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Category: french-revolution
Quotes of Category: french-revolution
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  1. Thomas A. Edison _ Diary and Sundry Observations

    I have always been interested in this . My father had a set of 's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.I have heard it said that borrowed from Montesquieu and . Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that ever borrowed a line from any man...Many a person who could not comprehend , and would be puzzled by , could understand as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in . He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing. would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object....we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending 's effort in his 'Reflections'.Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.' is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'Here we see the progressive quality of 's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered 's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.{}
    book-quoteinfluencelibertyfrench-revolution

  2. Ron Chernow _ Washington: A Life

    An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation. " page 714
    book-quoteamerican-revolutionfrench-revolutionamerican

  3. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    Again, take someone who's crippled or deformed; they can't be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds {who can't see much anyway} get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he'd have fewer problems, but it's surprising how few of them fall into all those categories.
    book-quotefrench-revolutionguillotine

  4. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck.
    book-quotefrench-revolution

  5. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased- it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton.
    book-quotefrench-revolution

  6. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    Vadier {on Danton}: "We'll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end."Danton {on Vadier}: "Vadier? I'll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in.
    book-quotefrench-revolution

  7. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    At first they'd thought the guillotine would be a sweet, clean business, but when you have twenty, perhaps thirty heads to take off in a day, there are problems of scale.
    book-quotefrench-revolution

  8. Hilary Mantel _ A Place of Greater Safety

    Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you'll find that you've fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you'll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you'll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday's conviction, and today you'll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of? He believes everything he says. Presumably there was some layer of Robespierre, some deep stratum, where all the contradictions were resolved.
    book-quotefrench-revolution

  9. Christopher Hitchens _ Christopher Hitchens and His

    The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'-the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has-from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness."
    book-quoterevolutionpoliticsinfluence

  10. John Adams _ The Adams-Jefferson Letters:

    This society {Jesuits} has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or 's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.{}"
    book-quotehistoryjeffersonthomas-jefferson
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