Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

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!

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.

Happiness is a new idea in Europe.

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.

J’ai pensé que l’ordre social était dans la nature même des choses, et n’empruntait de l’esprit humain que le soin d’en mettre à leur place les éléments divers; qu’un peuple pouvait être gouverné sans être assujetti, sans être licencieux, et sans être opprimé; que l’homme naissait pour la paix et pour la liberté, et n’était malheureux et corrompu que par les lois insidieuses de la domination. Alors j’imaginai que si l’on donnait à l’homme des lois selon la nature et son cœur, il cesserait d’être malheureux et corrompu.

(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 380]

Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.

Je méprise la poussière qui me compose et qui vous parle ; on pourra la persécuter et faire mourir cette poussière ! mais je défie que l’on m’arrache cette vie indépendante que je me suis donnée dans les siècles et dans les cieux...

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.

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

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

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.

Je ne suis d'aucune faction, je les combattrai toutes.

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

A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.