Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.

Definition
The term —both as a noun and adjective— is usually applied to the field of politics, and is occasionally used in the context of science, invention or art. In politics, a revolutionary is someone who supports abrupt, rapid, and drastic change, while a reformist is someone who supports more gradual and incremental change. A conservative is someone who generally opposes such changes. A reactionary is someone who wants things to go back to the way they were before the change has happened.

Revolution and ideology
According to sociologist James Chowning Davies, political revolutionaries may be classified in two ways:
 * 1) According to the goals of the revolution they propose. Usually, these goals are part of a certain ideology. In theory, each ideology could generate its own brand of revolutionaries. In practice, most political revolutionaries have been either anarchists, communists, democrats, fascists, Islamists, liberals, libertarians, nationalists, republicans, or socialists.
 * 2) According to the methods they propose to use. This divides revolutionaries in two broad groups: Those who advocate a violent revolution, and those who are pacifists.

The revolutionary anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev argued in Catechism of a Revolutionary: The Revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion—the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy....

Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara said this about revolutionaries: "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force."

Notable revolutionaries

 * Abbie Hoffman
 * Abimael Guzmán
 * Abu Nidal
 * Adem Jashari
 * Afonso I of Portugal
 * Agostinho Neto
 * Agustín de Iturbide
 * Ahmed Ben Bella
 * Ahmed Sékou Touré
 * Ahmad Shah Durrani
 * Ahmad Shah Massoud
 * Ahmed Yassin
 * Alexander Dubček
 * Alija Izetbegović
 * Andreas Vokos Miaoulis
 * Andrés Bonifacio
 * Andry Rajoelina
 * Antonio Gramsci
 * Arminius
 * Aris Velouchiotis
 * Ashfaqulla Khan
 * Assata Shakur
 * Aung San
 * Aung San Suu Kyi
 * Ayn Rand
 * B. R. Ambedkar
 * Badal Gupta
 * Bagha Jatin
 * Batukeshwar Dutt
 * Bayard Rustin
 * Benazir Bhutto
 * Benigno Aquino, Jr.
 * Benito Mussolini
 * Benjamin Franklin
 * Benoy Basu
 * Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
 * Bernardo O'Higgins
 * Bhagat Singh
 * Birsa Munda
 * Bob Marley
 * Bobby Sands
 * Boris Savinkov
 * Boris Yeltsin
 * Buenaventura Durruti
 * C. Odumegwu Ojukwu
 * Camilo Cienfuegos
 * Camille Desmoulins
 * Carl Gustav Mannerheim
 * Carlos Fonseca
 * Carlos Lamarca
 * Carlos Manuel de Céspedes
 * Carlos Marighella
 * Chandra Shekhar Azad
 * Charles de Gaulle
 * Charlotte Corday
 * Che Guevara
 * Chen Qimei
 * Chiang Kai-shek
 * Chris Hani
 * Christapor Mikaelian
 * Corazon Aquino
 * Crazy Horse
 * Cyrus the Great
 * Damdin Sükhbaatar
 * Daniel Ortega
 * Daniel Andreas San Diego
 * David Ben-Gurion
 * Deniz Gezmiş
 * Desmond Tutu
 * Dinesh Gupta
 * D.S. Senanayake
 * Eamon De Valera
 * El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed
 * Eleftherios Venizelos
 * Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 * Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
 * Emma Goldman
 * Emiliano Zapata
 * Enver Hoxha
 * Eric Rudolph
 * Eva Perón
 * Evo Morales
 * Farabundo Martí
 * Fidel Castro
 * Francisco I. Madero
 * Francisco Javier Mina
 * Franjo Tuđman
 * Frantz Fanon
 * Fred Hampton
 * Frederick Douglass
 * Friedrich Engels
 * Fumimaro Konoe
 * Gamal Abdel Nasser
 * George Washington
 * Georges Danton
 * Georgios Karaiskakis
 * George Grivas
 * Guy Fawkes
 * Gotse Delchev
 * Giuseppe Garibaldi
 * Grigory Zinoviev
 * Harriet Tubman
 * Hereward the Wake
 * Hans Scholl
 * Hideki Tojo
 * Hirohito
 * Ho Chi Minh
 * Huang Xing
 * Huey P. Newton
 * Hugo Chávez
 * Hussein ibn Ali
 * Ibrahim Rugova
 * Imre Nagy
 * Ismail Enver
 * Isaias Afewerki
 * Ion Antonescu
 * Ion Iliescu
 * Jack Straw
 * James Connolly
 * Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
 * Jatindra Nath Das
 * Jawaharlal Nehru
 * Jean-Bertrand Aristide
 * Jean-Paul Marat
 * Joe Slovo
 * Jomo Kenyatta
 * John Adams
 * John Brown
 * John Hancock
 * John Lennon
 * John Reed
 * Jonas Savimbi
 * José Bonifácio de Andrada
 * José de San Martín
 * José Gervasio Artigas
 * José María Morelos
 * José Martí
 * José Rizal
 * Joseph Stalin
 * Joshua Nkomo
 * Josip Broz Tito
 * Józef Piłsudski
 * Jyotirao Phule
 * Juan Pablo Duarte
 * Julius Nyerere
 * Kader Siddique
 * Karl Marx
 * Kenneth Kaunda
 * Khudiram Bose
 * Kim Gu
 * Kim Il-sung
 * Kwame Nkrumah
 * Laszlo Bardossy
 * Laurent-Désiré Kabila
 * Lech Wałęsa
 * Leon Trotsky
 * Lev Kamenev
 * Lon Nol
 * Lord Byron
 * Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
 * Luís Carlos Prestes
 * Mahatma Gandhi
 * Matangini Hazra
 * Malcolm X
 * Mammad Amin Rasulzade
 * Mangal Pandey
 * Manuel Marulanda
 * Manuel Belgrano
 * Mao Zedong
 * Marcus Garvey
 * Maria Nikiforova
 * Maria Spiridonova
 * Martin Luther King, Jr.
 * Maurice Bishop
 * Maximilien de Robespierre
 * Mehmet Shehu
 * Meles Zenawi
 * Michael Collins
 * Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
 * Mikhail Bakunin
 * Mikheil Saakashvili
 * Miklos Horthy
 * Mohammad Hatta
 * Mohammed Omar
 * Muammar Gaddafi
 * Muhammad Ali Jinnah
 * Muhammad Naguib
 * Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
 * Napoleon
 * Nat Turner
 * Nelson Mandela
 * Nestor Makhno
 * Nicolae Ceauşescu
 * Norodom Sihanouk
 * Nursultan Nazarbayev
 * Omar Mukhtar
 * Oliver Cromwell
 * Pancho Villa
 * Pascual Orozco
 * Patrice Lumumba
 * Patrick Henry
 * Paul Kagame
 * Pavel Dybenko
 * Pedro I of Brazil
 * Peter the Great
 * Peter Kropotkin
 * Phan Boi Chau
 * Pritilata Waddedar
 * Pol Pot
 * Ram Prasad Bismil
 * Rani Lakshmibai
 * Rash Behari Bose
 * Raúl Castro
 * Rigas Feraios
 * Robert F. Williams
 * Robert Mugabe
 * Robert W. Wilcox
 * Rosa Luxemburg
 * Ruhollah Khomeini
 * Saad Zaghloul
 * Sam Nujoma
 * Samuel Adams
 * Salvador Allende
 * Sanjaasürengiin Zorig
 * Seamus Costello
 * Seewoosagur Ramgoolam
 * Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
 * Sheikh Bedreddin
 * Shivaram Rajguru
 * Siad Barre
 * Simón Bolívar
 * Skanderbeg
 * Song Jiaoren
 * Sophie Scholl
 * Souphanouvong
 * Spartacus
 * Sri Aurobindo
 * Stepan Maximovich Petrichenko
 * Steve Biko
 * Subcomandante Marcos
 * Subhas Chandra Bose
 * Sukarno
 * Sukhdev Thapar
 * Sun Yat-sen
 * Surya Sen
 * Syngman Rhee
 * Ted Kaczynski
 * T. E. Lawrence
 * Thein Sein
 * Theodoros Kolokotronis
 * Thomas Baker
 * Thomas Jefferson
 * Thomas Paine
 * Thomas Sankara
 * Tom Barry
 * Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
 * Toussaint Louverture
 * Tunku Abdul Rahman
 * Túpac Amaru
 * Túpac Amaru II
 * Túpac Katari
 * Udham Singh
 * Václav Havel
 * Vasil Levski
 * Velupillai Prabhakaran
 * Venustiano Carranza
 * Vercingetorix
 * Vicente Guerrero
 * Viktor Chernov
 * Viktor Yushchenko
 * Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
 * Vladimir Herzog
 * Vladimir Lenin
 * Walter Rodney
 * Wat Tyler
 * W. E. B. Du Bois
 * William the Silent
 * William Wallace
 * Xanana Gusmao
 * Yannis Makriyannis
 * Yasser Arafat
 * Yoweri Museveni
 * Zhang Binglin