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meme.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty… To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

I don’t give a fuck for the prisoners, let them fend for themselves.

Five or six hundred heads lopped off would have assured you repose and happiness; a false humanity has restrained your arm and suspended your blows; it will cost the lives of millions of your brothers.

The rich are only defeated when running for their lives.

When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.

Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time.

Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation.

Revolution requires more than spontaneous revolt against the elite; it depends upon the existence of a section of society whose interests would be best served not just by a chance of ruler or a few laws, but by a new set of ethics governing every aspect of society from top to bottom.

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the… momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror - that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

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