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Revolution Quotes

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Revolution Quotes

“It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”

Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution

“Old France, weighed down with history, prostrated by wars and revolutions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to decline, but revived, century after century, by the genius of renewal!”

War Century Greatness Revolution Genius France Decline Renewal

Book:War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944-1946. Translated from the French by R. Howard

Source: War Memoirs: Salvation, 1944-1946. Translated from the French by R. Howard

“No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.”

Generations Revolution Genius Walking Sticks Journalism Covered Reporters My Generation Lynching Spats Walking Sticks

Author:H. L. Mencken

“The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.”

May Form Humanity Race Revolution Genius Wave Streams Mislead Stagnant Marshes

Author:Johann Gottfried Herder

“I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.”

World May Children Country Form Humanity Language Race Wife Revolution Genius Labor Property Wave Streams Customs One Love Mislead Stagnant Marshes

Author:Johann Gottfried Herder

“No single man makes history. History cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing. Wars and revolutions, kings and Robespierres, are history's organic agents, its yeast. But revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track mind, geniuses in their ability to confine themselves to a limited field. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days, the whole upheaval takes a few weeks or at most years, but the fanatical spirit that inspired the upheavals is worshiped for decades thereafter, for centuries.”

Men Years Mind Made War Whole Action Spirit Order Hours Ability Growing Week Century Fields Revolution Genius Kings Inspired Track Decades Agents Grass Upheaval Single Man Yeast Grass Growing

Author:Boris Pasternak