Political Revolution Quotes

Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. ~ Thomas Paine

We have got to change the political culture in America. We need a political revolution. That means we are working on politics not just three weeks before an election but 365 days a year. ~ Bernie Sanders

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people. ~ Fred Hampton

The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit. ~ Henrik Ibsen

What America needs is a political revolution. ~ Walker Evans

Instead, Deng Xiaoping and his allies, who were no less self-interested than their rivals but who had different interests and political objectives, defeated their powerful opponents in the Communist Party and masterminded a political revolution of sorts, radically changing the leadership and direction of the party. ~ Anonymous

Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974. ~ Jose Saramago

In all these ways this world is conserved. We live by these people, we are friends with them etc., and sometimes we forgive them - that way we all live more easily. We, make it possible, this contingency, this world. ~ Elias Tsikoudis

Fashion is not just about trends. It's about political history. You can trace it from the ancient Romans to probably until the '80s, and you can see defining moments that were due either to revolutions or changes in politics. ~ Daphne Guinness

Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids - well.But none of that happens unless there's a political revolution. And it's not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media. ~ Bernie Sanders

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. ~ Noam Chomsky

Death! Death! We will not let you die. The people of the future will sing your name and your monstrosities. ~ Elias Tsikoudis

I don't believe that clothes can start a revolution, but I do believe that fashion is often a manifestation of a sociological or political climate. ~ Tom Ford

We neither need a political revolution nor a religious revolution. What we need is an inner transformation in human beings. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

What my campaign is about is a political revolution - millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the hand full of billionaires. ~ Bernie Sanders

The reality is we that have a corrupt campaign finance system which separates the American people's needs and desires from what Congress is doing. So to my mind, what we have got to do is wage a political revolution where millions of people have given up on the political process, stand up and fight back, demand the government that represents us and not just a handful of campaign contribution - contributors. ~ Bernie Sanders

My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

Families are struggling to put bread on the table, send their kids to college and take care of their basic needs. America needs a political revolution. ~ Bernie Sanders

At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution. ~ Thomas Piketty

Don't be obsessed with yet another revolution to overthrow the opposition, if you think that a violently excruciating revolution will make everything right. Let me ask a question about this brave new revolution of yours, when you have finally defeated all the bad guys and it's all perfect and just and fair - when you've finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you - the trouble-makers? How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one? You may most blindly and boastfully proclaim that you will win. But remember, no one wins for long. The wheel just keeps turning. ~ Abhijit Naskar

When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with. ~ Bernie Sanders

Every provisional political set-up following a revolution requires a dictatorship, and an energetic dictatorship at that. ~ Karl Marx

What does a political revolution look like? It means that 80 percent of the people vote in national elections, not 40 percent. It means that billionaires can't make unlimited campaign contributions and buy and sell politicians. It means that the U.S. government represents the needs of all the people, not just the 1 percent and their lobbyists. ~ Bernie Sanders

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty ... Only a moral revolution
not a social or a political revolution
only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements ~ Emma Goldman

I do think the Cubans have to change some of the political structures there and allow critical voices, for their own sakes, because unless there is accountability the revolution will totally atrophy. ~ Tariq Ali

Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution. ~ Jill Johnston

Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.' ~ William S. Burroughs

As a result of their own experience in a country with historical social mobility, American policy makers are often blind to deeply embedded social stratifications that characterize other societies. The only successful political revolution in the western hemisphere that also resulted in a social revolution was that of Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1959, a revolution that the United States spent the next fifty-plus years trying to contain or reverse. ~ Francis Fukuyama

Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that's not on the ballot. ~ Russell Brand

Of our political revolution of '76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I do love a revolution! ~ Graham Heywood

They say I am a reformer. They say wrong: for I have long since given up any such chimerical idea, as that of being able to make men happier who are wicked and miserable by prescription. Withdrawing, therefore, from any such Utopian and hopeless attempt, I believed the best thing I could do was, to relieve, where I could, individual distress, and to lighten the chains that villany often imposes on simplicity under the name of law. In this I have done some good, and what else ought a man to do on this earth? ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing. ~ Thomas Hobbes

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood. ~ Rick Perlstein

Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul ... ~ Mao Zedong

The common and continual mischief's [sic] of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. ~ George Washington

The murder of Pakistan's first prime minister heralded the imminent derailment of the political process and the onset of a brutal political culture of assassinations, sustained by the state's direct or indirect complicity. ~ Ayesha Jalal

The world needs heroes. Be a hero and build your part of the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of
Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions. ~ Douglas Wilson

In America, conservative historian Francis Fukuyama wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history: liberal capitalist democracy had won, no ideology could challenge it anymore, and nothing remained but a little cleanup work around the edges while all the world got on board the train headed for the only truth. …

On the other side of the planet, however, jihadists and Wahhabis were drawing very different conclusions from all these thunderous events [Iran's 1979 revolution and ouster of US presence and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan]. In Iran, it seemed to them, Islam had brought down the Shah and driven out America. In Afghanistan, Muslims had not just beaten the Red Army but toppled the Soviet Union itself. Looking at all this, Jihadists saw a pattern they thought they recognized. The First Community had defeated the two superpowers of its day, the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires, simply by having God on its side. Modern Muslims also confronted two superpowers, and they had now brought one of them down entirely. On down, one to go was how it looked to the jihadists and the Wahabbis. History coming to an end? Hardly. As these radicals saw it, history was just getting interesting. ~ Tamim Ansary

Margaret Thatcher was the first political leader in any major country to warn of the dangers of climate change ~ Ed Miliband

If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program - immediately, if not sooner. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

More than 100,000 soldiers will soon return home with the post-traumatic stress I know so well, not to mention the mysterious effects of deplted uranium ... and the ripples of resentment and animosity this war has sent throughout the world will inevitably wash up on U.S. shores.
As I write this, mainstream political dialogue is still focused on the crazy idea that we can somehow still "win" the war in Iraq. For someone like me, a citizen of both countries, what outcome would constitute a victory? When you're talking about war, about so many thousands dead, so many families shattered on both sides, how can anyone claim victory? ~ Wafaa Bilal

I don't bring God into my life to - to, you know, kind of be a political person. ~ George W. Bush

The problem with monasteries, ashrams, convents is these institutions become extremely political. In other words, they're really small societies, and much of what you hope to avoid in societies you find there. ~ Frederick Lenz

For two centuries supporters of the Electoral College have built their arguments on a series of faulty premises. The Electoral College is a gross violation of the cherished value of political equality. At the same time, it does not protect the interests of small states or racial minorities, nor does it serve as a bastion of federalism. Instead the Electoral College distorts the presidential campaign so that candidates ignore most small states - and many large ones - and pay little attention to minorities. ~ George C. Edwards III

The political arena is the funniest.They [politicians] are always pretending to change, but they never change. They're the best actors and actresses in the world. They've always been hilarious since the beginning of time. ~ Paul Mooney

The interest which lay behind Federalism was that of well-to-do citizens in a stable political and social order, and this interest aroused them to favor and to seek some form of political organization which was capable of protecting their property and promoting its interest. ~ Herbert Croly

When I started off with Trainspotting, it was the way the characters came to me. That's how they sounded to me. It seemed pretentious to sound any other way. I wasn't making any kind of political statement. ~ Irvine Welsh

There is a cultural norm on the left of being afraid to declare victory, which is related to the binary of reform/revolution. Whereas reformists are winning small gains, revolutionaries don't want people to be satisfied with those small victories because they worry this will lead to acceptance of the bigger picture of capitalism domination, and so they find a way to turn every victory into a defeat. In the book, I call for a culture of declaring victory wherever we can. ~ Cynthia Kauffman

When the political partisan's beliefs are insulted or ridiculed, he feels the 'offence' as deeply as any believer who has heard his god or prophet questioned. We do not, however, prohibit or restrict arguments about politics out of 'respect' for political ideologies, because we are a free society. We call societies that prohibit political arguments 'dictatorships', and know without needing to be told that the prohibiting is done to protect the ruling elite. ~ Nick Cohen

For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question ~ Michel Foucault

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced. ~ Thomas Paine

[P]olitical freedom can easily provide the legal frame for economic slavery, with the underprivileged 'freely' selling themselves into servitude. We are thus brought to demand more than just political democracy: we need democratization of social and economic life. In short, we have to admit that what we first took as the failure fully to realize the noble principle of democratic freedom is a failure inherent to this principle itself. Learning how the distortion of a notion, its incomplete realization, is grounded in the distortion immanent to this notion is a big step in political education. ~ Slavoj Zizek

Currency warfare is the most destructive form of economic warfare. ~ Harry Dexter White

People sought reforms, not rights. Had the throne then been occupied by a monarch of the calibre and character of Frederick the Great, I have no doubt he would have accomplished many of the reforms which were brought about by the Revolution; and that not only without endangering his throne, but with a large gain of power. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman. ~ John F. Kerry

But if too many countries, as has been the case, interfere too much in the internal affairs, the political situation of Afghanistan, then of course we can't hope satisfactory results. ~ Bulent Ecevit

IS WHERE POWER GOES: the most significant factor in any equation that adds up to political power, Lyndon Johnson had assured his allies, is the individual, not the office; for a man with a gift for acquiring power, whatever office he held would become powerful - because of what he would make out of it. Johnson ~ Robert A. Caro

I doubt if there is any problem in the world today - social, political or economic - that would not find a happy solution if approached in the spirit of the sermon on the mount. ~ Harry Truman

There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else. ~ Thomas Sowell

Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations. ~ June Jordan

When someone deviates from an accepted norm, they signal a gap in the system. A hole that hasn't been plugged. The danger with exposing a foundation's failings is it opens the door to the possibility that it's a faulty structure altogether and should be torn down and built anew. ~ Romina Garber

I don't believe in marriage. I think at worst it's a hostile political act, a way for small-minded men to keep women in the house and out of the way, wrapped up in the guise of tradition and conservative religious nonsense. At best, it's a happy delusion - these two people who truly love each other and have no idea how truly miserable they're about to make each other. But, but, when two people know that, and they decide with eyes wide open to face each other and get married anyway, then I don't think it's conservative or delusional. I think it's radical and courageous and very romantic. ~ Tina Modotti

The current political tension is very serious. We have not yet ruled out a boycott of the election. ~ Abhisit Vejjajiva

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know. ~ Michel De Montaigne

It would be hard. After all, I'm working. I'm a mother. Number one, I'm a mother & housewife, so there's the house kind of chores. In the evenings, I might attend some meeting, & then late at night, I would be either writing to the brothers & sisters in prison or working on the leaflets of their cases. Then on the weekend, at least every other weekend, we'd visit the political prisoners...I mean everybody has their whole life & things they have to do at home. But I'll tell you, we were busy during this time. Every week, more brothers & sisters would be arrested. We were working on scores of cases at the same time--trying to keep up with visiting, writing, attending court hearings. If I could show you all the leaflets we made, you'd get an idea of how expansive the work was. ~ Diane C. Fujino

The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air access remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat. ~ Wendell Berry

The Sexual Revolution offered us women this deal: you can particiapate in higher education and the labor market, as long as you agree to chemically neuter yourselves during your twenties, and endure expensive, humiliating, and possibly dangerous infertility treatment during your thirties and forties. ~ Jennifer Morse

Why croak with dishonesty when your target subject discovers, listens, and witnesses beyond the veil of your duplicity?

Your proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, gossips, polemics, planted intrigues, lies, calumny, misjudgement, and all other forms of smear campaign, may deceive gullible hearts but you cannot destroy the unparalleled truth which is in the hands of your target victim. ~ Angelica Hopes, K.H. Trilogy ~ Angelica Hopes

There's no particular relationship between spending and educational results. Most education spending is actually on salaries, and that's allocated according to political muscle. ~ Peter Brimelow

Global warming is a political issue. It is as much a political issue to the left as abortion is. It's as big a political issue as health care is. ~ Rush Limbaugh

We live in an era of mind-blowing scientific discovery, virtually none of which ever makes the front page, even as every trivial twist and turn in the rococo political drama has a secure place as the lead story. ~ Timothy Noah

Violence, of course, is generally associated with frankly totalitarian forms of anti-political utopianism like Communism, but the Second World War shows that liberal universalists are as capable of violence as Communists. They are just less capable of honesty. ~ Greg Johnson

Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much. ~ Timothy Snyder

Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups. ~ George Michael

The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like lovers in the Afterlife.
And all this through a lens of oleaginous Belfast rain. ~ Adrian McKinty

As I sit here and breathe, I never thought the good God would let me live to see someone walk into the middle of a revolution, pull a lugubrious face, and say, 'What's the matter? ~ Harper Lee