Quote by Hannah Arendt: “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”

Once a revolution succeeds and creates new institutions, its leaders become invested in protecting what they built. The impulse that was once aimed at change becomes an impulse to preserve. This is a warning that no movement or person is immune to the conservatism that comes with power.

Arendt made this observation in the context of the 1960s student protest movements, in her 1970 essay 'Thoughts on Politics and Revolution.' She had seen the revolutions of the twentieth century consolidate into new forms of authoritarian power, and was wary of any movement that treated revolutionary transformation as an end in itself.

German-American political philosopher who fled Nazi Germany and became one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers on power, totalitarianism, and the nature of evil. Her 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism remains a foundational text in political theory.