Ken Livingstone Quotes

When Tunisians overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 29 days and Egyptians Hosni Mubarak in 18 days, it was an appropriate rebuke to dictators and Bin Laden.

Once people sense their own power, no authoritarian government can stand against the people who are determined to be free.

This government must go. It is our duty to make sure that it does go.

The aim of my life is the overthrow of monarchy.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

Revolution may not be pro-Western or democratic.

I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.

The Arab Spring I think we will look back whether it's two years, five years, ten or fifteen. And say it's a good thing.

When we overthrew Mubarak, we did this in 18 days. And because we were very naive and very unexperienced in revolutions, we thought that that was it. It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days. So we were very naive.

a government which goes counter to the will of the nation must be overthrown at once... It is dangerous to drive the people to despair and force them to demand by violence that which they as yet seek only by constitutional means.

Do you trust the government? No? In that case, let’s overthrow it tomorrow.

To quell all nations - to dethrone all Kings, and plant the Tree of Liberty in our Irish land.

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes

[Referring to Patrick Henry:] ... a man of desperate circumstances ... who excited the People to join in ... outrageous and rebellious Practices.

France seems travailing in the birth of freedom. Her throes and pangs of labor are violent…. Royalty, nobility, and vile pageantry by which a few of the human race lord it over and tread on the necks of the their fellow mortals, seem like to be demolished …. Ye Gods, with what indignation do I review the late attempt of some creatures among us to revive the vile machinery. Oh Adams, Adams what a wretch thou art!

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history

The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants

It is doubtful that President Mubarak or the Saudi Royal family will allow elections that might sweep them from office.

The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they split in defense of their liberties only enslaved them the more

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

Americans have a tendency to exalt the concept of a popular uprising.

The price of toppling Gadhafi will be steep. But Libyans will topple him, and in doing so, they will bring down with him the castles of fear our dictators thought they had fortified.

A nation should not be a hostage to one man's thirst for power, and it won't. Belarusians have woken up. The point of no return has passed.