It is unprecedented for the men who made a revolution to remain in power after it is over. Yet one still finds revolutionaries: that proves how badly history is taught.

Revolution has to be rethought. Look, even when revolutions have been successful, they have caused so much destruction and hatred that there is always some kind of horrible backlash. It’s inherent in the method. If you choose violence, then you create enemies who will resist you forever. And ruthless men become your revolutionary leaders, so when the war is over they’re in power, and likely to be as bad as what they replaced.

Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

A revolution is always distinguished by impoliteness, probably because the ruling classes did not take the trouble in good season to teach the people fine manners.

After a revolution there must be a period of cleansing, retribution and reeducation, presided over by a ruthless leader. It is the only way to root out the entrenched decadence.

In a real revolution, the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards come the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement, but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, disenchantment–often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured–that is the definition of revolutionary success.

The worst revolutionaries today are those reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need for change.

This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them.

Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.

Revolutionary movements attract those who are not good enough for established institutions as well as those who are too good for them.

After every revolution there is an interregnum, in which communities run themselves and all is well, and then the new regime comes in and screws things up.

Revolutionaries themselves are the last people to realize when, through force of time and circumstance, they have gradually become conservatives. It is scarcely to be wondered at if the public is very nearly as slow in the uptake.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.

The worst of revolutions is a restoration.