Millard Fillmore Quotes

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

“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!

Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly.

A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.

All revolutions are violent revolutions.

Tyranny may precipitate a revolutionary movement at any time.

The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term.

A revolution cannot survive without an enemy in front of it..

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

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

I was born in revolution.

You have to understand that to have a revolution when you are 18 years old is completely different from normal political leaders who were born in a democracy and will die in a democracy and never to have experienced that change. I have seen that change.

Revolution is glorified by intellectuals, apotheosized by poets, sanctified by visionaries, and bled white by politicians.

If ever anarchy is triumphant, it’s triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism.

A new Russian Revolution is inevitable, and that it may come much sooner than anyone would now dare to hope… I do not believe it possible that the thirst for freedom and decency in the countries of the Soviet Empire can remain much longer unslaked, and that any attempt either to quench it by total repression or to satisfy it by real reforms, will be cataclysmically destructive of the eroded foundations of the entire State system.

The revolution will stop at nothing. We have changed the nature of politics.

Revolution, not elections!

The National Revolution has begun.

The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

It is then a very unseasonable time to plead law, when swords are in the hands of the vulgare, or to think to restrain them with fear of punishments when they look after liberty and shake off all government.

The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they split in defense of their liberties only enslaved them the more

Revolutionary death is the reality and victory the dream.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.