Je confesse aujourd'hui de bonne foi que je m'en veux d'avoir autrefois vu en noir, et le gouvernement révolutionnaire et Robespierre et Saint-Just. … - François-Noël Babeuf

Je fais vœu de d'appeler prêtre c'est-à-dire charlatans, imposteurs tous ceux que je verrai dévier de la ligne des droits de l'homme.

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.

I vow to call a priest, in other words, charlatans, impostors, all those whom I shall see deviate from the line of the rights of man.