“Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.” WorldHumansMayDifferentRaceSituationRevolutionTrainHuman RaceEmergenciesWorld HistoryBrakeGrabbingLocomotives Author:Walter Benjamin
“It is a revolution, and it can no more be checked by human effort... than a prarie fire by a gardener's watering pot.” HumansEffortFireRevolutionPotGardener Author:Judah P. Benjamin
“We must think of human progress, not as of something going on in the race in general, but as something going on in a small minority, perpetually beleaguered in a few walled towns. Now and then the horde of barbarians outside breaks through, and we have an armed effort to halt the process. That is, we have a Reformation, a French Revolution, a war for democracy, a Great Awakening. The minority is decimated and driven to cover. But a few survive- and a few are enough to carry on.” ThinkingHumansWarEnoughProcessEffortRaceBreakDemocracyProgressSocietyRevolutionTownsDrivenAwakeningMinoritiesNow And ThenReformationHaltBarbariansBreak ThroughFrench RevolutionHuman ProgressHorde Author:H. L. Mencken
“If a man has lived in a tradition which tells him that nothing can be done about his human condition, to believe that progress is possible may well be the greatest revolution of all.” IfsMenBelieveHumansWellsMayDoneProgressConditionsRevolutionTraditionHuman Condition Author:Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth
“England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.” HumansSocialResultsCommonProgressMaterialsRevolutionDrinkIndiaEnglandFoundationWesternMissionsCeaseDestructiveIdolsAsiaPaganSkullsBourgeoisHideousAnnihilationEpochHuman ProgressNectarSocial RevolutionWestern Society Author:Karl Marx
“I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.” IfsHumansLittlesSoulEndsMightCareGrowsResultsConsciousnessProgressRevolutionMessagesRegardPropertyFollowingSeedsTinyStatementsCosmicPredictableKrishnaMantrasPedestalEnd ResultsHaresSmashingTwigsPenetrationAfterthoughtFortuitousHare Krishna Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women - of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.” MenNeedsHumansSpeakGenerationsRevolutionBattleConversationLibraryCategoriesPakistanLaboratoryMy GenerationJavaBolivia Author:Rebecca Solnit
“After sketching his program for the scientific revolution that he foresaw, Bacon ends his account with a prayer: "Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies". That is still a good prayer for all of us as we begin the twenty-first century.” GivingMindFirstsHumansMayStillsEndsHandsSpiritPrayerCenturyRevolutionPrayingProgramMercyAccountsTwentiesSteadfastSketchingHuman FamilyScientific RevolutionGood Prayer Author:Freeman Dyson
“I hope we have learned throughout centuries of revolution and reaction that it's really a shift in consciousness that we need. And I think there is a shift in consciousness among our human species. I think the human species is evolving, spiritually.” ThinkingNeedsHumansConsciousnessCenturyRevolutionSpeciesReactionsEvolveHuman Species Author:Elizabeth Lesser