Billy Connolly Quotes

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

We did not have a revolution in order to have a democracy.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.... Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachment on the rights of people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governments so mild in their punishment of rebellion so as not to discourage them too much.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion

If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.

The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection.

Real freedom will require many changes in the nation’s political and social philosophies and institutions.

When my husband and I had to escape from Czarist Russia with a price on our head [in 1905], we had utopian dreams of what Russia might become under a communist government with the Czar deposed but never really thought we would live to see it. But I did live to see my utopian dream come to reality. But it was not Russia. It is America, here and now. There is not a single thing that we revolutionists hoped for, that has not come to pass in America—the greatest country in human history.

No successful political transition can take place without leaders and movements that demand and press for freedom.

The most disastrous revolutions are produced by the extreme of physical want; the most happy, by wants of a moral kind, physical want being absent.

The two most important documents affecting the destiny of America are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Both these immortal papers relate primarily to the freedom of the individual.

In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free institutions we enjoy, have developed the powers, and improved the condition, of our whole people, beyond any example in the world.

To the American people of 1789, their nation promised a new way of life: each individual a free man; each having the right to seek his own happiness; a republican form of government in which the people would be sovereign; and no arbitrary power over people's lives. Less than two hundred years later, almost every aspect of the dream has been lost.

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the 'freedom of the press' goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

The Occupy Wall Street project feels like a burning ember that might light the torch of justice and inflame our longing for freedom.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple altars they have raised?

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

We believe that this is not right for a democracy to make revolutions the beacon of promoting democracy.

Security isn't what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection.

During my last voyage to America, I enjoyed the happiness of seeing that revolution completed, and, thinking of the one that would probably occur in France, I said in a speech to Congress, published everywhere except in the 'French Gazette,' 'May this revolution serve as a lesson to oppressors and as an example to the oppressed!'

The pursuit of happiness is in our Constitution. We're all entitled to have the best we can.