Adam Smith Quotes

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion

To those who had ordered them to death, one of them said: “We die because the people are asleep and you will die because the people will awaken.”

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.

When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.

If I was a Greek citizen I'd be out there trying to bring down this monstrosity that has been put upon those people.

George W. Bush and his administration have hijacked the American apparatus… If people acted on what they felt in their hearts, they would ring the White House with burning torches and pitchforks.

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

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

The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.

When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.

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 in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression

Why are the people rebellious? Because the rulers interfere too much. Therefore they are rebellious.

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.

Tremble, all ye oppressors of the world!

People have a right to violence, to rebel, to fight back.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.