Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
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
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
One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
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
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
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
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