Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

It is impossible to reign innocently.

The vessel of Revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood.

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.

A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.

If all people are free, all are equal. If they are equal, they are just.

One does not make revolutions by halves.

Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.

Keep cool and you command everybody.

I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.

Fame is an empty noise. Let us put our ears to the centuries that have gone: we no longer hear anything; those who, at another time, shall walk among our urns, shall hear no more. The good - that is what we must pursue, whatever the price, preferring the title of a dead hero to that of a living coward.

I do not belong to any faction, I will fight them all.

Dare! - this word contains all the politics of our revolution.

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.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

Monarchy is an outrage which even the blind of an entire people cannot justify... all men hold from nature the secret mission to destroy wherever it my be found. No man can reign innocently. The folly is too evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. Do kings themselves treat otherwise those who seek to usurp their authority?

When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.

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.

One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.

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.

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.

When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete... Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws, everything is sterile and dead.

Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.

You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.

Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars.

Morality is stronger than tyrants.

To dare: that is the whole secret of revolutions.

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.

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.

Happiness is a new idea in Europe.

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.

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.