Tout re volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en he re tique. Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.
Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.
Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.
The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.
The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war.
Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.
Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly.
Every revolution ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic