“If you can't have a revolution without Jacobinism, then it becomes a matter of how to have reform without revolution. Anyone who "accepts the necessity of Jacobinism" wants to try his hand at it. When François Furet hinted at this conclusion in his truly revolutionary book on the French Revolution, he found himself immediately tagged by the left as a diehard spokesman of the reactionary right. It was assumed that if he was against the Terror, he was against the people. His contention that the Terror had been against the people was not accepted.”

—  Clive James

'Edgar Quinet', p. 587
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

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Clive James 151
Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019

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