LAZARE CARNOT

In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, but much suffering.

The government of a single person is no assurance of a stable and tranquil government.

When a body acts upon another one, it is always immediately or through some intermediate body; this intermediate body is in general what one calls a machine.

We intend, Citizen General, to restore to a people ripe for revolution, the independence and liberty for which it clamors. Ireland has groaned under the hateful yoke of England for centuries. The Defenders … are already secretly armed…. Detach Ireland from England, and she will be reduced to a second-rate power.

... the sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] over all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas.

The government of a single person is no assurance of a stable and tranquil government.

In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, but much suffering.

When a body acts upon another one, it is always immediately or through some intermediate body; this intermediate body is in general what one calls a machine.

We intend, Citizen General, to restore to a people ripe for revolution, the independence and liberty for which it clamors. Ireland has groaned under the hateful yoke of England for centuries. The Defenders … are already secretly armed…. Detach Ireland from England, and she will be reduced to a second-rate power.

... the sciences are like a beautiful river, of which the course is easy to follow, when it has acquired a certain regularity; but if one wants to go back to the source, one will find it nowhere, because it is everywhere; it is spread so much [as to be] over all the surface of the earth; it is the same if one wants to go back to the origin of the sciences, one will find only obscurity, vague ideas, vicious circles; and one loses oneself in the primitive ideas.