Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767 – 1794)
One of the leaders of the French Revolution.
In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.
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.
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.
The vessel of Revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood.
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.