Pierre Trudeau Quotes

We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.

Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place... They revolted against much more mild oppression.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.

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

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

The removal of a tyrant is not merely justifiable; it is the highest duty of every true revolutionist.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history

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

When people rise, they must have a goal worthy of them. Must paltry goods be of concern to them?... The people must rise up not to collect sugar, but to bring down the tyrants.

In all of history, there has always been a time and a place where patriots rise up against the decree of the elites and shout, 'No more... get your hands off my freedom!'

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.

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone.

Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world!

The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.

Despair and frustration will not shake our belief that the resistance is the only way of liberation.

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.

An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.