Brandon Sanderson Quotes

In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties.

Revolutions rarely end up as positively as they begin.

I fear we may live to see another revolution.

Look, we're living in a crazy time right now. There's a lot of craziness going on in the world and in the United States in particular.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

The world today is anything but trouble-free.

I think daily that the country's future is being thrown to the wind.

For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground.

The old bastions of the post-communist regime collapsed before my very eyes. The monsters who had kept Ukraine in a criminal state left the stage.

We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

A State infinitely worse than that which the most inflamed Zealot, the most violent Republican or Enthusiast even pretended to dread before the Rebellion commenced.

The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

Russia probably knows the true cost of revolutions better than most other countries.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

If nothing happens, if we just keep doing what we're doing, tomorrow is not certain. We will see families killing each other. We will see chaos in the country. The day after tomorrow will disappear.... The next civil war in Burundi will absolutely be over land.

The Chinese people are not a new kind of human nature. Human nature in China is the same as it is elsewhere. When you start in a tyrannical regime to hand out freedom there is no place to draw that line and expect that line to hold. And so it’s only a matter of time before this regime comes down

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

When authority itself is in question, the middle gives way.

All revolutions invariably encourage bad characters and potential criminals.

Nothing endurable can be produced on a soil soaked with blood and moved by violent agitations.

Wars and revolutions cannot be prescribed and the circle of their influence determined in advance.

The state of things and the dispositions of men were then such, that a man could not well tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear.

An uncontrollable situation, in which there are no clearly defined spheres of authority, has come about in the country. Under these conditions, normal life is impossible.

The sudden collapse of the monarchy that had ruled Russia for three hundred years led to chaos. Russia immediately became, as one participant put it, 'the freest country in the world.'