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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.

— Hannah Arendt Crises of the Republic (1969)

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Revolution

More quotes by Hannah Arendt

In its flight from death, the craving for permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death.

Love and Saint Augustine (1929)

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The Life of the Mind (1978)

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

Men in Dark Times (1968)

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

The Human Condition (1958)

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I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism.

Huey P. Newton Revolutionary Suicide (1973)

Men do not lead the revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men.

Joseph de Maistre Considerations on France (1796)

We never talked about men or clothes or inconsequential things we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution - real girls' talk.

Nina Simone

The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.

John F. Kennedy

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hannah Arendt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.