François-Noël Babeuf Quotes

He is and will be an advocate only for the poor.

The husband and the wife must be equal.

It was in the dust of the seigneurial archives that I discovered the frightful mysteries of the usurpations of the noble caste.

Relearning and more difficult than learning.

I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, and the revolutionary government, and Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these men were worth more on their own than all the revolutionaries together.

If the people are sovereign, they must themselves exercise as much as they can of the sovereignty.

It is the system of great landed estates which invented and sustains the trafficking of whites and blacks who sell and buy men. ... It is this system which in the colonies gives the blacks of our plantations only a blow with a whip and a morsel of bread.

Nous distinguerons dans Robespierre deux hommes apôtre de la liberté et Robespierre le plus infâme des tyrans.

Babeuf was made a public example by being taken to Vendôme in a cage—an indignity which not long before had filled the Parisians with fury when the Austrians had inflicted it on a Frenchman. His defense, which lasted for six sittings at the court and fills more than three hundred pages, is an impressive and moving document. Babeuf knew well that he was facing death and the Revolution was doomed. .. His defense is like a summary of the unrealized ideas of the Enlightenment and a vindication of their ultimate necessity. And it has moments of grandeur which it is not absurd to compare to Socrates' Apology.

The opinion which you give us the contribution which can be derived from women is sensible and judicious. We will benefit. We all know the influence which this interesting sex can possess, which cannot bear more indifferently than we the yoke of tyranny; and which is not endowed with less courage, when it is a question of contriving to break it.

Réapprendre et plus difficile qu'apprendre.

Je fais vœu de d'appeler prêtre c'est-à-dire charlatans, imposteurs tous ceux que je verrai dévier de la ligne des droits de l'homme.

La connaissance des pratiques féodales « est la raison pour laquelle je fus peut-être le plus redoutable fléau de la féodalité. »

Nor does it impose silence on this sex which does not deserve to be despised.

We must advance ... because Christianity and freedom are incompatible