Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

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

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

Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead.

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.

On ne peut point régner innocemment : la folie en est trop évidente. Tout roi est un rebelle et un usurpateur.

(October 10, 1793) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 83-88]

(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 419]

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

(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 306]

(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 264]

Osez! — ce mot renferme toute la politique de notre révolution.

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.

I despise the dust that forms me and speaks to you. This dust you may persecute and kill, but I defy you to rob me of that independent life I have given myself down through the ages and in the heavens....

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.

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