Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

It's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that's not where we're going. But, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

For in the first place the American people could not have been swept too fast and too far in this movement without enough alarms being sounded to be heard and heeded.

… the most sacred right [revolution] to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.

In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, ... it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.

Revolutions are not made, they come.

Americans have a tendency to exalt the concept of a popular uprising.

If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions.

One revolution is like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next.

I titled my book "Revolution." And that is exactly what it is. France is experiencing a time of transformation - in education, on the labor market and in the pensions system. We're talking about a cultural revolution.

To make a revolution is not in the grain of our people's nature.

If things do not change, there will be nothing left to change. Either power must pass to the people or everything will perish.

A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

I do think that our culture or our psyche as a country I guess, the world or whatever, we're due for a huge event. We're due for a little bit of a revolution or a spotlight or a movement. Something that feels large, something that feels like the 60s. Some sort of unification.

This is a movement. This is not Trump. This is not anything. This is a movement. Remember, it is a movement. We used to say silent majority. It's not a silent majority, it's really a noisy majority.

A king can stand people's fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking.

Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden light; a general restlessness supervenes; the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed; old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before new ones have been created. These symptoms are the precursors of revolution; they have preceded all the great changes through which the world has passed.

It is a know fact that almost all revolutions have been the work, not of the common people, but of the aristocracy, and especially of the decayed part of the aristocracy.

The power of the masses can influence any government in the world. The power of the masses can elect an official, start a revolution, and drive history. Nelson Mandela did it alone from his prison cell. Ghandi did it lying down. Egypt did it singing songs.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution

Social change cannot come above the intellect, it comes about by people suffering. And the more people are related to that, the more they lose respect for an existing government. They will seek another direction. If there are too many people who seek a new direction, then the existing government calls upon the army and police to manage society – that is called fascism.

The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves.

I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived. And a revolution has some sense of a long time frame, millions of years that we've been evolving on this planet.