#revolution

It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer. It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? "We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#politics #revolution #russia #soviet-union #communism

Revolution begins with the self, in the self. ↗

— Toni Cade Bambara

#revolution #self

Only since the Industrial Revolution have most people worked in places away from their homes or been left to raise small children without the help of multiple adults, making for an unsupported life. ↗

— Martha Beck

#been #children #help #homes #industrial

It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#friction #kills #machinery #people #revolution

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#cured #evils #fighting #goals #ignorance

All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union of hearts. ↗

— Vinoba Bhave

#activities #hearts #purpose #revolutions #sole

Do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power. ↗

— Vinoba Bhave

#governmental #governmental power #imagine #power #propagated

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#change #form #politics #revolution

Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing. ↗