Francois Noel Babeuf Quotes

Social change comes through people.

… the most sacred right [revolution] to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

Well before the political or fighting phase of the national movement an attentive spectator can thus feel and see the manifestation of new vigor and feel the approaching conflict. He will note unusual forms of expression and themes which are fresh and imbued with a power which is no longer that of invocation but rather of the assembling of the people, a summoning together for a precise purpose.

Why does every nation on earth move to change their conditions except us [Arabs]. Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression. How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?

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

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.

Change has no constituency and a perceived revolution has even less.

There is no power above people power.

Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.

The workers and peasants had created their own institutions to administer the cities in republican Spain, formed their own armed workers' squads to patrol the streets, and established a remarkable revolutionary militia force to fight the Francista [fascists of General Franco] forces -- a voluntaristic militia in which men and women elected their own commanders and in which military rank conferred no social, material, or symbolic distinctions.

Lenin strove constantly to get the people to understand that the leaders could not do everything for them, that they them-selves, with their own hands, would have to build a new life and defend their own state; in this he proved himself to be a real people's leader, able to show the people the way forward and induce them to take the first step forward fully conscious of their aim, instead of following blindly behind the leaders.

Disobey the rules; ask for more; leave your wretchedness behind; organize with your brothers and sisters; never accept the hand of fate.

Chavez is not Chavez. Chavez is the people! And the people will not be stopped.

The French higher education system has not adapted to this revolutionary period. [It] rewards people for their capacity to follow the path that is open to them. It does not encourage people to rebel or to develop their character.

Peoples, hear the signal! Arise, for the last battle The International Fights for the Rights of Man! No higher being can save us, No God, no Kaiser, nor tribune Saving us from misery we ourselves alone must do!

Havana.- If 1959 was the Year of Liberation, 1960 was the Year of the Agrarian Reform. The nation lived days of intense transformations, not only political but, also, in every aspect of social and individual activity of its citizens.

Every kind of revolutionary work without exception is made very difficult in our country today by persecution from the police, but that does not mean that the white terror has achieved its aim, i.e., that it has “rooted out sedition”. Action calls for counteraction, persecution gives birth to self-sacrifice, and no matter how energetic the reactionary steps taken by the government, the revolutionary will always be able to evade them if only he devotes the necessary amount of energy to that purpose.

Go and tell those who have sent you that we are here by the will of the nation, and that we will not leave save at the point of bayonets.

Among other things the Russian experiment, no less than the experience of Socialist parties in Western Europe which have got some degree of power, shows clearly that not even the most cataclysmic revolution can create overnight those habits of mind and that social machinery necessary to the successful functioning of a new social order.

It’s only at certain points in history that people realize just how much power that they have.

Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.

The Socialist movement is the abolitionist movement of the 20th century.

[In the French Revolution] there is much to approve and much to condemn…. An essential change was necessary for the happiness and dignity of a great people, long in a state of degradation.

As a first step, we should recognize that the Armenian people's fight for national self-determination is first and foremost the duty and task of the Armenian people themselves. We do not believe in benevolent friends, the inevitable triumph of justice, or covertly and cleverly manipulating the superpowers. If we are to achieve national self-determination, then we ourselves, the Armenian people, will have to fight for it. We believe in the power of organized masses and in the capacity of our people to determine their own future. We believe in revolution