Andre Gide Quotes

A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.

Revolution may not be pro-Western or democratic.

I was born in revolution.

The only books on revolution were published by communists.

One man’s democratization is another man’s destabilization.

Be committed to … smashing feudalists, conservatives, and imperialists who are "reactionaries".

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

Reagan himself, for much of his life, was devoted against the elites. His antagonism to the Soviet Union is antagonism against oppression by the elites of the many.

You can bring down governments, you can do a lot of things that are in your own interests even though liberals will get very antsy when you start talking about it.

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.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

Every revolution has its counterrevolution - that is a sign the revolution is for real.

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

Unless something drastic is done very soon, then bloodshed and violence are going to happen…almost inevitably… A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate means.

Do you trust the government? No? In that case, let’s overthrow it tomorrow.

Bloody revolutions are solid; bloodless ones are not permanent. But we have shed sufficient blood to come to this revolution. It has been shed not only on battlefields, but within the country…There have been many risings, all of which have been suppressed. Let us hope that there will be no more bloodshed. The first duty of our educated people is to enlighten and guide the opponents of our happy revolution.

By definition, politics is, or ought to be, division.

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them.... In every country these two parties exist.... Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same party still and pursue the same object.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

“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, not elections!

Liberalism is but childishness, which is easily brought to reason; but revolution is a force, and one must know how to use it.

Mass action culminates in armed insurrection and civil war.

In politics experiments mean revolutions.

Revolutions do not always establish freedom.