A revolution occurs when a populace overthrows an existing government, triggered by events like riots, protests, or war.
This article offers 78 insightful quotes and sayings from historical revolutions, delivering a profound understanding of these societal upheavals.
Drawing from the lived experiences and perspectives of those who’ve witnessed or participated in these transformative events, the quotes provide a comprehensive look at the forces that drive revolutions and their lasting impact.
This reader-friendly collection serves as a valuable resource for anyone interested in political change and the history of revolutions.
Top 10 Revolution Quotes
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. ~ Aristotle.
The revolution does not need historians. ~ Vladimir Lenin.
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. ~ Che Guevara.
The hopeless don’t revolt, because revolution is an act of hope. ~ Peter Kropotkin.
In revolution there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte.
When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right. ~ Victor Hugo.
The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters. ~ Fidel Castro.
Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny. ~ William Godwin.
Good morning, Revolution: You’re the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on. ~ Langston Hughes.
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering. ~ Tom Stoppard.
Famous Revolution Quotes
A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the ruling classes did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people fine manners. ~ Leon Trotsky.
I think the revolutionary role of a writer is to make language that makes coalition possible, language that makes us see things in a new way. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Societies in decline have no use for visionaries. ~ Anais Nin.
A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution. ~ Martin Luther King.
When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things. ~ Bill Gates.
We are organizers at heart. Most of us in the movement take great pride in being able to put things together. ~ Cesar Chavez.
My God! This is a revolution! We have to offend someone! ~ John Adams.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. ~ Thomas Jefferson.
How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton.
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason. ~ William Godwin.
I am an enemy to revolutions. I abhor, both from temper and from the clearest judgment I am able to form, all violent convulsions in the affairs of men. ~ William Godwin.
Writing well is the best revenge. ~ Dorothy Parker.
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton.
Best Revolution Quotes
It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil. ~ Leon Trotsky.
Revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte.
Real revenge is making something of yourself. ~ Gerard Way.
The Revolution in the United States was produced by a mature and thoughtful taste for liberty, and not by a vague and undefined instinct for independence. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville.
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Look back at history – those who guided the revolution in the time of its culmination never kept their leading positions long after the turning point. ~ Leon Trotsky.
Seek justice from tyrannical governments not with your hat in your hands but with a rifle in your fist. ~ Emiliano Zapata.
If there is no justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government. ~ Emiliano Zapata.
Related: Boston Tea Party Quotes That Led to American Revolution and Green Revolution Quotes to Impact the World
Popular Revolution Quotes
A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past. ~ Fidel Castro.
It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it. ~ Vladimir Lenin.
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down. ~ Malcom X.
This is a revolution, damn it! We’re going to have to offend somebody! ~ John Adams.
I think the revolutionary role of a writer is to make language that makes coalition possible, language that makes us see things in a new way. ~ Gloria Steinem.
The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions. ~ Leon Trotsky.
Revolutions are always verbose. ~ Leon Trotsky.
The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable. ~ Maximilien Robespierre.
Powerful Revolution Quotes
It’s not the work which kills people, it’s the worry. It’s not the revolution that destroys machinery it’s the friction. ~ Henry Ward Beecher.
Pick a movement, pick a revolution and join it. ~ Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter).
A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte.
I don’t trust any revolution where love is not allowed. ~ Maya Angelou.
It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries. ~ Leon Trotsky.
Profound Revolution Quotes
This project shows others what is possible, and it is already helping to propel the green building revolution. ~ John Adams.
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere. ~ Voltaire.
The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that. ~ Richelle Mead.
A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government. ~ Johann Von Goethe.
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Vladimir Lenin.
Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine. ~ Vladimir Lenin.
Thought-Provoking Revolution Quotes
A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall! ~ Che Guevara.
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder. ~ George Bernard Shaw.
The American Revolution was, in fact, a battle against the philosophy of Locke and the English utilitarians. ~ Robert Trout.
I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware. ~ John Adams.
The aim of life is no more to control the mind, but to develop it harmoniously; not to achieve salvation here after, but to make the best use of it here below… ~ Bhagat Singh.
Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up. ~ Vladimir Lenin.
I was put out there as a spokesperson for the new feminist revolution. It was very difficult because I was either too feminist or not feminist enough, depending on who you spoke to. ~ Sarah McLachlan.
Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life. ~ Bob Marley.
People want only special revolutions, in externals, in politics, and so on. But that’s just tinkering. What is really is called for is a revolution of the human mind. ~ Henrik Ibsen.
Wise Revolution Quotes
Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore. ~ Albert Einstein.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John F Kennedy.
The most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey – and to be welcomed when she comes home. ~ Gloria Steinem.
Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness. ~ Alice Walker.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~ Buckminster Fuller.
So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president. ~ Madeleine Albright.
Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all. ~ Leon Trotsky.
There’s no turning back…We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind and heart… ~ Cesar Chavez.
If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades. ~ Che Guevara.
Inspiring Revolution Quotes
Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution. ~ Tony Benn.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. ~ Friedrich Engels.
A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon – authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire… ~ Friedrich Engels.
Conserving habitats is a wellspring for the next industrial revolution. ~ Janine Benyus.
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. ~ Martin Luther King.
We are in the the very midst of a revolution, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations. ~ John Adams.
The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. ~ Benjamin Rush.
So these were the 78 top quotes about Revolution.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Louise Erdrich quotes and Jim Thorpe quotes.
