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1 " When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head. "
― Hannah Arendt , On Revolution
2 " Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning. "
3 " For goodness that is beyond virtue, and hence beyond temptation, ignorant of the argumentative reasoning by which man fends off temptations and, by this very process, comes to know the ways, of wickedness, is also incapable of learning the arts of persuading and arguing. "
4 " Neither Rousseau nor Robespierre was capable of dreaming of a goodness beyond virtue, just as they were unable to imagine that radical evil would ‘partake nothing of the sordid or sensual’ (Melville), that there could be wickedness beyond vice. "
5 " We noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution. "
6 " To sound off with a cheerful ‘give me liberty or give me death’ sort of argument in the face of the unprecedented and inconceivable potential of destruction in nuclear warfare is not even hollow; it is downright ridiculous. "
7 " و اذا كانت الثورة لا تهدف إلا إلي ضمان الحقوق المدنية، فإنها في هذه الحالة لا تكون هادفة إلي الحرية، بل إلي التحرر من الحكومات التي قد تكون تجاوزت صلاحيتها، واعتدت علي الحقوق الثابتة و المقررة منذ أمد "
8 " We have become so used to thinking of domestic politics in terms of party politics that we are inclined to forget that the conflict between [the party system and the council system] has always been a conflict between parliament, the source and seat of power of the party system, and the people, who have surrendered their power to their representatives. "
9 " The greatest revolutionary innovation, Madison’s discovery of the federal principle for the foundation of large republics, "