Ernst Junger Quotes

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revolution has its ebullience, its bravery, its hope, and its solidarity. Some of these things pass.

I don't really feel McCain. It ain't just because Barack is black; he can make change. Just like Bush equals recession, Barack equals progression.

He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.

Revolutions just spread blood. Evolution - this is something that changes in the long term.

Reform is China's second revolution.

The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations.

Only through perils and upheavals can Nations be brought to further developments. May the present upheavals lead to a better world.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

Mr. Mijanovi and those associated with him are the hope and the conscience of the Yugoslav revolution.

I know and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backwards.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

We must not forget that all great revolutions and reformations would look mean and meagre if examined in detail as they occurred at the time.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expecting so much from it, would not the tide ebb as strongly as it was flowing? It is a rash game this setting our hearts on any future beyond what we have our own selves control over. Things do not walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, and to hope is almost the correlative of to be disappointed.

It's coming to America first, The cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on.

Miracles begin when we consider the possibility that there might be another way.

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

We know the redemption must come. The time and the manner of its coming we know not: It may come in peace, or it may come in blood; but whether in peace or in blood, LET IT COME.

Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.

Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future...Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands.

Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.

It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.