Motivational Quotes

Evolution

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.

- Conrad, Joseph

Best Quotes about Evolution

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

Camus, Albert

Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.

Djilas, Milovan

One of the stupidest theories of Western life.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.

Baudrillard, Jean

Revolutions are notorious for allowing even non-participants -- even women! -- new scope for telling the truth since they are themselves such massive moments of truth, moments of such massive participation.

James, Selma

On the first day of a revolution he is a treasure; on the second he ought to be shot.

The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.

Hoffer, Eric

In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interest are at stake.

Aristotle

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Plato

10.

To be a revolutionary you have to be human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

Fonda, Jane

11.

Conrad, Joseph

12.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

Herzen, Alexander

13.

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

Adams, John

15.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose, but their chains. .Workers of the world unite!

Marx, Karl

16.

Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull.

Lewis, Wyndham

17.

After listening to a lecture on evolution by a science professor, a student wrote a poem and titled it The Amazing Professor. The poem read: Once I was a tadpole when I began to begin. Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Next I was a monkey on a coconut tree. Now I am a doctor with a Ph.D.

18.

Clemency is also a revolutionary measure.

Desmoulins, Camille

19.

The dead have been awakened -- shall I sleep? The world's at war with tyrants -- shall I crouch? the harvest's ripe -- and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, its echo in my heart.

Byron, Lord

20.

It is easier to run a revolution than a government.

Marcos, Ferdinand E.

21.

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

22.

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it.

Thomas, Norman

23.

History teaches us that the great revolutions aren't started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better -- and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

24.

Thinkers prepare the revolution and bandits carry it out.

Azuela, Mariano

25.

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

Gilbert, W. S.

26.

If not us, who? If not now, when?

27.

Revolutions are not made for export.

Khrushchev, Nikita

28.

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.

Vaneigem, Raoul

29.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

Peirce, Charles Sanders

30.

Revolutions are always verbose.

Trotsky, Leon

31.

True revolutionaries are like God -- they create the world in their own image. Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.

Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti

32.

The more there are riots, the more repressive actin will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.

King Jr. Martin Luther

33.

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

Genet, Jean

34.

Riots are the voices of the unheard.

King Jr. Martin Luther

35.

Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

Twain, Mark

36.

At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping soldiers of the proletariat will awake as at the fanfare of the Last Judgment and the corpses of the victims of the struggle will arise and demand an accounting from those who are loaded down with curses.

Liebknecht, Karl

37.

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

Castro, Fidel

38.

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

Russell, Bertrand

39.

The worst of revolutions is a restoration.

Fox, Charles James

40.

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Bierce, Ambrose

41.

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

Spencer, Herbert

42.

All revolutions devour their own children.

Rohm, Ernst

43.

We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.

Reade, W. Winwood

44.

One revolution is like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next.

Rogers, Will

45.

Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.

Camus, Albert

46.

Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

47.

I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Castro, Fidel

48.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

Mencken, H. L.

49.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Zedong, Mao

50.

Two million years from now the scientists can start a row by claming that the creatures of that period descended from us.