#2,807

A “revolutionary” today means an individual for whom modern vulgarity is not triumphing quickly enough.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 450

#2,797

They speak emphatically of “transforming the world,” when the most to which they can aspire is to certain secondary remodelings of society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 448

#2,749

Those who defend revolutions cite speeches; those who accuse them cite facts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 441

#2,748

Between the causes of a revolution and its realization in actions ideologies insert themselves which end up determining the course and even the nature of events.
“Ideas” do not “cause” revolutions, but channel them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 441

#2,747

When a revolution breaks out, the appetites are placed at the service of ideals; when the revolution triumphs, ideals are placed at the service of the appetites.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 441

#2,713

A simple fit of impatience often soon bridges the distance between utopia and murder.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 437

#2,523

Revolutions are carried out in order to change the ownership of property and the names of streets.
The revolutionary who seeks to change “man’s condition” ends up being shot for being a counter-revolutionary.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,243

Revolutions are more a subject for sociology than for history.
Manifestations of those depths of human nature that nothing educates, nothing civilizes, nothing ennobles, revolutions despoil man of his history and return him to bestial behaviors.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 364

#2,222

Even though history does not have laws, the course of a revolution is easily foreseen, because stupidity and madness do have laws.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p .361

#2,221

Revolution is a permanent historical possibility.
Revolution does not have causes, but occasions it takes advantage of.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 361

#2,163

The most convinced reactionary is the repentant revolutionary, that is to say: the man who has known the reality of the problems and has discovered the falseness of the solutions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 352

#2,135

Victorious revolutions have been outbursts of greed. Only defeated revolutions tend to be insurrections of the oppressed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,058

Every episode of a revolution needs a partisan to relate it and an adversary to explain it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,008

For the true results of a prior revolution, let us consult the revolutionaries who are preparing the next one.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#1,993

Reforms are the entrance ramps to revolutions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,897

Revolution already seems to be less a tactic for executing a plan than a drug for fleeing from modern boredom during one’s spare time.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 310

#1,827

The revolutionary’s picturesque outfit changes colors imperceptibly until it matches the severe uniform of a police officer.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 300

#1,826

It is not so much the plebeian merriment that revolutions unleash which frightens the reactionary as the zealously bourgeois order that they produce.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 300

#1,795

A youth’s revolutionary activity is the rite of passage between adolescence and the bourgeoisie.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 296

#1,678

The looks of the participants in candid photographs of revolutionary scenes seem half cretinous, half demented.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 280