Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767 – 1794)
One of the leaders of the French Revolution.
Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.
What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon ... The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.
The vessel of Revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood.
The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.
It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt.
In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.
Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars.
When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck.
I do not belong to any faction, I will fight them all.
Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned three hundred rascals to death in a year. Has not the Spanish Inquisition done worse than that ... Have the English assizes butchered no one in that period? ... What of the kings of Europe, does anyone prate to them of pity? Ah, do not allow yourselves to grow soft-hearted!
Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.
The Revolution has grown cold; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé.
Happiness is a new idea in Europe.
It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.
A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.
I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.
You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.
The French people recognizes the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal.