Le vrai Citoyen préfère l'avantage général à son avantage. - François-Noël Babeuf

There has never been anything great done in the world except through the courage and resolve of one man who defies the prejudices of the multitude.

François-Noël Babeuf, the self-educated son of a gabellou and himself a man whose business it was before 1789 to show the rich how they might become richer by squeezing the peasants for feudal dues, did somehow produce the first modern and coherent communist political strategy.

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