Social Revolution Quotes

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

  Paulo Freire

  Revolution, Social, Born

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.99, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Life, Friendship

  Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

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• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

  John F. Kennedy

  Inspirational, Peace, Freedom

  Address on first anniversary of Alliance for Progress, 13 Mar. 1962

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• You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Inspirational, Change, Wisdom

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• No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

  Emma Goldman

  Real, Politics, Revolution

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• Revolution is but thought carried into action.

  Emma Goldman

  Revolution, Action, Social Change

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.50, Library of Alexandria

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  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Strength, Wisdom, Veterans Day

  Letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 Nov. 1787

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• Persuading people through technology is the next social revolution. Facebook demonstrates just how powerful it will be.

  B. J. Fogg

  Powerful, Technology, People

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• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Happiness, Peace

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.270

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• There are those, on the one hand, who hope to achieve the social revolution through the State by preserving and even extending most of its powers to be used for the revolution. And there are those like ourselves who see the State, both in its present form, in its very essence, and in whatever guise it might appear, an obstacle to the social revolution, the greatest hindrance to the birth of a society based on equality and liberty, as well as the historic means designed to prevent this blossoming.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Mean, Hands, Essence

  Peter Kropotkin, George Woodcock (1993). “Fugitive writings”, Black Rose Books Ltd

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• What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Freedom, Gun

  Letter toWilliam Stephens Smith, 13 Nov. 1787

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• Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Power, Justice, Demand

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.200, Beacon Press

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• Don't depend on governments or corporations to fix problems. Social revolutions are led by passionate individuals and that's what makes the difference.

  Margaret Mead

  Government, Differences, Passionate

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• There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Wine, Two, Church

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• Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.

  Faye Wattleton

  Class, Effort, Revolution

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• Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women

  Thomas Sankara

  Revolution, Social, Liberation

  Thomas Sankara (1988). “Thomas Sankara speaks: the Burkina Faso revolution, 1983-87”, Pathfinder Pr

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• The social revolution...cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped itself of all superstitions concerning the past.

  Karl Marx

  Past, Superstitions, Revolution

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• In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

  Nick Clooney

  Class, Wiping Out, Saving

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• Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.

  Emma Goldman

  Mean, Law, Parent

  "My Disillusionment in Russia". Book by Emma Goldman, 1925.

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• Three simple words can describe the nature of the social revolution that is talking place and what Negroes really want. They are the words "all," "now," and "here."

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Simple, Talking, Want

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• The current information revolution is a cultural revolution, a social revolution, a thoroughgoing technological revolution that involves not just information, but labor, leisure, entertainment, communication, education, culture and thus is part of a major cultural and social shift.

  Bill Gates

  Communication, Culture, Information

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• Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law - like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entropy).

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Law

  "A Soviet Heretic : Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin". 1970.

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• In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Revolution, Social, Obvious

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.302, Harvard University Press

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• I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Philosophy, Men

  Olaf Stapledon (1975). “To the End of Time”, Macmillan Reference USA

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• Jesus , in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government . That government seems to him purely and simply an abuse. A great social revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority in this world will be humiliated, was his dream .

  Ernest Renan

  Dream, Jesus, Ideas

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