Jean+Paul+Marat


 * some Quotes from Marat**
 * __from 1789__ "Nothing superfluous can belong to us legitimately so long as others lack necessities." 1789
 * __from 1789__ “To form a truly free constitution, that’s to say, truly just and wise, the first point, the main point, the capital point, is that all the laws be agreed on by the people, after considered reflection, and especially having taken time to see what’s at stake…”
 * __from 1790__ “Can I be accused of being cruel, I who cannot bear to see an insect suffer? But when I think that, in order to spare a few drops of blood, we expose ourselves to spilling it in great waves, I get indignant, despite myself, at our false principles of humanity.”
 * __from 1792__ “On our Nation’s stage, only the scenery has changed. The cast, intrigue and machinations remain the same… today, the principal actors hide behind the curtain where they manipulate with ease those who act the parts before your eyes. Most of these actors have already disappeared, so new ones have appeared to play the same roles. [The revolution will never succeed] … when the lower classes are left alone to struggle against the upper classes. Sure, at the moment of insurrection, the people will smash everything down by sheer numbers; but whatever advantage they may gain at first, they will always end up by caving in, since they find themselves bereft of intelligence, culture, wealth, arms, leaders and strategies and have no means of defence against those magicians full of cunning, craft and artifice. If the educated men, the well off, and the crafty ones of the lower classes, first sided against the despot, it was only to turn against the people after they had wormed their way into their confidence and used the people’s strength to set themselves up in the place of the privileged orders that they proscribed. Thus it is that the revolution has been made and sustained by the lowest classes of society –the workers, the artisans, the little tradesmen, the farmers, by those unfortunates whom the shameless rich call scum and whom Roman insolence called proletarians. But who would ever have imagined that it would only end up helping small landowners, lawyers and con men… Today, after three years of endless speeches from patriotic societies and a deluge of writings… the people are even further from knowing what they should do to resist their oppressors than they were on the very first day of the revolution. At that time they followed their instincts… Now, look at them, chained in the name of the law and tyrannized in the name of justice, they have become constitutional slaves!"
 * __from 1793__ “They continually present me as an anarchist who tramples on all the laws and who can only be happy amidst disorder. I am getting on for 50. Since the age of 16 I have been the absolute master of my conduct. I lived two years in Bordeaux, 10 in London, one in Dublin and Edinburgh, one in La Haye, Utrecht and Amsterdam, 19 in Paris and I tramped across half of Europe. If you search the police registers of these different countries, I defy anyone to find my name next to a single bad deed… They still present me as an ambitious man who aims for power… as a cannibal and drinker of blood… as an exalted brain, a nobody… From my childhood only two main passions have motivated all the powers of my being: a love of justice and a love of glory".
 * __from 1793__ “It is by violence that one must establish liberty and the moment has come where we must temporarily organize a despotism of liberty to crush the despotism of kings. I conclude by agreeing to this plan [for the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety] for the committee”.
 * above quotes are from http://www.answers.com/topic/jean-paul-marat

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