Historically speaking, the most obvious and most decisive distinction between the American and the French Revolutions was that the... historical inheritance of the American Revolution was "limited monarchy" and that of the French Revolution an absolutism which apparently reached far back into the first centuries of our era and the last centuries of the Roman Empire. Nothing, indeed, seems more natural than that a revolution should be predetermined by the type of government it overthrows; nothing, therefore, appears more plausible than to explain the new absolute, the absolute revolution, by the absolute monarchy which preceded it, and to conclude that the more absolute the ruler, the more absolute the revolution will be which replaces him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men--one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes ...in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity of government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps of political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of cons...ent and not of rebellion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...the worst horror of the Russian Revolution was the letting loose of one hundred million orators, for their passion for talk was... immediately responsible for all the other horrors ...Oratory prevented Russia from becoming a constitutional country. Oratory tore the Revolution from the patriots and gave it into the bloody hands of the mob. Oratory murdered the Czar, his wife, and their innocent children. Oratory almost wiped out the educated classes. Oratory held the stupid populace spellbound while the Germans invaded the country, boosted Lenine [sic] into power, and paved the way for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I never want to hear any more oratory as long as I live.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So far no actual revolutionary masses have come into view. This might be considered sufficient reason for reproaching someone who ...has set out to describe a revolution. But it is not our fault. This is, after all, a German revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They were fanatical men and women, young and old, all deeply touched by the great rousing call of the revolution, gladly willing t...o fight for the sake of humanity and to sacrifice themselves. There were strangely excited and intense figures among them, believers: believers in this world and utopians who dreamed of eternal peace. And though they were weak and they were few, they towered miles above the miserable figures of the little philistine Ebert and the wooden Noske with his mercenaries, who would soon raise their cudgels and smash them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppresse...d.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »