[Representative of the 238th Battalion of the French National Guard] The exploiters of monopoly seem to believe that the people are always in tutelage. They seem to forget that they sometimes wake up suddenly... (From: Chapter 17: The Guns of Montmarte, Pages 266-267..)
As the world has had good reason to recognize in recent years, revolutionary outbreaks often seem to occur with little warning, in societies that give the external appearance of political stability. (From: Chapter 10: War of Attrition (1965-1968), Page 290....)
In any case, a system which springs up spontaneously, under stress of immediate need, will be infinitely preferable to anything invented between four walls by hide-bound theorists sitting on any number of committees. (From: Chapter 5, part III..)
...this rapid extension of specialized opinion to every aspect of knowledge and daily living acts to inhibit the spontaneity of a man's thought and expression. Where a century or two ago the ordinary civilized man would speculate boldly on any subject and converse joyfully on all manner of topics, his spirit today is muted in dismal deference to the cumulative discoveries of science and the qualified pronouncements of the experts. His personality shrivels. He has no convictions to sustain him. His discourse perforce becomes restricted to jest, trivial observations, and personal reminiscence. (From: Part Three, Digression, Part B: The Growing Menace....)
...these strikes prove that the class fight between capital and labor cannot cease, and that when the old forms are not practicable any more, the workers spontaneously try out and develop new forms of action. In these actions revolt against capital is also revolt against the old organizational forms.
The energies liberated in a revolution are those expressing the phenomenon of creative spontaneity. (From: First Part: The Rebel (1896-1931), Section 9: Towa....)
In 1910 the Revolution broke out. The starting signal was given by Francisco Madero, liberal landovmer from Coahuila, who— in his Declaration of San Luis Potosi— assumed the provisional presidency of Mexico and designated November 20, 1910, as the date when Mexicans were to rise up in arms against the hated dictator. It seems paradoxical that this call for more orderly electoral procedures unleashed a storm of disorder and violence that was to sweep through Mexico for the period of an entire decade. In contrast to other revolutionary movements of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution was not to be led by any one group organized around a central program. In no other revolution movement did the participants in the drama pr... (From: Chapter 1: Mexico, Pages 25-26..)
