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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
27 quotes
“You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 380]
“When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 264]
“Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 419]
“Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 306]
“One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sur le jugement de Louis XVI (1er discours), speech to the National Convention (November 13, 1792).
“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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Convention (December 27, 1792). [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 383]
“I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On declaring the Minister of War, Charles François Dumouriez, a traitor (March 1793). [Source: David William Bates, Enlightenment aberrations: error and revolution in France (Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 169]
“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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).
“Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).
“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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).
“In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself ... The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (October 10, 1793) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 83-88]
“A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1793 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Saint-Just quoting Mirabeau before members of the Committee of Public Safety, October 17, 1793. [Source: Saint-Just quoted in Eugene N. Curtis, Saint-Just: Colleague of Robespierre (New York: Octagon Books, 1973), p. 23…
“Those who make revolutions halfway have done nothing but dig their own graves.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on Incarcerated Persons. Presented on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security to the National Convention at the session of 8 Ventôse, Year II (26 February 1794).
“I despise the dust that forms me and speaks to you. This dust you may persecute and kill, but I defy you to rob me of that independent life I have given myself down through the ages and in the heavens....”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 1 Préambule (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“The Revolution is frozen; 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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 3 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon ... The Revolution must stop itself at the perfection of public happiness and liberty through the laws.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 3 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 3 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 10 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragment 13 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]
“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!”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Convention (February 26, 1794). [Source: Charles Vellay (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 236-237]
“Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Convention (February 26, 1794); though widely published in the above form, this has sometimes been misquoted in some recent publications as: Osez! — ce mot renferme toute la politique de votre rév…
“Happiness is a new idea in Europe.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sur le mode d'exécution du décret contre les ennemis de la Révolution, speech to the National Convention (March 3, 1794).
“Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Convention (March 17, 1794). [Source: Saint-Just quoted in Eugene N. Curtis, Saint-Just: Colleague of Robespierre (New York: Octagon Books, 1973), p. 228]
“It is not enough, citizens, to have destroyed the factions, it is necessary now to repair the evil that they have done to the country.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Convention (April 15, 1794). [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 367]
“I am not of any faction, I will fight them all.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discours pour la défense de Robespierre, speech to the National Convention (July 27, 1794).
“Nothing so nearly resembles virtue as a great crime.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) said by 1794 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: [Geoffrey Brunn 1932. Saint Just Apostle of the Terror. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932, p.57] http://archive.org/details/saintjustapostle0000geof_l2o3
“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.”
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1794) [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]