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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

Random Louis Antoine de Saint-Just quote

24 quotes

In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself ... The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace.

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.

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.

The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.