Tim Wu Quotes

Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.

Revolution is not a goal in itself.

Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization. I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.

A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.

Make the revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Reforms are less to be dreaded than revolutions, for they cause less reaction.

If revolution insists upon overturning established order, let other peoples make the tragic experiment. There is no place for it in America.

Rebellions which overthrow the governments of Mexico cannot be called revolutions. A revolution is a radical change, and if there is anything that has never been changed in Mexico it is the method of putting new public functionaries into office by rebellion.

Revolution is a transfer of property from class to class.

If the idea of revolution is to win out, it must be through political enlightenment. It is useless to try to impose it by force of arms.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.

Political matters are developing so fast that we must not let a single thing slip without use.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom.

Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our revolution. They existed before.

I think our concept of revolution, in terms of getting the power to do things, is too focused on the state. We have a scenario of revolution that first, you know, comes from 1917, that first you take the state power, and then you change things. And we don't realize it's collapsed.

Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.

I've embraced rock 'n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock 'n' roll. But I am also engaged in all of these things separately.

Should the political process not work, there is always the other approach.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.