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For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.

Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing.

Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Revolution is glorified by intellectuals, apotheosized by poets, sanctified by visionaries, and bled white by politicians.

Joseph Warren, like a lot of revolutionary leaders, was into Enlightenment literature.

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.

The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole world becoming more revolutionary.

The French Revolution was a kind of 21st-century moment in the heart of the 18th century - and Alex Dumas, outstanding though he was, could never have risen the way he did if not for that. The French Revolution was the American Revolution on steroids.