revolution

Popular upheaval, political turmoil, industrial progress__ny combination of these can cause the evolution of a society to leapfrog generations, sweeping aside aspects of the past that might otherwise have lingered for decades. And this must be especially so, when those with newfound power are men who distrust any form of hesitation or nuance, and who prize self-assurance above all.

It's time to make important noise.

When you dream of change, it shines bright, like fire, and burns away all the rot that came before it. It's swift and inexorable. You cry for justice, and justice is done. The world stands with you in your fight. But if there was one thing I had learned in these last few weeks, it was that change had never been that simple. That kind of revolution existed only in daydreams.

Before I only wanted to change the world. I still want that, but it was ironic how I never wanted to change myself. Yet that's where revolutions start! And it's the only way revolutions can continue, if we keep looking inward, looking at how others might see us. That's what happened when I met Sofia. I saw myself the way she saw me.

They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light.

Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.

A revolution is an idea, taken up by bayonets.

No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.

Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act. As they did in Egypt, where liberty leading the masses was an earnest young woman in a black hijab.

To be __ut of touch_ with a society in which women have internalized their subjugation is an admirable thing.

The matter of sedition is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment....The causes and motives of sedition are, innovation in religion; taxes; alteration of laws and customs; breaking of privileges; general oppression; advancement of unworthy persons, strangers; dearths; disbanded soldiers; factions grown desperate; and whatsoever in offending people joineth them in a common cause.' The cue of every leader, of course, is to divide his enemies and to unite his friends. 'Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions...that are adverse to the state, and setting them at a distance, or at least distrust, among themselves, is not one of the worst remedies; for it is a desperate case, if those that hold with the proceeding of the state be full of discord and faction, and those that are against it be entire and united.' A better recipe for the avoidance of revolutions is an equitable distribution of wealth: 'Money is like muck, not good unless it be spread.' But this does not mean socialism, or even democracy; Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; 'the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people;' and 'Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?' What Bacon wants is first a yeomanry of owning farmers; then an aristocracy for administration; and above all a philosopher-king. 'It is almost without instance that any government was unprosperous under learned governors.' He mentions Seneca, Antonius Pius and Aurelius; it was his hope that to their names posterity would add his own.

The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.

So how do the people resist unjust authority, which, we all agree, they must and should do and have done in the past? The best solution anyone has come up with is to say that violent revolutions can be avoided (and therefore, violent mobs legitimately suppressed) if 'the people' are understood to have the right to challenge the laws through nonviolent civil disobedience.

The era of revolution by military means produced a greater degree of desperation and frustration. This was brought to an end by the people.

Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today__ New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called __oderate Republicans._ The __olitical revolution_ that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the _50s and _60s, the minimum wage__hich sets a floor for other wages__racked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

If truth is not to be spoken, Sir, in a government, calling itself free, least it should be understood by the people, who are governed; and prevent their freely supplying the oil, that facilitates the movement of the cumbrous machine__f facts, which cannot be denied, be repressed; and reason, which cannot be controverted, be stifled; the time is not far distant, when such a country may say, adieu liberty!

I think that our form of government is certainly the best__ot that can be imagined__ut that has ever been experienced; and, while we are sure that practice is in its favour, it would be most absurd to dream of destroying it on theory.

He is fiddling while Rome is burning, and, unlike the enormous majority of people who do this, fiddling with his face toward the flames.