Victor Hugo Quotes

One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

I'm not in power, but my ideas are in power. And my ideas will prevail.

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.

Both force and money are impotent against ideas.

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.

Ideas are more powerful than people.

Ideas are, in truth, force.

Ideas can never be defeated by military force. They can only be defeated by better ideas.

What rules the world is ideas.

Power, before it comes from arms or wealth, emanates from ideas.

A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.

An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any force.

It is useless to send armies against ideas.

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than an hundred against it

Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.

While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.

... My firm conviction [is] that it is the force of ideas rather than the impact of material things that made us a great nation. It is my conviction, too, that only the power of ideas, of enduring values, can keep us a great nation. For where there is not vision the people perish

It is indeed a law of politics as well as of physics, that a body in action must overcome a body at rest.

Books still accomplish miracles; they persuade men.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

Ideas lead to actions.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.