Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotes

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

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

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

The seed of revolution is repression.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority!

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most no graver than a schoolboy’s barring out.

“Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!

Tyranny may precipitate a revolutionary movement at any time.

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

Agitated by revolutionary movements, these grow in proportion to the force that resists them.

I'm challenging the powers that be.

A government creates its own revolution. There can be no revolt without it.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.

Every revolution, bloody or not, has two phases. The first phase is defined by the struggle for freedom, the second by the struggle for power and revenge on the votaries of the ancien regime.

A revolution is an act of violence whereby one class shatters the authority of another.

I really hate the people in power. I hate them with every fiber of my being. That is what drives me in almost everything I do.

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.

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

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.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

There is no middle course between the throne and the scaffold.