{"quotes":[{"text":"Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.","author":"Thomas Paine","tags":["american-revolution","crime","dogma","enemies","feigned-morality","french-revolution","hypocrisy","injury","intention","justice","love","love-thy-enemy","loving","maxim","meaning","morality","motive","persecution","preach","premius","proverb","revenge","vague"],"id":4846,"author_id":"Thomas+Paine"},{"text":"Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.","author":"Jennifer Donnelly","tags":["beauty","class-struggle","excess","french-revolution","grandeur","louis-xiv","paris","wastefulness"],"id":20568,"author_id":"Jennifer+Donnelly"},{"text":"Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.","author":"Maximilien de Robespierre","tags":["divine-violence","french-revolution","robespierre","violence","walter-benjamin"],"id":27217,"author_id":"Maximilien+de+Robespierre"},{"text":"And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn’t it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?","author":"Hilary Mantel","tags":["french-revolution","irony"],"id":27502,"author_id":"Hilary+Mantel"},{"text":"Who then shall unravel all these subtle combinations? Who shall trace the exact dividing line that marks off one form of extremism from its opposite? It can be done only by a love of country and a love of truth. Kings and knaves will always try to destroy this love, for they shun reason and truth like the p.","author":"Maximilien de Robespierre","tags":["divine-violence","french-revolution","love-of-truth","patriotism","revolution","virtue"],"id":40377,"author_id":"Maximilien+de+Robespierre"},{"text":"I turn away from the smell of death, pressing my lavender scented handkerchief as tight as I can against my nose.","author":"Meghan Masterson","tags":["french-history","french-revolution","historical-fiction"],"id":60511,"author_id":"Meghan+Masterson"},{"text":"When Freemasons vainglory on their deeds during the French Revolution, they forget that many innocents paid with their own life for that, including pregnant women and children from the royal families, and those that have witness it didn't forget, and will likewise turn the karma back on them in the years to come, making their innocents pay for the guilty ones.","author":"Robin Sacredfire","tags":["freemasonry","freemasons","french-revolution","history","masons"],"id":63208,"author_id":"Robin+Sacredfire"},{"text":"It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! And chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. … Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.","author":"Wilhelm Reich","tags":["celibacy","christianity","corruption","dictatorship","freedom","french-revolution","freud","galileo","hitler","inquisition","jesus","lenin","marriage","marx","nietzsche","responsibility","socialism","stalin","subhuman"],"id":64552,"author_id":"Wilhelm+Reich"},{"text":"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.","author":"Hilary Mantel","tags":["fashion","french-revolution"],"id":71034,"author_id":"Hilary+Mantel"},{"text":". . . Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they be, are slaves rebelling against the sovereign of the earth, which is the human race, and against the legislator of the universe, which is n.","author":"Maximilien de Robespierre","tags":["enlightenment","french-revolution","monarchy","political-science","social-contract"],"id":81753,"author_id":"Maximilien+de+Robespierre"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}