“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!”

— Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Speech to the National Convention (February 26, 1794). [Source: Charles Vellay (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 236-237]

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 13, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned t…" by Louis Antoine de Saint-Just?

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just 25

military and political leader 1767–1794

Related quotes

“I set to do you—each one of you, individually and in private—what I hold to be the greatest possible service. I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than with what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and rational as possible.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

36c6, as cited in Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995), p. 90
Plato, Apology

“Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. X: Religious Truth

“You should pay no heed to what some yokel priest has prated of. What does he know?”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 11 (p. 70)

“I don't think it's healthy for people to want there to be a permanent, unalterable, irremovable authority over them. I don't like the idea of a father who never goes away, the idea of a king who cannot be deposed, the idea of a judge who doesn't allow a lawyer or a jury or an appeal. This is an appeal to absolutism. It's the part of ourselves that's not so nice; that wants security, that wants certainty, that wants to be taken care of. For hundreds and hundreds of years, the human struggle for freedom was against the worst kind of dictatorship of all: the theocracy, the one that claims it has God on its side. I believe that totalitarian temptation has to be resisted. What I'm inviting you to do is to consider emancipating yourselves from the idea that you, selfishly, are the sole object of all the wonders of the cosmos and of nature - because that's not a humble idea at all, it's a very arrogant one and there's no evidence for it. And then, again, the second emancipation - to think of yourselves as free citizens who are not enthralled to any supernatural-eternal authority; which you will always find is interpreted for you by other mammals who claim to have access to this authority - that gives them special power over you. Don't allow yourselves to have your lives run like that.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=22m46s
2010s, 2010

“What are you Barrons?”
“The one who will never let you die, and that’s more, Ms Lane, than anyone in your life has been able to say to you. More than anyone else can do”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“Government by inquisition has never been good. However, since January 1979, our country has been under the yoke of inquisitorial power. Five centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, Iran is living under the terror of a new Torquemada who is more pitiless and more sinister than its predecessor. In fact the Inquisition tribunals did not sentence men to be executed unless they were known to be heretics. They had the opportunity to recant and to repent; and they would call witnesses, which the Iranian Torquemada does not allow.
The tribunals are said to be Islamic. But the truth cannot be overlooked, and genuine Islamic law insists on the right of an accused man to defend himself. Islam is never served by hatred, vengeance and murder, but by justice, goodness, forgiveness and high moral standards. This explosion of hatred, supposedly "in the name of God", is an insult to God and to our religion. And this insult, I repeat, unfortunately threatens to do great harm to Islam, just as the Inquisition did great harm to Catholicism.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 209
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“The overriding supremacy of the myth has created a widespread illusion that the theory of evolution was all but proved one hundred years ago. . . Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Michael Denton book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 77

“Plenitude, when too plenitudinous, was worse than destitution, for — obviously — what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §4
The Cyberiad (1967)

“Half dead’s a lot worse than dead, when you know you’re gonna die in another three, six days no matter what anyone else does.”

Samuel R. Delany book They Fly at Çiron

Source: They Fly at Çiron (1993), Chapter 6 (p. 166)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just 25

Related quotes

Related topics