"...and never heads enough..."
Domestic carnage, now filled the whole year
With feast-days, old men from the chimney-nook,
The maiden from the bosom of her love,
The mother from the cradle of her babe,
The warrior from the field - all perished, all -
Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks,
Head after head, and never heads enough
For those that bade them fall.
William Wordsworth
Terror is nought but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland."
Maximillien Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Address, National Convention, 1794
"The French Revolution had opened an era of intense politicization. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was a true child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In Latin America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called himself a "a liberator"; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people."
Paul Johnson
"Modern Times"
"What we learn from the study of the Great [French] Revolution is that it was the source of all the present communist, anarchist and socialist conceptions."
Prince Petr Kropotkin
Russian naturalist, author and soldier
writing in 1909 on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution
No comments:
Post a Comment