This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez
It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime.
A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.
Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
A revolution is not the overturning of a cart, a reshuffling in the cards of state. It is a process, a swelling, a new growth in the race. If it is real, not simply a trauma, it is another ring in the tree of history, layer upon layer of invisible tissue composing the evidence of a circle.
Evidence | Growth | Revolution |
Lester Thurow, fully Lester Carl Thurow, aka L.C. Thurow
No country without a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp a shift in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last generation. At no other time have median wages of American men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the per capita domestic product was advancing.
Defeat | Majority | Men | Occupation | Revolution | Time |
Lester Thurow, fully Lester Carl Thurow, aka L.C. Thurow
Probably no country has ever had as large a shift in the distribution of wealth [as what we've seen in the U.S. in the last 30 years] without having gone through a revolution or losing a major war.
Revolution | Wealth |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The great revolution is stillness.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, fully Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon ... The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.
Good | Liberty | Public | Revolution | Happiness |
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, fully Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.
Revolution | Wise |
The purpose of adolescence is to revise the past, not to obliterate it. . . . Adolescence entails the deployment of family passions to the passions and ideals that bind individuals to new family units, to their communities, to the species, to nature, to the cosmos. Therefore, given half a chance, the revolution at issue in adolescence becomes a revolution of transformation, not of annihilation.
Adolescence | Family | Ideals | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.
Revolution | War |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.
Law | Revolution | System | Will |
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are two essentially different revolutionary processes, and the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society.
Inevitable | Revolution |
The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives
Change | Revolution |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Theirs is the customary human reaction when confronted with innovation: to flounder about attempting to adapt old responses to new situations or to simply condemn or ignore the harbingers of change--a practice refined by the Chinese emperors, who used to execute messengers bringing bad news. The new technological environments generate the most pain among those least prepared to alter their old value structures. The literati find the new electronic environment far more threatening than do those less committed to literacy as a way of life. When an individual or social group feels that its whole identity is jeopardized by social or psychic change, its natural reaction is to lash out in defensive fury. But for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place.
Individual | Pain | Practice | Revolution | Old | Value |
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime.
Force | Government | Liberty | Revolution | Terror | Tyranny | Government |
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror - virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent.
Government | Revolution | Terror | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Government |
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
So the current technological revolution is in fact the hand of G-d at work; it is meant to help us make G-d a reality in our lives. And as time goes on, science will show itself more and more to parallel the truths of G-d, thereby revealing the intrinsic unity in the entire universe.
Reality | Revolution | Science | Time | Unity | Will | Truths |