This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
As to the impotence of repression — it is sufficiently demonstrated by the disorder of present society and by the necessity of a revolution that we all desire or feel inevitable. In the domain of economy, coercion has led us to industrial servitude; in the domain of politics — to the State, that is to say, to the destruction of all ties that formerly existed among citizens, and to the nation becoming nothing but an incoherent mass of obedient subjects of a central authority.
Coercion | Desire | Incoherent | Necessity | Nothing | Politics | Present | Revolution | Society | Society |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
The past year of revolution has taught me one truth: politicians may make mistakes, politics may be socially useful, but may also be socially harmful, whereas scientific and educational work is always useful and is always needed by the people.
Past | Politics | Revolution | Work |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
If on the morrow of the revolution, the masses of the people have only phrases at their service, if they do not recognize, by clear and blinding facts, that the situation has been transformed to their advantage, if the overthrow ends only in a change of persons and formulae, nothing will have been achieved. ... In order that the revolution should be something more than a word, in order that the reaction should not lead us back tomorrow to the situation of yesterday, the conquest of today must be worth the trouble of defending; the poor of yesterday must not be the poor today.
Change | Conquest | Ends | Nothing | Order | People | Revolution | Tomorrow | Will | Worth | Trouble |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The information revolution. Almost everybody is sure ...that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and ...that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors ...The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s...did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 ...Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, ...it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. ...the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. ...These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead.
Computer | Enough | Internet | Invention | Revolution | Society | Will | Wrong | Society |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
You know how I always believe in the future ... Without disorder, the revolution is impossible; knowing that, I did not lose hope, and I do not lose it now.
Future | Knowing | Revolution |
A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal.
Pierre Trudeau, aka Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fully Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau
Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us.
Legends | Revolution | Science | Spirit | Will |
As soon as Goals 2000 passed, it was attacked by extremists, who stirred up anxious parents with visions of totalitarian control over their children's minds and of secular humanists stealing their children's souls. What are these goals that promote such reactions: By 2000: All children in America will start school ready to learn. High school graduation rates will increase to at least 90%. All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter. US students will be first in the world in science & math. Every adult will be literate and will possess the skills necessary to compete in a global economy. Every school will be free of drugs & violence. Teachers will have access to continuing education. Every school will promote partnerships with parents. These goals are hardly the stuff of revolution and are not likely to be fully achieved by 2000. We cannot expect to reverse decades of declining standards in a few years.
Children | Control | Global | Goals | Parents | Revolution | Science | Will | World |
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear.
Aims | Chance | Change | Democracy | Determination | Enough | Ignorance | Improvement | Little | Need | Order | Reform | Revolution | Old |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
I have been a deliberate half-century-fused inciter of a cool-headed, natural, gestation-rate-paced revolution, armed with physically demonstrable livingry levers with which altogether to elevate all humanity to realization of an inherently sustainable, satisfactory-to-all, ever higher standard of living. Critical threshold-crossing of the inevitable revolution is already underway.
Humanity | Inevitable | Revolution |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
Critical threshold-crossing of the inevitable revolution is already underway.
Inevitable | Revolution |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
It is new design by architects versus world revolution by political leadership.
Design | Revolution | World |
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
Art | Revolution | Art |
R. G. Collingwood, fully Robert George Collingwood
The sciences of observation and experiment are alike in this, that their aim is to detect the constant or recurring features in all events of a certain kind. A meteorologist studies one cyclone in order to compare it with others ; and by studying a number of them he hopes to find out what features in them are constant, that is, to find out what cyclones as such are like. But the historian has no such aim. If you find him on a certain occasion studying the Hundred Years War or the Revolution of 1688, you cannot infer that he is in the preliminary stages of an inquiry whose ultimate aim is to reach conclusions about wars or revolutions as such. If he is in the preliminary stages of any inquiry, it is more likely to be a general study of the Middle Ages or the seventeenth century. This is because the sciences of observation and experiment are organized in one way and history is organized in another. In the organization of meteorology, the ulterior value of what has been observed about one cyclone is conditioned by its relation to what has been observed about other cyclones. In the organization of history, the ulterior value of what is known about the Hundred Years War is conditioned, not by its relation to what is known about other wars, but by its relation to what is known about other things that people did in the Middle Ages.
Events | Experiment | History | Inquiry | Observation | Order | Organization | People | Revolution | Study | War | Value |
Raymond Aron, fully Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron
The man who no longer expects miraculous changes either from a revolution or from an economic plan is not obliged to resign himself to the unjustifiable. It is because he likes individual human beings, participates in communities, and respects the truth, that he refuses to surrender his soul to an abstract ideal of humanity, a tyrannical party, and an absurd scholasticism. . . If tolerance is born of doubt, let us teach everyone to doubt all the models and utopias, to challenge all the prophets of redemption and the heralds of catastrophe. If they can abolish fanaticism, let us pray for the advent of the skeptics.
Abstract | Absurd | Challenge | Doubt | Individual | Man | Plan | Redemption | Revolution | Soul | Surrender | Teach |
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
Love | People | Revolution | Struggle | Understanding |
Raymond Aron, fully Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron
The intellectual who no longer feels attached to anything is not satisfied with opinion merely; he wants certainty, he wants a system. The revolution provides him with his opium.
Opinion | Revolution | Wants |
Richard Barnet, fully Richard Jackson Barnet
Revolution is a wasteful, destructive, and inhuman engine of political change. It must be allowed to happen if there is nothing better, but the great challenge to human ingenuity is to find alternative paths to economic and political reconstruction, which can bring basic changes without the massive use of violence. The societies of the- Third World can ill afford the economic and human costs of prolonged civil war. But virtually all of the thinking to date about revolutionizing underdeveloped societies through technology rather than through violence has been designed to serve the political interests of the donor country. The avoidance of revolution has been an end in itself, and very little commitment has been made to the achievement of radical political change through nonviolent means in societies needing revolution. A great nation has an inherent problem, and possibly an insoluble one, in devising a strategy for helping another society to remake its political life without injecting its own interests and values and without coming to dominate the weak.
Achievement | Challenge | Change | Commitment | Ingenuity | Life | Life | Little | Means | Nothing | Revolution | Society | Technology | Thinking | World | Society | Ingenuity |
What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. It is pure information. It's digital information. It's precisely the kind of information that can be translated digit for digit, byte for byte, into any other kind of information and then translated back again. This is a major revolution. I suppose it's probably the major revolution in the whole history of our understanding of ourselves. It's something would have boggled the mind of Darwin, and Darwin would have loved it, I'm absolutely sure.
History | Mind | Revolution | Understanding |