Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. — Herbert Spencer
Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children. — Georg Buchner
Revolutions are the locomotives of history. — Karl Marx
Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny. — William Godwin
The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable. — Maximilien Robespierre
A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his. — Mario Vargas Llosa
Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere. — Giuseppe Mazzini
It is in revolutionary periods that the culmination of previous trends and the beginning of new ones appear. — C. L. R. James
Revolution is an inalienable right of mankind. Freedom is an imperishable birth right of all. Labor is the real sustainer of society, the sovereignty of the ultimate destiny of the workers. — Bhagat Singh
We talking about revolution because that's the era that you're caught in. — H. Rap Brown
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. — Aristotle
Short French Revolution Quotes
The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought. — Kim Jong-un
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. — John Kenneth Galbraith
Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought. — Kwame Nkrumah
The first revolution is when you change your mind — Gil Scott-Heron
Revolutions are not about trifles, but spring from trifles. — Aristotle
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. — Havelock Ellis
Revolutionaries don't get job security. — Ruby Dee
Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly. — Albert Camus
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot
French Revolution Image Quotes
In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris. — Jean-Paul Marat
The rich are only defeated when running for their lives. — C. L. R. James
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
French Culture Quotes
I see myself as an ambassador of French heritage and French culture. — Bernard Arnault
The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America. — Mireille Guiliano
Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist. — Masaharu Morimoto
Every revolution begins with a spark.
French girls still have the Jane Birkin culture. You can go just like that, without makeup, without managing your hair. — Emmanuelle Alt
It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French. — James A. Baldwin
France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything. — Adam Michnik
Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures. — Bob Cousy
Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture. — John Robert Colombo
French culture takes ageing very seriously. There's much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries. — Kristin Scott Thomas
All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely. — Lawrence Durrell
France Quotes
I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France. — Louis XVI of France
I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs......When I was on drugs I couldn't even find my bike. — Willie Nelson
You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa. — Dave Barry
According to traditional wisdom in rural France, a baby in the womb should be compared to fruit on the tree. Not all the fruit on the same tree is ripe at the same time...we must accept that some babies need a much longer time than others before they are ready to be born. — Michel Odent
The greatest difficulty we have faced is the neocolonial way of thinking that exists in this country. We were colonized by a country, France, that left us with certain habits. For us, being successful in life, being happy, meant trying to live as they do in France, like the richest of the French. — Thomas Sankara
France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina. — Wilfred Burchett
My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances — Alice Hoffman
France generates a significant part of its energy requirements from fission reactors and these have achieved a perfect safety record. We build ours all differently. — Wilson Greatbatch
In France we have a law which doesn't allow the press to publish a photo that you didn't approve. It lets the paparazzi take the picture, but if they publish this picture, you have the choice to sue the newspaper. So me, I always sued them. — Audrey Tautou
Frenchmen Quotes
Never doubt the courage of the French. They were the ones who discovered that snails are edible. — Doug Larson
Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud to be who I am: first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman. — Zinedine Zidane
Close with a Frenchman, but out-maneuver a Russian. — Horatio Nelson
I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities. — Leslie Caron
The reason why Englishmen are the best husbands in the world is because they want to be faithful. A Frenchman or an Italian will wake up in the morning and wonder what girl he will meet. An Englishman wakes up and wonders what the cricket score is. — Barbara Cartland
You must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your King, and you must treat every Frenchman as if he were the Devil himself. — Horatio Nelson
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason. — Ambrose Bierce
The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The priest has just baptized you a Christian with water; and I baptize you a Frenchman, daring child, with a dewdrop of champagne on your lips. — Paul Claudel
French Quotes
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. French translation — Marcel Pagnol
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur.
English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness. — Auguste Escoffier
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. — Mother Teresa
My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal. — Julius Evola
Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not. — Obafemi Awolowo
It is the height of stupidity to claim that men who for a thousand years have had the power to berate us, to fleece us and to oppress us with impunity, will now agree, with good grace, to be our equals. — Jean-Paul Marat
In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? — Marlene Dietrich
I do a real analysis of who actually owns things - it’s the British…the Dutch…then it’s the Arabs…then it’s the French…then it’s the Jews…and then, on down the line. — Alex Jones
Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough. — Mark Twain
Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants. — Karl Lagerfeld
American Revolution Quotes
The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations. — Thomas Jefferson
Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. — Angela Davis
Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy sideThy every action let the goddess guide. — Phillis Wheatley
I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt. — Nathanael Greene
The die is now cast; the colonies must either submit or triumph.... we must not retreat. — George III
Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. — Benjamin Franklin
With regard to military discipline, I may safely say that no such thing existed in the Continental Army. — Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben
Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep. — Alexander Hamilton
You must not deprive the colonies of their right to make laws for themselves. Parliament should only make laws necessary for the empire as a whole. — Thomas Hutchinson
The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. — Nikita Khrushchev
Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker. — Jean-Paul Marat
One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head. Nothing can be expected from European kings except by force of arms. I vote for the death of the tyrant. — Georges Danton
The ministers and the Jacobins are making the king declare war tomorrow on Austria. The ministers are hoping that this move will frighten the Austrians and that within three weeks we will be negotiating (God forbid that this should happen). May we at last be avenged for all the outrages we have suffered from this country! — Marie Antoinette
[We need] someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people... someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude. — Jean-Paul Marat
I shall die in the belief that to make France free, republican and prosperous, a little ink would have sufficed - and only one guillotine. — Camille Desmoulins
The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles. — Terry Eagleton
How could liberty ever establish itself amongst us? Apart from a few tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes. — Jean-Paul Marat
I trust we shall never be reduced to the painful extremity of seeking the aid of Mirabeau. — Marie Antoinette
What is this much repeated phrase 'active citizen' supposed to mean? The active citizens are the ones who took the Bastille. — Camille Desmoulins
The King did not summon the Estates because he needed them, but out of his own pleasure. — Jacques Necker
I have left my balls to Robespierre and my legs to Couthon. That should help the Committee of Public Safety for a while. — Georges Danton
When one meddles with the direction of a revolution, the problem is not how to make it go but how to keep it under control. — Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
The disorganisers are those who want to level everything: property, comforts, the price of commodities, the various services rendered to the State... who want the workmen in the camp to receive the salary of the legislator... who want to level even talents, knowledge, the virtues, because they themselves have none of these things. — Jacques Pierre Brissot
You [Robespierre] will follow us soon. Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood. — Georges Danton
In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now. — Thomas Gage
For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution. — Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
The French revolution taught us the rights of man. — Thomas Sankara
The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.' — Henry Hazlitt
I shall make it my chief business to see that the [royal] executive power has its place in the constitution. — Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past. — John Corigliano
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. — Vladimir Lenin
The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little. — Charles Caleb Colton
No secular state ever existed and none would exist until the end of the French Revolution, and so we understand that America was built on the Judeo-Christian ethic and we believe that this nominee is going to see to it that those truths are upheld. — Rod Parsley
In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, [the French Revolution] had transferred all the public power to the people - the people... ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess — Pope Pius VI
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible. It is then an emanation of virtue. — Maximilien Robespierre
...the French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789... gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order. — Karl Marx
History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past. — Jennifer Donnelly
The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848. — C. L. R. James
This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution. — Edvard Munch
Monarchy is an outrage which even the blind of an entire people cannot justify... all men hold from nature the secret mission to destroy wherever it my be found. No man can reign innocently. The folly is too evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. Do kings themselves treat otherwise those who seek to usurp their authority? — Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Most of the Ten Commandments are negative. The purpose of law is not to mandate good behavior. That concept comes from the French Revolution. — Randall Terry
Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them. — Voltaire
The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last. — Francois-Noel Babeuf
This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it. — H. G. Wells
There were two, three or four French Revolutions. Like a multi-stage rocket today, the Revolution involved several successive explosions and propellant thrusts. — Fernand Braudel
I shall easily show that it is impossible to tax further, ruinous to be always borrowing and not enough to confine ourselves to measures of economy. — Charles Alexandre de Calonne
Louis XVI started to die on June 21st 1791. For his flight tore away the veil of that false constitutional monarchy, and once more confronted the Patriot party with the whole problem of the revolution's future. — Francois Furet
The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty. — Joseph Fouche
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete... Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws, everything is sterile and dead. — Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
The Roman Catholic Church early on simply adapted the hierarchical structure of the Roman Empire and confused the whole thing. Vertical attention and hierarchy were so entangled, that when the French killed the king during the Revolution, they lost much of their vertical attention too. — Robert Bly
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