Everett Dirksen Quotes

All big changes of the world come from words.

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.

It takes but one person, one moment, one conviction, to start a ripple of change.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

Every revolution seems impossible at the beginning, and after it happens, it was inevitable.

I'm not trying to steer people in a direction. I'm just trying to move them. Wherever it takes them, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be moved in one way or another, and that's a hard thing to do, I think.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.

Sometimes - history needs a push.

Ideas are more powerful than people.

For me, 'revolution' simply means radical change.

You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch, but actually it's moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks' efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.

There is a major ingredient missing from our perception of how changes are brought about; that ingredient is power.

Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes.

The revolution is a torrent which sweeps aside those who resist it.

In any social revolution the one thing that keeps it alive is hope.

Revolutions do not go backward.

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Something is stirring in the hearts and minds of the people.

In every revolution on Earth, consciousness came first.

Heroism means going out of bounds. In this world things must go out of bounds from time to time... No one can desire that the world continue to muddle along in every respect in the groove into which imperfect laws and even more imperfect behavior have pushed it. Without heroic intervention no Council of Nicaea, no dethronement of the Merovingians, no conquest of England, no Reformation, no revolt of the Netherlands, no free America. The thing that counts is who intervenes, how and in the name of what.

… revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal