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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes
1767–1794 France
Antoine Louis Léon de Richebourg de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794) was a military and political leader during the French Revolution. The youngest of the deputies elected to the National Convention in 1792, Saint-Just rose quickly in their ranks and became a major leader of the government of the French First Republic.
France Politicians Republicans Also known as: Louis de Saint Just, Louis de Saint-Just, Saint-Just, Saint-Just, Louis de
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In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.
Fragment 13 (1794)
Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.
Nothing so nearly resembles virtue as a great crime.
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.
You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.
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.
The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal.
Fragment 10 (1794)
Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead.
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.
Fragment 3 (1794)
Happiness is a new idea in Europe.
Those who make revolutions halfway have done nothing but dig their own graves.
A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.
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.
Fragment 3 (1794)
The Revolution is frozen; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé.
Fragment 3 (1794)
One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.
I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.
I am not of any faction, I will fight them all.
Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.
Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars.
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