François-Noël Babeuf Quotes

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

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

Admitting inequality is subscribing to a depravity of the species.

N'impose pas non plus silence à ce sexe qui ne mérite pas qu'on le méprise.

The knowledge of feudal practices is the reason why I was perhaps the most formidable scourge of feudalism.

Si le peuple est souverain, il doit exercer lui-même tout le plus qu'il peut de souveraineté.

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.

No one can by the accumulation of all mediums deprive others of the instruction necessary for their happiness; the instruction must be communal.

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

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!

We shall distinguish in Robespierre two men, apostle of liberty, and Robespierre the most infamous of tyrants.

Relearning and more difficult than learning.

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.

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