Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Quotes

Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.

If your ruler is just, then praise God; but if he is unjust, pray to God to rid you of him.

Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone.

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

As long as the wrong people hold power, how can the right political climate even arise?

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Unless something drastic is done very soon, then bloodshed and violence are going to happen…almost inevitably… A people made desperate by despair and injustice and oppression will use desperate means.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

Now in the whole of Europe there are only two parties: France for the freedom of peoples against all the rulers, and all the monarchs against France for despotism and old traditions.

To quell all nations - to dethrone all Kings, and plant the Tree of Liberty in our Irish land.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes

That king who through folly rashly oppresses his kingdom, (will), together with his relatives, ere long be deprived of his life and of his kingdom. As the lives of living creatures are destroyed by tormenting their bodies, even so the lives of kings are destroyed by their oppressing their kingdoms

Emperor Napoleon is nothing but an ordinary king who tramples on human rights.

Rebellion! the very word is a confession; an avowal of tyranny, outrage, and oppression. It is taken from the despot's code, and has no terror for others than slavish souls.

The Law! It is the arch-crime of the centuries. The path of Man is soaked with the blood it has shed. Can this great criminal determine Right? Is a revolutionist to respect such a travesty? It would mean the perpetuation of human slavery.

Tyranny must be opposed at the start. Autocracy, once secured in the saddle, is difficult to dislodge.

the Distress of our oppressed Country, which now unjustly feels the baneful Effects of arbitrary Power.

This nation openly endorses, tolerates and legalizes the very abuses against which she originally waged a bloody revolution.

There is no middle course between the throne and the scaffold.