Quotes about rebellion

Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest.

— Yaser Arafat

For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.

— Aristotle

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

— Mikhail Bakunin

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

— Ambrose Bierce

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.

— Edmund Burke

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

— Albert Camus

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

— Albert Camus

The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all -- he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.

— Albert Camus

I'm totally going through a rebel period right now. It's sort of waning, but ... ach, I'm allowed, right? It's OK, right?

— Claire Danes

No one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat.

— Lawrence Durrell

It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

— T. S. Eliot

Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.

— Victor Hugo

I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

— Thomas Jefferson

A riot is the language of the unheard.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

Anyone who can be proved to be a seditious person is an outlaw before God and the emperor; and whoever is the first to put him to death does right and well. Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel.

— Martin Luther

I wouldn't have turned out the way I was if I didn't have all those old-fashioned values to rebel against.

— Madonna

Insurrection: Insurrection as soon as circumstances allow: insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous: the insurrection of the masses: the holy war of the oppressed: the republic to make republicans: the people in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection announce with its awful voice the decrees of God: let it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood all the country that it is destined to make fertile.

— Giuseppe Mazzini

There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy. Be militant each in your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.

— Emmeline Pankhurst

When the sword of rebellion is drawn, the sheath should be thrown away.

— English Proverb

Twelve highlanders and a bagpipe make a rebellion.

— Scottish Proverb

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.

— John Reed

The burning of rebellious thoughts in the little breast, of internal hatred and opposition, could not long go on without slight whiffs of external smoke, such as mark the course of subterranean fire.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

— Henry David Thoreau

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

— Leon Trotsky

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

— Rebecca West

You’re required to fight the government since they are not obeying the laws of the constitution and it says in the constitution to fight them if they are not.

— James Dye