to say, 'I didn't know. ~ John Aitchison

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The "health, education, and welfare" section of government is another boondoggle. First we manufacture indigent and superfluous people by legal monopolies in land, money and idea patents, erecting tariff barriers to protect monopolies from foreign competition, and taxing laborers to subsidize rich farmers and privileged manufacturers. Then we create "social workers, " etc., to care for them and thereby establish a self-aggravating and permanent institutionalized phenomenon ... ~ Laurance Labadie

To possess both wisdom and compassion is the heart of our human revolution. If you have wisdom alone and lack compassion, it will be a cold, perverse wisdom. If you have compassion alone and lack wisdom, you cannot give happiness to others. You are even likely to lead them in the wrong direction, and you won't be able to achieve your own happiness. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

The rhetoric of feminism with its emphasis on resistance, rebellion, and revolution created an illusion of militancy and radicalism that masked the fact that feminism was in no way a challenge or a threat to capitalist patriarchy. ~ Bell Hooks

And in the night, when the dog barks at shadows, tell him
not to be afraid of what he cannot see
or the things he does not yet understand.
There is mystery everywhere.
Beneath rocks, there is damp earth
and an army of ants
planning a revolution.

Esteban stood at the front of the room, staring at the page. Then he lifted his head and looked at us. We cheered again, even louder this time. I don't know if any of us really understood his dad's poem. But for a long time after he'd finished reading, I thought about that army of ants, how they were coming together.
Like us. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion. ~ Albert Camus

Western Civilization was responsible for a paradigm shift in history. It created the industrial and scientific revolutions that enabled the birth of a transportation, communications and knowledge revolution unprecedented in the 5 billion year history of this planet. Unfortunately this revolution took place amidst a moral vacuum at the very top of the power structure. It is as if a three year old child had been given control over both a candy story and a shotgun. He was able to use the shotgun to get all the candy he wanted but he had no idea what to do next. Whenever somebody tried to tell him too much candy was bad for him, he shot the person who said that. ~ Benjamin Fulford

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

Revolution! The people howls and cries, Freedom, thats what were needing! Weve needed it for centuries, our arteries are bleeding. The stage is shaking, the audience rock. The whole thing is over by nine oclock. ~ Kurt Tucholsky

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy. ~ Anais Nin

Revolution is not for the faint of heart. It is for monsters. You have to lose who you are to discover what you can become. ~ Antonio Negri; Michael Hardt

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

No one can deny that the feudal wars, which were quite localized and subject moreover to restrictive regulation by the spiritual authority, were nothing compared to the national wars that have resulted, following the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, in armed nations, and we have seen in our own day new developments hardly reassuring for the future.
By compelling all men indiscriminately lo take part in modern wars, the essential distinctions among the social functions are entirely ignored, this being moreover a logical consequence of 'egalitarianism'. ~ Rene Guenon

I can't rightly say where deciding to write about the American Revolution came from; I had bits and pieces of information about the war and about the country at that time that I'd collected over the years and, of course, I'm comfortable in the woods, so, finally, it just all feel into place. ~ Gary Paulsen

I definitely think anything I'd be in now is a permanent relationship. ~ Kim Kardashian