François-Noël Babeuf Quotes

Admettre l'inégalité, c'est souscrire à une dépravation de l'espèce.

Le vrai Citoyen préfère l'avantage général à son avantage.

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

The true citizen prefers the general advantage to his advantage.

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

The husband and the wife must be equal.

Il n'est et ne sera que l'avocat des pauvres. (1786)

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 ultimate ideal of Babeuf and his Conspiracy was absolute equality. Nature, they claimed, calls for perfect equality; all inequality is injustice: therefore community of property was to be established. ... In the ideal communist society sought by the Conspiracy, private property would be abolished, and all property would be communal and stored in communal storehouses. From these storehouses, the goods would be distributed “equitably” by the superiors — apparently, there was to be a cadre of “superiors” in this oh so “equal” world!

Education is a monstrosity when it is unequal, when it is the exclusive patrimony of one class of the society; because it then becomes the controlling hand of this class, a mass of mechanisms, a provision of weapons of all kinds, with the aid of which the ruling class combats the other, which is disarmed.

... children of ignorance, who have at all times made the misfortunes of the human races.

Nul ne peut par l'accumulation de tous les moyens priver l'autre de l'instruction nécessaire pour son bonheur; l'instruction doit-être commune.

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.

Le mari et la femme doivent-être égaux.

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.