"The establishment of democracy in a nation that has languished in chains for a long time can be compared to the effort of nature in the transition [so astonishing] from nothing to existence, no doubt a much greater effort than the passage from life to annihilation.""L’établissement de la démocratie chez une nation qui a longtemps langui dans les fers peut être compare à l’effort de la nature dans la transition si étonnante du néant à l’existence: effort plus grand sans doute que le passage de la vie à l’anéantissement."
Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, an architect of The Terror, addressing the National Convention in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, Primidi, 1 Floréal 2 =Sunday, 20 April 1794 Old Style, Gazette nationale ou Le moniteur universel no. 202 (Duodi, 2 Floréal 2 =Monday, 21 April 1794 Old Style), Réimpression de l'ancien Moniteur 20, 263. I was put onto this by (and have taken this modified translation from) Rémi Brague, The kingdom of man: Genesis and failure of the modern project, trans. Paul Seaton, Catholic ideas for a secular world (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 135.
