Quotes about Insurrections

Angelina Grimke

Slavery always has, and always will, produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things, and no human power can much longer perpetuate it.

Thomas Jefferson

The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.

Adolf Hitler

The Arab Freedom Movement is, in the Middle East, our natural ally against England. In this connection, the raising of rebellion in Iraq is of special importance.

The Germans allied themselves with the Islamic insurgency of the day as a strategic maneuver. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem broadcast propaganda from Nazi radio in Berlin and was dispatched to organize Muslim fighters in Iraq. Fascism was introduced into the Middle East and the Arabs and Persians saw it as a natural extension of their authoritarian and highly prescriptive forms of religious and civil government. 60 years later, there would be Islamic Fascists throughout the Middle East in control or vying for control of many of the countries.

Angelina Grimke

Slavery always has, and always will produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things.

Charles II

The old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than I have taken for the murder of my father.

Nathaniel Bacon had led a rebellion in Virginia and had routed the Governor’s troops and caused him to flee leaving control of Virginia to Bacon and his followers who were far more democratic and advanced. However Bacon succumbed to swamp fever, and his followers could not hold the colony together giving the Governor a chance to establish his authority. He then went on a vengeful reign of terror, executing all of Bacon’s followers he could get his hands on. With no danger to the authority of the Crown, King Charles felt that Berkeley had gone too far. The King’s father Charles I had been executed in the aftermath of the English Civil War, but he had executed far fewer than Berkely had done in Virginia.

Richard K. Betts

To impose justice, stability, and cooperation on oppressed or ungoverned nations is usually a tall order. It is hardly ever done cheaply, especially against nationalist resistance

Abraham Lincoln

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? … you have failed to implicate a single Republican … If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Southerners were paranoid that the relatively new Republican party leaders were conspiring to foment slave rebellions. In particular, they believed that the Republican party was behind John Brown’s failed slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry. For many Republicans, Brown’s raid was understandable and even inevitable and moral, but there was no assistance provided to Brown by the Republican party of even members of its leadership. Democrats attacked the Republicans with this charge. There were some strong abolitionists who were Republicans who did believe that violence to end slavery was not only moral but was inevitable due to the intransigence of the South.

Norman Mailer

Let the madmen duke it out and then jump the one or two of them that are left.

Insurrections Quotes